Struggle for Equality from a Nonviolent Perspective

In the struggle for equality in the United States, minorities have had very profound historical struggles that have all taken different approaches to achieve some degree of social change. Each group has used similar methods in order fighting for their own civil rights; some were nonviolent and passive, while others were very aggressive. There were of course limitations in all these strategies, with much resistance, but most of the groups worked together to help one another by using ideas from another group’s strategy. Mexican Americans used ideas of the Black civil rights movement, inspired by their outcome, like boycotting mechanisms which had great success. The Black liberation movement worked closely with the Gay rights movement, having Bayard Rustin’s support and nonviolent strategies throughout the struggle. Asian Americans and radical feminist both attacked the political and social systems through literary work, by criticizing the way the systems operated and trying to empower their own kind to fight back.

In the 1960s, Mexican Americans started fighting against their useless classification of being “just another white American”. Mexican youth started feeling repressed as an effect of the repression by authority, the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 were formed in Los Angeles as a way to let society know of their visibility while police arrested and harassed Mexican youth. Before 1950, organizations were being founded such as the National Farm Workers Union (NFWO), in California in order to fight the Bracero Program which would lower wages. “Los Agricultores Mexicanos” were formed in Phoenix, Arizona and “La Association de Jornarelos” represented a broad coalition of labor workers which fought against repressive politics. Unfortunately, none of these unions were successful but they did succeed to inspire new unions to emerge in the 1960s. According to Dr. Alvarez’s, the “Chicano Movement” involved Cesar Chavez, a farm worker, who was mentored by Saul Alinsky’s works, became the director of the Community Services Organization (CSO) in 1960, which enabled him to seek agreement at the CSO to begin organization of farm workers. National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) was established with few organizers who went house to house trying to create social awareness of the inequality and poor treatment of farm workers.

Inspired by the nonviolent Black liberation movement, the NFWA organized successful strikes to fight for pay increase, such as the Grape Workers’ Strikes of 1965 which had success in raising the tough work environment the farmers were exposed to. They also gained media attention through these strikes where they were successful in advocating and practicing the boycotting of grape consumption, which was also inspired by the nonviolent mechanisms of the Blacks liberation movement. In order to proceed in a nonviolent movement, Chavez worked under a “Gandhi-King” image to make his union leadership appear pacifist to American’s. In his “Letter to Delano”, Chavez explains that direct confrontation to inherit the land would enable the movement to a social revolution by use of economic pressure of boycott and strikes, in other words, militant nonviolence. To be “free and human”, workers would need to be liberated from the oppression that kept them enslaved in the agricultural business, as Chavez states. The way he achieved this was through organized marches, protests, and boycotts against the agricultural system through a nonviolent approach, which were successful in gaining national attention. He also engaged in a peaceful hunger strike, influenced by Gandhi, where he lasted 25 days and was encouraged by Robert Kennedy, which led to a social movement that led to massive success in the boycotting movement and gaining farmers’ rights.

Limitations of Cesar Chavez movement were very subtle, if his organization would not have been as perseverant and Chavez would have not approached in a nonviolent manner, they probably would have had no success. Some limitations to the Chavez’s strategy also included resistance from many White Americans, who felt that the NFWA was a way to also fight for the citizenship of Mexican Americans altogether. Inspired by the farmer’s movement, the “Plan Espiritual de Aztlan”, seeked to enhance the social position of Mexican Americans by using similar strategies as those used by the Black Panthers because they were fighting for the same things, like “… community organizing against police brutality, better education, and poverty relief.” (pg. 5)

In the initiation of Asian American civil rights, Richard Aoki, a Japanese American was an avid member of the Black Panthers since its initiations; he ultimately used mechanisms by the Brown Berets, Black panthers, and the Women’s liberation movement to promote the Yellow power movement. The Anti-Vietnam movement emerged as a result of many Asian American students coming together to oppose the war in Vietnam because many saw it as American hostility toward ethnic minorities. Asian Americans also had a coalition with the Black Panthers, MECHA, and other protesting against war organization.

