Second Thoughts
S.I. Hayakawa

(Reprinted by Request)

Racism in all Directions

One of the queerest things about race prejudices is the way they are held by people who are themselves victims of race prejudice. At a meeting of the Japanese-American Citizens League to which I was invited in Denver the other night, I was told that there are many Japanese-Americans who, although vigorously protesting race prejudice when it applied to them, had strong prejudices themselves against other minorities, such as Mexicans, Negroes and Jews.

The Japanese-American Citizens League is combating such prejudices among their own group with the very sensible argument: "How do you expect others to stop being prejudiced against you if you insist on having similar prejudices yourself?"

Unfortunately, the point is hard to get across to many members of minority groups. The reason is not far to seek. The victim of discrimination is simply consoling himself by finding someone else to discriminate against. "I may be low down," a Japanese-American may say to himself, "but at least I'm not as bad as those Jews."

Japanese Girl Among Negroes

The more dealings I have with minority problems the more am I convinced that it isn't possible to deal with prejudices one at a time with divided forces, some fighting anti-Negro prejudice, some fighting anti-Jewish prejudice, and so on. We must attack the whole lot at once.

A story that impressed the point on me more than anything else is about a Japanese-American girl who was about to be hired in a factory employing a large number of Negro women. The employer first asked the Negro women if they would mind having a Japanese girl working with them.

"Nothing doing," the women replied. "We don't want to work with any Japs."

The employer, however, was so short of help that he finally hired the Japanese-American girl anyway and placed her among the Negro employes.

After a few days the Negroes discovered that the little Japanese girl wasn't so bad after all and began to speak to her. She replied politely, so that soon she had many friends among the Negro employes.

She Had It Too

One day, one of the Negro women who had become especially friendly with the Japanese girl took her aside and said to her, "We have an apology to make to you. Before you came to work here, the boss told us he was hiring a Japanese-American girl. We all objected to your coming, because we were prejudiced against Japanese.

"Now that we have seen you and talked to you, we have got over our prejudice. And we want to ask you to forgive us for having been so stupid and prejudiced."

The Japanese girl was deeply touched by this remark.

"I'm awfully glad you people like me," she said, "because I like all of you and I like working here." Then her tone changed. "I especially like being here because before I came I was working for a bunch of Jews, and I hate Jews."

If a thief squawks about his home being robbed, we don't have much sympathy for him. I'm not at all sure the victim of race prejudice deserves much, sympathy when he goes around spreading the poison himself.