Where I Stand -- Aurora Jose Wong: We must live together

Editor's note: In August Where I Stand is written by guest columnists. Today's guest is Aurora Jose Wong, who has served as corporate counsel for her family businesses in North Las Vegas and Guam. She is currently on the board of directors of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies in Washington, D.C. She writes a column, Speaking from the Heart, for the Asian Reader, a local monthly newspaper. She has lived in Las Vegas since 1985 with her husband, Buck.

CONVENTIONAL approaches to race relations must undergo considerable rethinking as America enters the millennium more multicultural than ever.

The new demographics will not escape Nevada. Witness the remark of retired Wisconsin judge Fred Kessler when he unveiled his proposed re-districting plan on Aug. 6 for the city of Las Vegas: "This is as integrated a city as you will find in the entire United States."

The new ward boundaries would give African-Americans a 30 percent voting bloc in a new Ward 5 encompassing West Las Vegas, and the Hispanics a 24 percent voting bloc in existing Ward 3. The remaining wards would be at least 6 percent black and 8 percent Hispanic.

While whites would retain population majorities in all six wards, the voting blocs would take on significance in a city where just a few months ago 139 votes determined a City Council race and in a state where 426 votes decided last year's U.S. Senate race.

Consider also the recent, nationwide initiative on the part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to recruit Hispanics. The NAACP is now reaching across racial divides to eliminate discrimination and fight for economic development for all constituencies.

What is happening in today's race relations is a dramatic shift away from the black vs. white tradition.

Nationwide, whites now account for 74 percent of the population, blacks 12 percent, Hispanics 10 percent, Asians 3 percent and American Indians 1 percent.

In Hawaii and New Mexico, whites are not the majority. By next year, this may be true for California. Texas, Maryland, New Jersey and Nevada are also predicted to soon have populations where no one ethnic group predominates.

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2050, Hispanics will account for 25 percent of the population, blacks 14 percent, Asians 8 percent, American Indians less than 1 percent and whites 53 percent.

During the hearings associated with the President's Race Initiative Commission, Commissioner Angela Oh argued for a race dialogue that included non-black racial minorities and immigrants. A new theme emerged in the media -- looking beyond black and white.

In March 1998, at a hearing in Denver, the commission members were disrupted by an angry and frustrated audience. Said one woman, "... this format of a panel of power brokers and the citizenry is just not working."

A month before, college students at Brown University called for individual responsibility. Said one student, "Often people at Brown feel like they have to play a role as a representative of a minority voice. So there is pressure not to voice your own opinion. But we have to challenge ourselves with these issues, so when we leave Brown and are confronted with this every day, we can react intelligently."

In Silicon Valley, where the economy is booming, commissioners were challenged for not including conservatives and "European-Americans who make up the majority of people living in this country." An unidentified white man disrupted the proceedings with shouts of, "We don't want to be a minority in our own country!"

A Chinese-American then told the commission, "When this fellow said 73 percent of the nation is European-American, I'm thinking only 2 or 3 percent is Asian-Pacific Islander. When I think of who's voting and who's in the majority, then I feel scared."

The public testimony at these hearings shares a common thread: conventional formats and solutions in the field of race relations are inadequate. And maybe that's what the commission's final report to the president, criticized as being inconclusive and lacking any viable approaches, is really telling us.

We need a new language to deal with the changing face of America. And as we develop this new language, we cannot ignore or exclude white anxiety and anger.

The European-American and the Chinese-American are saying the same thing: we are afraid of each other. They are coming from the same place, a place where fear blocks communication, and therefore, understanding. Fear is greatest when race issues become economic and the allocation of resources is at stake. What programs get funded at whose expense? Who gets the job promotion at whose expense? Who gets accepted and rejected by the university?

This is the traditional "haves/have nots" paradigm operating. It will only lead us to more entrenchment on all sides of the race debate and to more racially motivated violence of the type we have seen recently.

Multiculturalism demands that we go beyond mere political correctness. We have to find human ways to connect and live with each other. Otherwise, fear will destroy us.

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