Amy Uyematsu was an Asian American activist who also used nonviolent strategies to fight for Asian civil rights. She used the Black power as basis and inspiration for the foundations of the development of Yellow power. She implied that Asians were a small minority that were seen will little visibility in society, due to their quiet “silent Oriental” stereotype. As Uyematsu explains, in “The Emergence of Yellow Power”, there is a grandiose need for Asian powers to unite and imply Yellow Power because other minorities are being more oppressed due to the comparison of groups. Uyematsu argues that “Asian Americans are perpetuating white racism in the United States as they allow white America to hold up the ‘successful’ Oriental image before other minority groups as the model to emulate.” (pg. 56) Uyematsu was aware of the oppression of other minorities and knew that White Americans were criticizing other minorities for not being more like the “silent Orientals” and using this to keep depriving them of equality. The limitations of Uyematsu’s Yellow power struggle included white racist attitudes present in Asian Americans themselves, the ones who tried to assimilate white culture and did not contribute to Asian American civil rights, similar to the limitations of the conforming women in the Women’s rights movement.

In the International Hotel crisis, there was a unification of Asian Americans from various different countries who came together for one cause; this greatly helped the Civil rights movement for Asians. Their nine-year struggle using nonviolent confrontation occurred despite the organizations disagreement on strategy because many had the common goal to protect the elderly and poor. They did so by working as a “multiracial radical party”, being the voice for the unheard, through creating social awareness, as Estella Habal reports. They marched and protested to create pressure on the owner of the hotel to sign another 3-year lease for them and were successful in obtaining it. If it would have not been for their perseverance, motivation, patience, and toleration of each group to one another, this strategy would have had no success.

Homosexuals have long fought for their freedom from the state for the past decades. More homosexuals were “coming out” in the 60s and 70s than ever, they joined in small groups to express their discontentment with society. Like the Black and Brown liberation movement, Gay organizations worked using similar strategies as did Blacks in their struggle. Gays started protests and public demonstrations in order to show to society that they were no longer invisible or hidden. At the beginning of the movement, they took a nonviolent confrontation method to fight against society by protesting in an “appropriate” manner by wearing gender stereotypical clothing and behaving as such. However, these peaceful demonstrations were not very successful, the real success came from the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York where undercover officers entrapped many gay men and raided The Stonewall Inn. Through combating police oppression and brutality, like the Zoot Suit riots of 1943, they were successful in showing that they were a large population and that they were no longer invisible.

In their nonviolent approach, Gay men decided to influence scientific research to restudy and reconsider its position on homosexuality. Thereafter, in the 70s there was an increase of openly homosexual individuals in legislative positions and the increase for Gay pride. Like the Yellow Power movement, Gays used increase of self-pride in order to empower their community. As the readings explain, the main limitation for the Gay rights movement was the emergence of HIV and AIDS in the Gay community in the 80s. Healthcare practitioners did not want to help out AIDS patients and many saw HIV/AIDS as the “gay plague”, which increased discrimination against. However, once more the Gay community fought back, they recruited Gay doctors to treat AIDS patients and formed many Gay and Lesbian Community centers in the metropolitan cities. Even to this day, the struggle to legalize Gay marriage is in debate, but it persists in a nonviolent manner and will be decided through a judicial process like in past cases like the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 2003 case.

The Black liberation movement took on many different strategies, many Black protesters decided to organize marches to express their frustration against segregation. Like the NFWA who boycotted grapes for the farmer’s movement, many Blacks, especially women boycotted bus transportation which resulted in the loss of 65% of the bus company business. They instead, walked to their destinations, organized carpools, and fundraisers to find other means of transportation, as stated in the PowerPoint slides. The main limitations of the nonviolent Black power struggle included doubting from many organizations, like the NAACP, which did not think protests would be effective and the violence it provoked. According to the documentary film, “Eyes on the Prize”, this nonviolent Black rights movement was effective in getting media attention, but it also provoked outrage and violence in people who opposed the Civil rights movement. This was the case when college students from the Northern states joined Black southerners in protesting because they saw there was injustice and inequality in the South. They marched along with people fighting for Black liberation, this then caused many White Southerners to become outraged, as well as police officials, who were predominantly White males.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was the idea behind a nonviolent approach to fight against segregation and inequality. In 1965, after the Bloody Sunday march, Martin Luther King, Jr., symbolized nonviolence as a leader in the movement; he joined in the march to the Mississippi state border in a nonviolent manner by gaining Gov. Wallace’s consent at the time. The march was successful in gaining attention, and also influenced politicians, like the current president L.B. Johnson who used words from the movement as support in some of his speeches. Other non-violent movements included the Freedom rides, which were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961, and The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which organized to get youth involved in the civil rights movement.

The limitation of the MLK nonviolent movement was that many Black activists felt that the nonviolent strategy was still not being as successful as they hoped, out of this instilled rage there was the formation of the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers used militant activism, by using new methods to show their visibility and anger towards White American society and their lack of care for minorities. The Black Panthers created fear in people because the media portrayed them to be affiliated with gangs and violence (Eyes on the Prize, 1990). Overall the Black civil rights movement was successful in achieving much triumph, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination illegal and punishable by law.

