Two strangers in Detroit are walking down the street in opposite directions.

The first is an Asian-American man who is minding his own business. The second is a young child.

Suddenly, the child strikes a karate pose. He utters some words, kicks and punches at the air and runs away laughing.

This is the story Frank Wu, the luncheon keynote speaker at the Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity and dean of Wayne State University Law School, tells his friends to show why he is so obsessed with race and ethnicity.

Wu said he uses this simple personal story to show that all people have race and ethnicity on their minds, whether they realize it.

“No question that what [the child] has done is about race and ethnicity,” Wu said. “I know that he doesn’t go up to everyone to challenge them to karate matches. It’s only if you have this color of skin, this texture of hair, this shape of eye.”

This story of an innocent child who means no harm is at the center of his view on race and ethnicity in the United States.

“If we are going to have a serious discussion about race and ethnicity, you have to start with a picture of the world that is accurate,” he said. “And my claim is that race is not figuratively, symbolically, metaphorically black or white.”

He said racism does not occur only between blacks and whites, and cases of racism are not simple black-and-white or open-and-shut cases.

“We portray racism as if it is only about villains and victims. It is only those hard-core cases where there is that smoking gun, where there is the evidence. I will like to suggest that there are also cases of ambiguity,” Wu said. “There are cases within a vast gray area.”

He gave two examples as an illustration. He said many law firms don’t have any African-American partners. He also said there are many science and engineering departments in universities that don’t have any tenured black professors.

“What is interesting about these firms is that they probably don’t have any closet KKK member behind a desk writing memos saying, ‘Let’s not hire African-Americans,'” Wu said. “That person may well have been there 30 years ago – and there are a few isolated cases – where that person is still there, but at most of these firms they are people who are decent. But what about this disparity of intentions and consequences?”

He said this disparity is a cumulative consequence of past racist practices and the way most people see each other.

“This is the problem that we face, where if you look for the bigot, you would not find him [or her] there anymore, but where the disparity is still there,” Wu said.

“And I would offer us a hypothesis. The cause of these problems is the pattern that people follow, the shortcuts that we take, the retro generalizations. We can’t get through lives without having shortcuts, without generalizing in some way, without being able to sort out all that we see. Who is a friend? Who is a foe?

“But sometimes we do it on the basis of characteristics that are dangerous, that lead us to replicate the problems of the past.”

Wu added that everyone, including himself, could be a victim or villain in everyday interactions.

He said people should view diversity as a process of continuously learning and trying to understand each other, not an end.

About 473 people attended the conference, which took place Friday at the Memorial Union. Thomas Hill, vice president of student affairs, was optimistic about the effect of the conference.

“I feel confident that efforts like this really are making a difference on the Iowa State campus,” Hill said.