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Should the above title make you nervously expect a punch line of questionable taste to follow, just bear with me for a wee bit longer and all will be revealed.

If in our working world, there is a green thumb for the kind of money that grows on trees, then my thumb, figuratively speaking, typically stays in the red. That’s not the punch line yet, folks. Contrary to the stereotypes about Asian Americans being good with numbers, my savoir faire falls resoundingly to the side of the Liberal Arts. So why then should I take even the remotest interest in a New York Times article entitled “Is There Room at the Top for Black Executives?” by Ron Stodghill?

I think one of the most unfortunate results of excessive ethnocentrism is the view that falling into one particular minority demographic would preclude one from taking an interest in other minority demographics. In mainstream media, there seems to be this obsessive bipolar lock on how we discuss ethnicity, usually with the white majority as the go-to dance partner while the other minority groups each wait their turn on the floor.

The Punch Line

So here’s the punch line: in a truly ethnically enlightened society, an African-American CEO and an Asian-American Blogger occurring in the same sentence really shouldn’t have to seem like part of a punch line. In other words, the real joke is that a dialogue about members of two different minority groups (without the white majority) sadly seems more likely to occur within the context of vulgar ethnic humor.

So let’s make the title work and address the question I asked earlier, “Why should I, as an Korean-American with no direct background in business, take the remotest interest in a New York Times article about the state of black American corporate executives?” Well, for one thing, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that what has bearing on one minority group has bearing on others as well.

If there is a dearth of black executives in the corporate world, particularly given that blacks are one of our longest standing minority groups in U.S. history, then it stands to reason that other minorities may suffer a similar lack of representation. Of course there are experiences and conditions unique to each ethnic group, but looking at the plight of one minority group can serve as a bellwether for other groups.

But beyond the motive of self-interest by proxy, I believe that regardless of what demographic one belongs to, accepting a state of ignorance about other cultural groups with which we share this country invariably leads to the toxic by-product of bigotry, both overt and covert, both conscious and unconscious.

Can’t See Forest for the Trees

What struck me most about the article was that several of the black executives interviewed expressly stated wanting to be treated on the basis of their performance, whether good or poor, as individuals before the labeling of their black identity (if at all in the case of the latter).

The fact that they even need to provide the disclaimer, almost as if in some reflexive defense mechanism, is symptomatic of the problems that all ethnic minorities face in a dominant white society—the difficulty of seeing the individual before seeing the perceived attributions of the individual’s ethnic group. I discussed this issue in my earlier posting entitled, “Don’t Doubt the Benefit of the Doubt.”

But therein lies the pointed irony, despite claims of our living in a color-blind society, you can’t get to the individual without first properly understanding your own conceptualization of said individual’s identity—a process that is not always so easy to do.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly problematic comments of a few weeks back provide an excellent case example. Several weeks ago, he had made headlines for certain statements he had made on his radio show while recounting his dinner with Reverend Al Sharpton at Sylvia’s, a black-owned restaurant in Harlem.

On his radio show, he was discussing interethnic relations with Fox News analyst Juan Williams, specifically between blacks and whites. He cited his experience at Sylvia’s as a sign of social progress for blacks in America.

In the course of his dialogue with Mr. Williams, Mr. O’Reilly indicated surprise by stating he “couldn’t get over the fact” that there was no difference between black-owned Sylvia’s and other restaurants.

“It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun,” he said. “And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

In general, I am not a fan of Mr. O’Reilly’s role in mainstream media (similar to that of his counterparts like Lou Dobbs or Glenn Beck) in which he blurs his role as a demagogic pundit with declarations of being the American everyman, or in Mr. O’Reilly’s specific case, sometimes even with protestations of being the maligned “outsider” to mainstream media which he imbues with an overall liberal bias.

My honest belief is that Mr. O’Reilly meant to express relatively progressive views on the topic of interethnic relations, but his comments demonstrated perfectly the kind of bigotry that is in some ways more difficult to guard against or argue against than overt racism, because the initial intention was so well-meaning. He exhibited the classic soft bigotry of low expectations, or to put it more colloquially, he paid a back-handed compliment to Sylvia’s, and by problematic proxy, the black community.

For those who still believe his comments to be innocuous and the rest of us are being too critical or over-reactive, I find that role-reversal sometimes helps to point out the inherent myopia of a given perspective, and the blogger “Black Sentinel” effectively illustrates this in “Restaurant Review Bill O’Reilly Style,” a biting parody in which she as a black customer reviews a fictional white-owned restaurant.

Free Your Mind, The Rest Will Follow

Being a nationally recognized media figure, it’s too easy to pick on Mr. O’Reilly’s foibles to feel better about ourselves in our ostensibly superior social sensitivity, but at least he has engaged and continues to engage members of another ethnic demographic (in this case the black community) in dialogue. We as individuals would do better to carefully examine how we might also embody bigotries hidden even to ourselves that foster through a lack of engagement with worlds beyond our everyday familiarity.

This could entail a Korean-American blogger reading about black corporate executives in the New York Times or a white news pundit sharing a meal with Reverend Al Sharpton in a black-owned restaurant in Harlem—small steps towards greater understanding. The learning curve exists for every single one of us.

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