In the struggle for equality for Women’s rights, there were many strategies used to promote justice, some were nonviolent, influenced by literary works that criticized society for being male dominated as well as raising social consciousness. These writings then led to the creation and support for radical feminism. In order to create successful political action, many women set out to find explanations of female oppression in America. Works included, Kate Millet’s “Sexual Politics”, which protested against Freud’s sexist theories on sexuality and women, Betty Friedan’s, “The Feminine Mystique”, which referred to women who are trapped and conformed to traditional gender roles as the “the problem that has no name” as an impediment to freedom. Other works who supported the uproar of feminism were, Johnnie Tillmon’s “Welfare as a Women’s Issue” which argued that being a black woman on welfare was the worst thing to be in the country, she said it was practically like being invisible and less of a human as well as a trap for women. And The Redstockings Manifesto, which tried to create social awareness to the problems being faced by women in gender stereotyping by highlighting women’s second-class citizenship by bringing to the light that men were primary oppressors of women because they only use them for economic, sexual, and psychological pleasures.

Through frustration that was felt in women, they decided they were going to fight to be equal to men, feminist decided to create organizations like National Organization for Women (NOW), which would seek to end sexual discrimination, especially in the workplace, by means of legislative lobbying, litigation, and public demonstrations as a way of civilized nonviolent mechanisms. Other organizations also rampaged to demand the legalization of birth control and abortions. Lesbians were largely excluded from the Gay activist alliance, so they went on to support the women’s freedom movement, which Friedan called the “lavender menace”. Some similarities in the women’s civil rights movement to that of the Asians, is that they both used literary works as a source of motivation and social awareness to combat social inequality. They were successful in obtaining the legalization of birth control in 1960 and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was passed in 1972. The limitations for this nonviolent strategy for women included the resistance of their own kind, many women resisted to this change and wanted to keep traditional values and remain invisible in society. Many angry and ignorant men also criticized feminist as being “frustrated and unattractive women” who were jealous of attractive ones.

To conclude, Asians, Black, Browns, Gays, and Women have historically been oppressed in similar ways and their ways of combat have been similar. Asians seemed to achieve success far faster than Browns and Blacks; It may have been due to their overall social behavior, since they were seen as the “quiet and obedient minority”. Fortunately, these groups who were persistent had a great degree of success, perhaps through their grandiose unification of large amounts of people nonviolently fighting for the same cause as we have seen in these five groups. Many are thankful for their struggle that has opened many opportunities for minorities in the present and it inspires the continuation of the struggle for social liberation.

Asian Psychology: Differences Between the East and West

“When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come” is the saying that describes the basic idea of Eastern philosophy. Many differences exist in Eastern and Western thought, however. First of all, Eastern psychology has been known to lay its foundations on religion, while Western Psychology has its foundation on empirical data and theories on observable phenomena. The three main Asian religions that have more commonality to psychology are: Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In China, there is no institutionalized religion like Hinduism is in India, there is the influential views of Taoism though. Taoism is based on Confucius teachings that seek in the individual, traits like empathy, harmony, kindness, modesty, and self-control. Indian philosophers have historically shared the belief that all creatures go through a cycle of reincarnation unless they liberate themselves individually from the material world through pure consciousness, Hinduism stemmed from these beliefs. Siddarata Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, preached that the external world is real and is made up of easy particles, while complex and visible things are constructed out these particles (Shiraev, 2010).

In Buddhism, there is the belief that liberation of humans occurs when individuals are able to accept the right point of view. The field of Buddhism and psychology has a relatively short applied history. In its first generation, it was a field of battle, controversy, and large debate. Since then, it has become an interesting and respectful field that has a lot to offer to new therapy methods, because both areas assume they respond to similar human mental needs. They both assume that the mind is self-corrective when providing insights into its dysfunctional dynamics. The most important similarity between the two traditions is the assumption that the other follows a similar path and that if it does not provide the same insights, it at least provides complementary ones. Like in Buddhist tradition, psychology works to gain insight into the true nature of persons, attaining freedom from illusory ideas of ourselves that keep us unhappily attached (Prebish & Baumann, 2002).

