They Failed In Their Duty
Siva Vaidhyanathan writes:
Asian-Americans are all too often spoken for within the major cultural and political nodes of our nation's consciousness. But rarely do they speak. The Wen Ho Lee case is different. Hundreds spoke out.
When Dr. Wen Ho Lee walked out of the federal courthouse in New Mexico, he uttered a handful of grateful words for those who stood up for him. He expressed no overt bitterness for the double standards, rushes to judgement and overt racial profiling that put him in solitary confinement in the first place.
Wen Ho Lee's ordeal has ended relatively painlessly. In the 20th century, Asian-Americans accused of lesser (or no) crimes have seen their property stolen and their lives uprooted, have seen their nation endorse anti-Asian racism ("Gookism") to justify four wars, have been beaten or killed by racist mobs, and have seen sacred signs of their cultures commercialized by everyone from General Foods to Madonna.
And too often Asian-Americans expressed no overt bitterness for their treatment. That changed in the 1960s with the rise of the Asian-American movement. This time Dr. Lee did not stand alone. Asian-American civil-rights activists reminded Americans how they have been treated in the past and exposed the hypocrisy of the federal criminal case (not quite espionage ... but not quite right). One of the reasons Dr. Lee is not in solitary confinement today is that activists did their job well. They not only struck a blow for justice, they struck a blow against cynicism.
The New York Times' non-apology apology did not acknowledge that within any large institution in America — the Justice Department, the Energy Department, The New York Times, New York University — there is a certain amount of inertial bigotry. Against Asian-Americans it is the "soft bigotry of high expectations." Asian-Americans seem by default to be able, if not willing, to carry out elaborate schemes that require technical prowess, elaborate networks and suspect loyalties. They must prove they are merely sloppy, shortsighted and naive. Sometimes they must prove they are loyal and patriotic. Sometimes proof of loyalty does not matter. Inertial bigotry demands constant vigilance to keep it in check. We depend on our watchdogs in the press to maintain such vigilance.
Times editors should have known that federal investigators would act like many law enforcement officers do when under intense pressure: they went for the simplest answer, the suspect who fit the profile (never mind the facts), the villain who would make the tangled mess of details make sense as soon as possible.
Had the Times editors truly embraced a "global" perspective, they might have seen that Dr. Lee's experiences are too complex for the simple tale of greed and disloyalty that federal prosecutors conjured for the case. They would have noticed that the United States is blessed with millions of families just like Lee's — families that made sacrifices to live here, yet retain strong links to other nations. The editors would have also realized that no one with close family in Taiwan would have any interest in helping the People's Republic of China arm itself better. The Times saw merely a Chinese face. It failed to see a family's struggles, sacrifices and successes as anything more than an opportunity for disloyalty. Dr. Lee's America is the next America. In the 21st century, loyalty will no longer be a simple, either/or proposition. We will all have complex stories to tell. Many more of us might be suspects.
The editors and reporters had a duty to question the conventional wisdom that drove investigators to Dr. Lee's front door. They failed in their duty. Had the editors listened to Asian-American activists before the crisis, had they deigned to view the Eastern hemisphere, its residents, and its emigrants as more than cheap labor and a willing market for American goods (and news content), they might have avoided the sensationalist stories that yielded that non-apology in the first place.
The New York Times has yet to admit contrition, sorrow or shame for its laziness. But thanks to the talents and courage of Asian-American activists, news editors around the world might be a little more careful next time an Asian-American is falsely accused of disloyalty.
