Posted 12:59 PM by Blah blah

Hypocrisy

Sometimes I prefer to be alone. I've been spending much time alone lately, enjoying doing what I feel like doing, saying and thinking what I feel like saying, without politics, without interruption, and without someone screaming his head off at me. I really like this quote from Emerson on "Friendship":

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting as indeed he could not help doing for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to face him, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back.

Speaking of racism, Esther, you should watch that fine 1947 movie, Gentleman's Agreement, starring Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire, which won the Best Picture Oscar that year. It was a courageous movie at the time and encountered much executive opposition to being made. It's one of the first movies ever to deal head-on with anti-Semitism and how pervasive racism and prejudice are, especially with the "nice people" who just disapprove but never DO anything about it.

Gregory Peck, a magazine writer, pretends to be Jewish in order to feel what it's really like and to write about it. He quickly finds out that the most unexpected people around him, people he would trust, are deep down very conflicted and prejudiced about Jews. They are as guilty of helping prejudice along, with a wink and nudge, as the blatant bigots. My favorite person in it is Celeste Holm, a fine comedienne and heartfelt actress who touches you the most. She won Best Supporting Actress for that film.

I bring up this movie because in it Gregory Peck does just what Emerson wrote. He throws off the social conventions and pretend politeness and speaks out bluntly about what it feels like to be snubbed or looked down on because of one's religion or race. He stirs up conflict where normally people will play dumb and overlook it, to avoid facing real issues. And in the end he finds a connection with the one girl at work who has actually believed in and supported him the whole way through.

Being Asian-Americans, we've grown up facing prejudice against ourselves. We may be used to fighting back against it when we see it on the outside. But what bothers and hurts me the most is when I see prejudice from fellow Asians. From my own race.