Author, television commentator and Howard University law professor Frank Wu addressed students in the Bryan Center last night about his new book, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White.
"I wrote the book to engage in dialogue, and I'm encouraging students to e-mail me about what they think," Wu said, as he signed books in the Von Canon dining room before delivering his speech.
Wu, whose tour has taken him to cities across America, described his book as a discussion of race outside the normal paradigms of white and black, with an emphasis on the Asian-American experience--a discussion that he sees as parallel to that of W.E.B DuBois.
"DuBois showed that he was able to focus on African Americans but encompass all races," Wu said. "It's a book very much of questions, not of answers."
The professor touched on the complicated issues surrounding the Asian-American experience in the United States by first describing what he called the "foreigner syndrome." The syndrome is an attitude expressed by many Americans that even naturalized Asian Americans are somehow not at "home" in America--that even as Americans born in America, they are not where they belong.
The foreigner syndrome, Wu said, is revealed by the types of questions that many white Americans ask Asian Americans and other non-white ethnicities.
"People will say OHow do you like it in our country?'" Wu said. "And I'll think OIt's fine, except for all of these questions.'"
Sentiments like the foreigner syndrome played a large role in American racial injustices like the Japanese internment during World War II, where even Japanese Americans whose families had lived in the United States for generations were distrusted as potential spies or saboteurs, Wu said.
"I worry that when people ask OWhere are you really from?' that there's a subtext to it," he said. "It's a constant doubt that they have a birthright that you don't have."
Wu also touched on the complicated issue of stereotypes in the Asian-American experience. He said that although many stereotypes of Asian Americans are flattering, they can also imply insulting comments about a race or ethnic group.
"Who wouldn't want to be called an overachiever?" he asked. "But when people say, OOh, you are all so polite,' it's a polite way of saying OYou know your place.'"
Wu also said another goal of his book was to examine race as a more complicated dynamic than just a black-and-white conflict between racists and non-racists.
"What I'd like to suggest is that race is not just bigots and victims," Wu said. "Sometimes we're all partly right, and we're all partly wrong."
Wu taught law at Stanford University for one year after receiving his law degree from the University of Michigan and working as a lawyer in San Francisco. He is the first Asian-American professor of law at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.