In a discussion group I frequent, someone posted on a recent Bush campaign commercial that claimed Kerry was weak on National Security. In the ad, they mentioned terrorism as a major threat, and above the terrorist label, showed a picture of an obviously Arab-American male, looking back somewhat insidiously. At least one major Arab-American group is protesting this representation, and is demanding the ad be changed or pulled. Now, usually I would be posting about how it seems that Bush can’t create an ad without offending a great many people in some way or another, or how stupid and fake the ad is for saying that Kerry wants to weaken the fight against terrorism, but this time I’m focusing on the appropriateness of the image. The poster on the forum I mentioned usually provides a liberal view, but this time saw nothing wrong with the image. Just after 9/11, in one of Bush’s rare good deeds, he urged the country not to take out their anger at the terrorist attack on Muslims or Arabs; now two years and a half later, I think it is important for us to remember what Bush said then, as he so clearly has forgotten it himself. It is, in my opinion, not OK to use generic racial images like that one in the ad. You may not feel that is the case, but you may also be white. Let me explain.

This is where having personal experience with racial discrimination is necessary to understand the objections. You may think you can understand how people think and feel because of discrimination, you may even know people who have experienced it and think you understand because of that. But as someone who has been in both places, I can tell you that you have to be the recipient before you can really understand it well–and I believe I don’t even have the whole understanding of racism in America because racism in Japan is less serious, though more open.

In the 1980’s, Japan and America suffered a great deal of animosity due to adverse trade relations. On top of that, Japan was feeling its oats as a country, feeling on top of the world, and nationalism was enjoying a resurgence. As an American living in Japan at that time, I felt the repercussions of negativity against non-Japanese, and Americans specifically. Americans were all too often portrayed as violent, criminal, and diseased (AIDS-carrying). I got pulled over on my bicycle by police for ‘biking while white,’ accused every time of stealing it (even when well-groomed and dressed in a business suit, coming back from work). I was told to leave restaurants, denied membership in stores like video rental shops, and in the countryside I was stared at, pointed at and sometimes ridiculed. 95%+ of apartment landlords refused to let me even see an apartment because “gaijin wa dame” (“foreigners are no good”), and some even posted ads reading “no pets, prostitutes or foreigners allowed.” On TV, Americans were often portrayed as gun-loving, violent criminals or AIDS carriers; in baseball, American players were intentionally beaned far more often than usual, then labeled as violent when they rushed the mound. The word for “foreigner” in Japanese was even played upon to change the meaning to “harmful person.”

And when the cops pulled me over on my bike for the Nth time, surrounded me, checked my bike’s serial number and called it in while demanding my ID and grilling me on the street–I would see Japanese people passing by, carefully looking without looking, and I knew that at least some were thinking, “so it’s true!”

So if, on TV, someone showed a photo of someone who looked like me and labeled it “Criminal,” then hell yes, I would be offended. Worse, if I saw that in a political ad, I would be offended and not just a little scared. Because the ad would (a) play on people’s fears, and increase those fears they felt when they saw me on the street, and (b) if the politician won (and fear sells well), there would be yet another person in power who saw political gain in making me out to be a threat to the country.

Now, today, things are different and much better in Japan in these respects. The trade war pretty much forgotten about, the animosities not so prevalent. It’s a different story now. Foreigners are not so often pulled over and accused, apartments are easier to find—I haven’t been at the receiving end of any discrimination I can discern for many years now. But I can still remember, and I can still recognize the same elements of that harmful discrimination back home. Remember, Bush was supposed to be the one who didn’t do this kind of thing; that he approves of that ad, to me, shows that (a) he has changed his beliefs on the issue, (b) he never believed it and told Americans what he did after 9/11 for some other reason, (c) he still believes but is willing to betray those beliefs to get elected, or (d) his understanding of the issue is so weak that he simply can’t see the difference. Any way you look at it, it’s not pretty. As James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute said, “This is the very thing that the president warned against after 9-11. He was so wise to tell the country not to fall prey to the negative stereotypes that exploit fear. Now the president seems to be doing what he warned against.”

I have seen the ad, and I do understand how Zogby feels. So because of that, and not just a generic liberal principle, I agree with him wholeheartedly. The ad should be pulled, and Bush should not do that kind of thing again.