RACISM, THE WAR AND THE UNIVERSITY

Gerald D. Berremsan

University of California, Berkeley

Evidence that the war in Asia is to a large extent a racist
war is plentiful. As such, it represents an extension of

racism and institutional violence in America. Universities,
including my own, are deeply involved in the war through re-
search and consulting. Social scientists, in-cluding anthro-
pologists, are among the war workers. It is important that

this complicity be ended for intellectual reasons as well as

for the overriding hn and moral reasons.     [American culture,
counter-insurgency, genocide, racism, Southeast Asia, Thailand,
role of the University, University of California, war]

The following statement was given as an address on May 27, 1970, at
the second Greek Theatre convocation at Berkeley following the United
States' invasion of Cambodia. It was written for that event, and for
the format of a mass meeting with many speakers and severe limitations
on time. It was given in the context of the "reconstitution." of the

University in response to the-Cambodian invasion and, more broadly, in

response to the continuation of the war. It is presented here as it was
given. It seems to the author and to the editors that it remains rele-

vant despite the fatigue, discouragement and repression which have over-
taken the campus, and the consequent diminution of activity toward the
ends advocated here. This is an anthropologist's statement on his
society and his university, expressing his understanding and his
commitment.

In March 1965 at the first Teach-in against the war in Vietnam
here at Berkeley, I made the point that this was a racist war. It is
a tragedy of our time that 5 years later I must come here to say it
again.

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Now as then it is a war of white America against Asians. Now

as then it is a genocidal war because it comprises systematic exterm-
ination of cultures and peoples. Now it is spreading like a cancer.

The pretense of adherence to international law and to the Constitution of
the United States has been largely dropped. Our leaders are war criminals
objects of horror and contempt before the world. All Americans share
guilt in our country's crimes against humanity.

Now as five years ago, the racism of the war is manifest in words
as well as deeds. We kill more easily, I think, because those we kill
are not children, women and men, but "dinks", "gooks", "slopes", Viet
Cong and Communists. In fact we don't kill them, we "zap" them,

"terminate them with extreme prejudice", subject them to the effects of
"free fire zones", and we reduce them to a body count. They don't even

live and die in houses, but in "hootches". They are, in short, so alien
as to be scarcely human. To most Americans their lives are incompre-

hensible as human lives; their persons scarcely recognizable as human
persons; their deaths unidentifiable as the deaths of people who live,
love, fear, hope and sacrifice. The semantics of dehumanization is an
important part of the American prosecution of the war as it is in

repression wherever we practice it--it makes it palatable to our citizens.

Realistic reporting, as has occurred in the case of the Mai Lai
massacre, takes on special importance in this context, as Spiro Agnew
has recognized in his attacks on the press, for it has a tendency to
bring Americans to their senses and thereby endangers the war effort.

The semantics of the war depends heavily upon the deep-seated

and long extant racism in American culture, and in Western civilization
generally. It is based not on race as biologists define the term, but
on differences between groups which are regarded as intrinsic and
significant, be they genetic, learned or imposed, be they racial,

cultural, economic, religious or sexual. Racism is a generic term for
all. Such racism has been the rationale for violence and oppression
throughout the history of the Western world. It was manifest by

Europeans in America when they dispossessed and murdered the Native

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Americans; it was manifest throughout the brutal history of colonization
and slave trade in Africa and elsewhere; it was manifest in the genocide
and extinction of such forgotten peoples as the Tasmanians. It was

manifest in the Nazi annihilation of Jews and Gypsies. Ironically, it
is manifest today in the glorification of Israel's Western culture,

technical efficiency and military might, as against the long-despised

and almost totally unknown Arabs. Whatever the merits of the opponents
in that hopeless conflict, the racism is blunt and unadorned.

Most of all, our racism is manifest in the oppression of our

internal minorities, and in our war in Asia. There, the might of our
technology is aimed not just at Vietnamese, but at Southeast Asians

generally as it moves into Cambodia, Laos and (no doubt) Thailand. Our
chiefs of staff have evidently defined China as the ultimate target--

the most populous nation on earth, populated by Asians. If there is not
a drastic turnabout, and an immediate one, we will be catapulted into
the greatest pre-emptive race war in history--and the last one.

But that it is a racist war does not mean that whites are simply
killing Asians. All one has to do is to look at the statistics to see
that our 50,000 dead are to a disproportionately large extent, black
people and brown people, and that most of the rest are poor whites,

(another oppressed minority). Racist America is not above using others
in implementing its racism--in fact, that is routine. And now we hear
of Vietnamization of the war, not only in Vietnam, but in Cambodia as

well. Vietnamization does not mean Vietnam for the Vietnamese-- that is
the program of the National Liberation Front, not the United States or
its South Vietnamese puppets. Rather, it means puppet rule. We let
Vietnamese kill one another, provided we are certain the survivors
(whom we call victors) will do our bidding.