Historical differences exist between psychology and Buddhism, as well as some terms. In Freudian psychology, attachment may refer to the mental attachment of being securely or insecurely attached to our caregivers as infants. In Buddhism, attachment is seen as a milestone in the path of an individual, an opponent. Psychology has generally expanded its goals in decades since Freud, claiming that it was just trying to term psychotic suffering into normal human unhappiness. Psychology seems to pursue a freedom less expansive than that of Buddhism, which ideally envisions a complete freedom from unhappiness and suffering. Currently, there is an intersection of Buddhism and psychology in the West, where Buddhism is becoming more psychologized and medicalized in its application (Prebish & Baumann, 2002).

The proper path in life, says Taoism, is one where the individual works in harmony with reality, the essence of the real world. Until recent, the concept of Eastern totality has been absent from Western scientific thinking, which lays its foundation on experiments based on causality. Taoism has been the Eastern religion most similar to Jungian psychology. Bolen (2004) describes Jung’s concept of synchronicity as the archetypes of the collective unconscious, saying that synchronicity is the only psychological equivalent to the Tao. Through this concept of synchronicity, Bolen (2004) explains that it lies in its ability to connect us to intuitive principles that are the path with heart, like Tao explains, a way to live in harmony with the universe.

It is found that in Chinese cultures, crisis is represented as both danger and opportunity. Both Taoism and Jungian psychology acknowledge the possibility for constructive change in the midst of chaos, but the decision of constructive change remains an individual choice. They also agree that through a transformation of our own psyches, we can truly change ourselves and society in a spiritual way. Some similarities include the world of opposites as found in the yin/yang for Taoism and the shadow/persona in Jungian theories (Rosen 1997). There is a strong recent interest in Taoism from the West, as the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist sacred text, is the second most widely translated book in the world after the Holy bible. The final belief is that in the Tao of Jung, Jungian psychology and Taoism agree that individuation is a process toward enlightenment, which is characterized by accepting and surpassing opposites. Letting go of the ego, confronting the shadow, and being guided by the soul and spirit is the way to achieve wholeness is very similar to Taoism teachings on enlightenment.

The principles of Hinduism are based on the Bhagavad-Gita, a spiritual guidance poem, which hopes to help individuals reach salvation from the reincarnation cycle, by helping them achieve pure consciousness in their actions by detachment from material things and good morale. Olson (2002) hypothesizes that the authors of Hindu scriptures may have made observations of anxiety, insecurity, and low morale in the community and therefore developed scriptures to help cope with personal distress and achieve salvation. As an example, he compares karma-yoga, a practice in Hinduism that appreciates and intends to impact behavior and role functioning on the morale of the individual, to a behavioral approach in psychotherapy. In Hinduism, human actions and attitudes are connected to spirituality. Individual is encouraged to renounce to the credit for self-focused actions, and to act on principles without thought of results in order to reduce anxiety and selfish interests. The ultimate goal of all the yogas, spiritual disciplines, are the union with Brahman, the supreme soul, they yield many other beneficial effects for the hopes of living a healthy life. This union is also compared to Gestalt’s psychotherapy of the “here and now” harmony with the environment, because of it’s emphasizes on individual responsibility and being concerned only with the present.

Since most of the population in the world practices an Eastern lifestyle, it is too important to be educated on practices from the East in order to be a good citizen of this world. There exist the criticism that too many occidentals judge the East entirely in terms of its poverty, maladjustments, and human suffering, while the Oriental judge the West in terms of its exploitations of minorities, disloyalty to religion, suicidal warfare, and materialistic love for comfort (Akhilananda, 1946). In terms of Hinduism and psychology in the Western world, the European psychiatrist Dr. William Brown was known to be more inclined to accept the theory of post existence of the mind after the body’s physical death. Akhilananda (1946) criticizes Western psychologists, with exception of behaviorists, in the nineteenth century for believing that men’s behavior was determined by the subconscious mind. However, most Hindu psychologists agree with Freud and Jung in the aspect that the greater portion of the mind is actually submerged, unknown to every one of us and can be compared to an iceberg. A person may not be aware of the forces that lie beneath their mind; Hindu psychologists call these hidden mental forces samskaras. However, most Hindu psychologists do not agree on Freud’s theory of psychosexual development and the “inborn” sexual urge and will to power.

In the Western world, there exist an unfortunate amount of authentic knowledge of Eastern religions and many individuals just find them too complex to understand, and make false assumptions about followers of these religions. It is rumored that people in Western countries will sometimes associate Hindu followers as being completely unreasonable in the way they feel about the body and soul connection. However a recent study has found that these unreasoned stereotypes are false. Francis, et al (2008), found that young -Hindu people living in England have a positive correlation with attitudes toward Hinduism and lower psychoticism scores. From the findings which were assessed in survey form at a Hindu Youth Festival in London, there is no evidence to correlate levels of religiosity with poor mental health among young people within the Hindu community. Again, these results may show that there is a tremendous lack of Eastern religious education in Western countries.

