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SF: This is kind of a speculative question too. In terms of, kind of, racism within our own community, seems to me that there, you know -- among Niseis in particular, because of when they grew up and the ethnic competition and things of that sort -- there's a fair amount of, say anti-black attitudes. Partly, maybe it's partly cultural, maybe it's economic competition, it could be lots of things. Do you think Buddhism speaks to that in a different or... way than Christianity? Is, how should we within the community think about trying to better that situation, or our own racism? It's like, I can sort of remember picking up the seeds of say anti-Korean sort of thing. Nothing really explicit, but somehow you got the idea that they weren't as good as Japanese were, and then there's this kind of pecking order of the different races.

RI: Yeah. I think Japanese Buddhists have a lot of the same biases and similar pecking order, same pecking order as other non-Buddhist Japanese. But I think there's an awareness -- Buddhism is quite egalitarian -- that everybody has this potential to be a Buddha, this Buddha nature, and it has nothing to do with skin or gender or anything. We know that. So when we find very little... I don't know what people are feeling inside. Maybe in their business practices they are racist, whatever. But it's not, it's never spoken of at Buddhist gatherings, 'cause they know it won't be supported. It'll just draw dead silence. But, you know we're Japanese, and World War II isn't so far off in this adoration of the emperor, and we as the chosen people, in a way, the only civilized people in the world and everybody else is kind of barbaric. And that kind of pervades this kind of pride in being Japanese and with the recent, you know, of being an economic power. And although that's fluctuating now, the belief still is Japan is probably the most advanced non-white country in the world, right? And you just have to look at the products around us to know this technologically... so it goes on and on. And so it does feed into our feeling of being different, but maybe in some ways superior. And I know I carry some of that, too, which has served me well through the battles in academia where I'm the only Japanese or Asian, where I could make, kind of develop a haughty air, and kind of intimidate them from not criticizing too much. Things like that. But it has nothing to do with Buddhism in that way, although at the bottom line I realize it's a big sham and a game. So maybe that's Buddhist. I don't know if that's a response to your question directly.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.