Those whom we hold in contempt and whom we oppress, we co-opt
when we can, to do our dirty work. In this context, it is not sur-

prising that even the most racist police forces recruit a few carefully
selected black and brown officers. This is not simply tokenism; it is,

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again,cooptation. It doesn't imply respect for those people, only
recognition of their usefulness as Vietnamization does in Asia.

Racism is often denied by those who practice it--it comes so

easily as to go unnoticed. But though it may be subtle to those who

perpetrate it; it is brutal to those who suffer it. It can be as subtle

and as brutal as the decision during World War II to put in concentration
camps Americans of Japanese ancestry, but not those of German ancestry;
as subtle and brutal as the fact that the only atomic bombs ever

dropped on people were dropped on Asians; as subtle and brutal as

Nixon's southern strategy, Reagan's economizing on welfare and publi6

services (including imposition of university tuition) and Agnew's call
(echoed by many academics) for uniform admissions standards in our

universities. The results of such political expediency is the inaccess-
ability to millions of people of economic, political and social emanci-
pation, and a secure life. Most of those people are members of our
internal minorities. Racism is as subtle and brutal as the the

conspicuous difference in public attention and soul-searching directed
to the shooting of four middle-class white students at Kent State as
contrasted to that of the shooting of two black students at Jackson

State--and even less concern expressed at the deaths of six black non-
students shot in Augusta. All of these deaths were tragic; all repre-

sented oppression; it is the differential response to them which reflects
our racism--the fact that black murders are routine and familiar, white
middle-class murders are news.

Genocide is a conmmon concomitant of racism--its logical extension.
How routinely was the nationwide manhunt and massacre of Black Panthers
treated by the press and accepted by the public until it had run its
course for many months. How routinely are the hundreds of thousands

of Asian deaths in Southeast Asia accepted in this country. Genocide,
too, is often unrecognized by those who perpetrate it. Since it is

made up of many discrete acts, it is too abstract and too remote for
them to recognize or admit; but it is concrete and immediate to those
who suffer the individual and cumulative effects of those acts.

Genocide is as remote as pushing a bomb release at 50,000 feet, unseen,
unheard, and unseeing, on supersonic flights from distant, comfortable

and safe sanctuaries against an enemy without aircraft or other effective
defense. Genocide is as immediate and brutal as tons of explosives

falling into the homes and schools of people like you and me; as brutal
as thousands of anti-personnel fragments piercing the brains and hearts
of children like ours. Genocide is as subtle as the voices of commnd

which order and authorize the release of those bombs, the deaths of those
people, and the expansion of the war; as subtle, too, as the actions

of a citizenry which casts the votes and pays the taxes which endorse
and enable these murders and murderers.

Genocide is also as subtle as the academic institutions which

prostitute themselves to the war-making of this nation. In the case

of the University of California this is done, for example, via the Los
Alamos and Livermore laboratories where the architects and technicians

of atomic holocaust do their filthy work under the concealing mantle of

academic affiliation. It is done through ROTC on campus where the officers
of war are trained, but not educated. In the case of social science,

the prostitutes are the hirelings of the Department of Defense, and in
Southeast Asia, the hirelings of the Agency for International Devel-
opment and other agencies engaged in counterinsurgency activities--

activities which express in the words of a colleague, "organized contempt"
for the peoples of those nations by nakedly suppressing their efforts

at reform in their own nations. These anti-social scientists do their
inhuman work, in secret or in public, not as independent scholars but

as hirelings. They are war profiteers parading under a false banner of
academic freedom.

Let me bring this point home, and relate racism at home and
abroad to institutional violence at home and abroad, by briefly

describing some research which is being done by social scientists
in the employ of our government.

A good example of which I have some knowledge is a project which
I understand has been carried out by social scientists, including as

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a consultant at least one from the University of California (not

Berkeley). This is a project submitted by the American Institutes

for Research in Pittsburgh, to the Advanced Research Projects Agency
of the Department of Defense, on Counter-Insurgency in Thailand.

It is an utterly obscene document, but it bears quoting because it is

enlightening. (I might note, that the reports of research accomplished
are said to be classified and are hence uoavailable for scrutiny.

The proposal from which I quote, is unclassified as are the agenda

of some of their consultative board meetings in Thailand.) Defining
the problem for research, the proposal says:

The struggle between an established government and
subversive or insurgent forces involves three

different types of operations....The social scientist
can make significant contributions to the design
of all three types. . .

What are these types of operations social scientists can help design?

The first is to make inpuxts into the social system

what will gain the active support of an ever-increasing
proportion of the local population. Threats, promises,
ideological appeals, and tangible benefits are the

kinds of inputs that are frequently used. The second
is to reduce. . . the flow of the competing inputs

being made by the opposing side by installing anti-
infiltration devices, cutting communication lines,

assassinating key spokesmen, strengthening retaliatory
mechanisms, and similar preventive measures.

The third is to counteract or neutralize the

political successes already achieved by groups committed
to the 'wrong' side. This typically involves direct
military confrontation.