There is a lot of research emerging on the study of religion and mental health, currently. A study that explored the relationship between schizotypal personality traits and attitude of Balinese Hindus towards their faith found that attitude towards Hinduism, frequency of prayer, and temple attendance had a weak positive relationship with each other (Lesmana & Tiliopoulos, 2009). Prayer behavior exhibited negative low-to-moderate relationships with schizotypal traits; there is no reason to think as Hindu followers as having psychotic traits. Rather, it can be assumed that having a strong foundation on religion, one is less likely prone to develop a mental illness.

Many Hindu psychologists disagree with the Western scientific belief that all life is born from matter. To achieve pure consciousness, the Hinduism belief is that the first step is to acknowledge that one is above the physical bodily concept. There is criticism from firm followers of Hinduism of Westerners that preach that an individual is only a physical body and therefore identify and categorize humans by separating them into different ethnicities (Prabhupada, 1998). The author references the understanding of the Bhagavad-Gita, Hindu spiritual poem, as the only path to pure consciousness. He criticizes Westerners as being too attached to material possessions, which eventually have them forget their true selves and therefore remain attached of the physical world.

Conn (2011), reports that in Western psychology, mindfulness meditation is taught and applied unattached from its religious root, and that it is more commonly being used now to treat many conditions, like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, chronic pain, and other disorders. Mindfulness is the main foundation of Buddhist spiritual tradition, it is achieved through meditation. Conn (2011) brings to the present the concern that Buddhism is not being properly accredited of its successful ventures in Western cultures. Now and days, one can practice yoga and/or meditation in any city they walk through in the United States, but most would term it “natural medicine” here and not really follow through the roots of the actual practice.

There is the comparison of literature in both Eastern and Western societies that have found that many psychologists have assumed universality in their theories, while scholars in other fields believe that Westerners and East Asians have maintained very different systems of thought. Nisbett (2003 ) found that many scholars agree that Europeans assume that the behavior of objects, animals, and humans can be understood directly. Also, that Westerners have a strong interest in categorization, which helps them to know what rules to apply to objects in question, and that they use formal logic in problem solving. In contrast, East Asians are believed to attend to objects in broad context, in more complication. Asians tend to understand events while requiring consideration of many factors that operate in a deterministic way. Formal logic plays little role in problem solving for Eastern cultures, a person who is too concerned with logic may be considered immature. If these findings were one day validated, they would crush cognitive psychology theories that say that human cognition is the same, universally.

Uba (2002) explains that in Western science, especially in the United States, there is a lack of authentic knowledge of many different Asian cultures. She also elaborates on the lack of areas of study for many minority populations and their mental health. The main concern is that not all experiment findings can be generalized to all populations, but in American Psychology, results of many experiments are sometimes seen as universal and therefore are applied to many populations. Uba (2002) recommends that modern psychology needs to reconsider their study samples, facts, and research methods used to describe and explain behavior. There is also the criticism that many Western societies tend to generalize and refer to Confucius and Buddhism to explain the behavior of all Asian Americans.

Asian Americans have a 200 year plus history in the United States. Modern Asian psychology is currently growing at a very fast pace, while being concerned for multiracial research. There is over sixty different Asian groups in the United States currently, however it seems that many Americans classify these sixty groups into one big group, with many stereotypes. Alvarez & Tewari (2009) state that, “ [it is] amazing and unfortunate that public knowledge and perceptions of Asian Americans have been confined to stereotypes and superficial images.”

To conclude, American psychology has not been historically attentive to cultural issues. There exist too much universality in psychological theories and not enough research on any other race other than the Caucasian race. Eastern religions lay their basis on the assumption of the unity of all things, and experience many forms of ten thousand things as manifestations of a “oneness” (Bolen, 2004). Personally, as a psychology student, I take away from this project the strong need to urge new psychological methods of conducting research and to revise the teachings that are currently being given to college students in America. Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism do have a lot in common with psychology; it may be due to the fact that we are all human and may experience same processes insights on the way to pure happiness. I am however, a firm believer that there is a greater deal of ignorance about the Eastern world than that which is assumed. In the United States, if religion is taught, it is most likely Western religions that will be mentioned; however teachings Eastern religions are not prevalent in American schools. This deprivation of knowledge to us in the Western world is what leads to the creation of stereotypes and false beliefs that depict Asians in a negative light.

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