This proposal is spelled out in 33 hair-raising pages
(a useful sunmmary is contained in The Student Mobilizer of
April 2, 1970 available from SMC, 1029 Vermont Avenue N.W.,

Room 907, Washington D.C. ,20005). But it is the final paragraph
of the proposal, on page 34, which gets it all together and out
front for our consideration of racism. Let me quote that final
paragraph, and listen well.

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The potential applicability of the findings to
the United States will also receive special

attention. In many of our key domestic programs,
especially those directed at disadvantaged sub-
cultures [note: this means Blacks, Chicanos,

Native Americans, and the poor of all colors]

the methodological problems are highly similar
to those described in this proposal, and the

applications of the Thai findings at home con-

stitutes a potentially most significant project
contribution.

This is applied social science. Now we are designing counter-insurgency
in America as well as in Southeast Asia. Will it too involve "selective
assassination"? Did this project's findings prove useful in dealing
with the Black Panthers?  Will they prove helpful in dealing with

student unrest? Your guess is as good as mine--and I am afraid that it
will be the sa   guess as mine.

The Regents of the University of California are currently
contractors with quite a different government agency: the Agency

for International Development (AID)--one which is usually regarded as
an innocuous sort of high-powered peace corps. But let me quote from
a 1968 AID pamphlet on "The U.S./A.I.D. Program in Thailand:"

The U.S. A I D program in Thailand is concentrated
upon a single objective: supporting the Royal Thai
Government in its efforts to contain, control, and
eliminate the Communist insurgency in rural areas.

We have access to a copy of the Amendment which renewed the
contract between the University of California and AID in September,
1968, because it was "liberated" from the files of one of the

participants. This contractual agreement is not such heady stuff as
the AIR one, but let me quote three segments:
The Operations Plan says (p 2):

The overall objective of this contract is to make

available the resources of the Contractor, including
personnel, to support and strengthen the operations
of the U.S. aid program in Thailand, particularly
with respect to the research activities undertaken

by the Research Division of USOM (US Operations Mission)

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Thailand. In so doing, the Contractor will provide
support to facilitate the effective functioning of

the Academic Advisory Council for Thailand (AACT) to
insure its maximum contribution to accomplishment of
the goals of the A.I.D. program in Thiland. [Note:

AACT is made up of scholars from several universities.]

Then it goes on:

The Contractor, in conjunction with AACT, will
provide the following services (p 2):

Two of the eight services are of special interest here, for both
mention counterinsurgency.

1) Identify research that is being, has been, or will
be conducted in universities, foundations and other
institutions that may relate to developmental and

counterinsurgency activities in Thailand; evaluate,
index and make such research available to A.I.D.;

suggest and solicit research proposals relevant to
A.I.D. activity in Thailand for consideration by
A.I .D./W [Washington] and USOM/Thailand.

6) Organize, coordinate and conduct meetings,

seminars, or conferences, under AACT auspices,
dealing with development and counterinsurgency

problems, issues and activities, including research,
relating to A.I.D. operations in Thailand.

This is your university--and you are asked to keep the University
out of politics!

This project has no place in a University. It is another
manifestation of organized contempt for the aspirations and self-

determination of the Thai people, and of academic complicity therein.
That contempt is tantamount to racism; and it is a direct adjunct
of our war machine in SE Asia.

I have been told that this project, out of UCLA, is up for

renewal. I hope that it will be dropped. Efforts are being made to
see that this is done. The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
is one group working on this. I urge support for these efforts.

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This is one aspect of reconstitution of this University which is
essential and urgent.

Let me close with some words about reconstitution of the

Uni-versity. The var in Southeast Asia, together vith racism at home
and abroad, has mde it clear to increasi   numbers of people that
traditional university education bas been compatible with domestic
and international racism and violee.    he faculty, eployees and
students of the University of California, have therefore begun to
reconstitute this University. We propose to end business as usual

because war and racism are business as usual, and they are incompatible
with education in a free society.

We are takin  the initiative ourselves, as the academic community,
to pursue education by deining for ourselves what is relevant to learn
and teach, and how to go about it. We are, after all, the University.
We will be addressing n.ny of the problems of our society directly;

often we will be doing so in novel ways; we will be involving ourselves
with the broader coMmunity. We will be learning and diss    ting the
truth as we discover it, wherever we can discover it. We will recon

stitute  our educational functions, not abandon them; we will invigorate
them, not attenuate them; we will bring them out of the ivory tower and
out of the war machine (which, to a significant extent is in the ivory

tower), into the world. We will work to make that world a more humane one.

As we attempt to educate ourselves and others, we hope the

university will change--that it will never be the same again. We hope
the country will never be the same again. We hope racism and violence,
and the hypocrisy which nurtures them will never be the same again.

To realize these ambitious hopes, we will engage in hard,

practical work; this will entail sacrifice and risks, but it is our
only hope for a viable academic community in this political world.

It is our contribution toward the widespread determination to turn this
country away from the current course of war and racism, genocide
and oppression.

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