Why Asian American II

II.

Why do we come together as Asian Americans?

[The following two sections are of a three-part entry on Asian American identity, the last of which deals with the question “What is Asian American identity?” Throughout this discussion I cite implicitly and heavily from a number of authors, all of whom are respected and renowned experts in their respective fields: Ronald Takaki, Sucheng Chan, Yen Espiritu, Bill Ong Hing, Mae Ngai, Henry Yu, Mia Tuan, Amartya Sen.]

The formation of ethnic identity can only occur in a system of existing and conflicting group identities. That is, we define who we are only in opposition to another group. Although initial Asian immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries preserved their local, regional affiliations, in the American cauldron their identities became generalized to a larger, pan-national designation. For instance, the bulk of Indian immigration in the early twentieth century was in fact Sikhs from the Punjab, just as Chinese immigration decades before that was primarily of Southern Chinese from Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta. Yet neither the receiving population nor the state institution recognized these particular differences, so they were marked along commonly recognized and national identities such as “Indian” and “Chinese.”

The same generalizing pattern occurred for the Japanese, Koreans, and Filipinos, but to designate these immigrants along ethnicities or nationalities is only half the picture. Their experience of America was (and is) shaped by factors not uniquely related to their respective ethnicities or homelands. Rather, these newly arrived immigrants to America were slotted into a pre-existing system of racial divisions and subordination: thus they came to also have a racial – and thereby Asian – experience.

So what does this matter? Well, in tracing the early major history of Asian migrants and settlers in the United States, there exist -overwhelmingly- consistent themes of colonialism, international geopolitics, economic pressures, racial antagonism, social discrimination, violence, disproportionate gender ratios, and finally legal exclusion. It was like clockwork on how one group would arrive, out-compete white ethnics, face discrimination, fight back, and then suffer institutionalized exclusion from this nation. In 1917, legislators responded to the influx of Indian immigration and created an Asiatic Barred Zone extending from Afghanistan to the Pacific, a region in which all immigration was prohibited. In 1924 even Japan – who by then was an imperial powerhouse with hegemony in East and Southeast Asia – had its citizens excluded from immigrating to the United States. The Philippines posed an interesting case throughout this history, as since 1898 it was a colony of the United States. Filipinos, as American nationals, thereby could freely move between the two nations, and large numbers migrated to both Hawai’i and the mainland. By 1934, however, America stripped the Philippines of its dependent status and simultaneously imposed an immigration quota of 50 per year – the lowest of any nation in the world.

So I believe the first answer to the question of “Why do we come together as Asian Americans?” is an appeal to the commonality of experiences and histories that we all share. It is not by coincidence, for instance, that Filipinos faced the same processes of alienation, violence, and exclusion just as Indians and Koreans. Nor is it a coincidence that in the modern day, everyone from Pakistani to Vietnamese to Laotian to Japanese can still be seen as having just come to the nation, even if they have been here for generations and their families speak only English.

But a commonality of experience/history is also taking too much for granted. That is, we have an infinite number of commonalities shared with other individuals – why do we pick -these- exact histories to identify by? For instance, I am from Tucson, Arizona, and I would automatically associate with anyone I meet in Ann Arbor with that same personal history. Or consider that I am a classical guitarist, or a liberal, or even a male. These identities each has a rich, complex, and conflicted historical experience – but I do not wear armbands and hold long meetings every week just based on my Tucsonan identity, classical guitar identity, or male identity. Far from it! The first two border on the absurd, and the third is excessive because male privilege entails that I have the luxury of -not- discussing gender if I choose so. The reason why I would then find that commonality of experience with Asian Americans – a commonality that is deeper and more meaningful than with other identities – is exactly because Asian American identity is a pervasive, profound determinant of my life. Being Asian American has shaped much of my existence, from the people I interact with, clothes I wear, language I speak, where I live, work, play, go to school, etc. Even if I actively rejected and distanced myself from my Asian American identity, it would still have that same impact. And we cannot forget that choosing –not- to identify is just another form of racial identification in itself.

The fact is, Asian Americans come together not only because of some arbitrary commonality they find among one another. Instead, it is because they have a commonality of -racial- experience and history. The reason why racial identity is elevated above other identities is because it is among the most preeminent, salient, and visible parts of our selves. In philosophical terms, it is an objective identity because it is imposed on us, rather than a subjective identity which we would self-define. Now, because our race is a primary, ineluctable determinant of our social existence – no matter how we may embrace or reject it – the histories that pertain to this racial identity are equally elevated and more significant than the history of any run-of-the-mill identity. Or in other words, because race is a rigid, objective identity, everything related to that identity is just as objective and durable. Thus, just as I cannot change my race, I cannot avoid its tumultuous history, stereotypes, and numbers of social and political issues. A large reason why Asian Americans come together -as- Asian Americans with a common canon of history and experience is because American society has been deeply structured by these racial divisions. Thus we contend always as part of that larger group.

But merely having a common racial identity and experience is insufficient for a group to come together in building a social coalition or even develop a collective consciousness. While commonality does present us a path toward unity, it does not compel us to walk that path. The spark to motivate us to undertake this arduous long walk is thus when having this racial identity is more empowering, more hopeful than not. Yen Espiritu and Sucheng Chan each trace resonating histories of protest, rebellion, and social action among Asian Americans -as- Asian Americans to claim rights our community deserves. Without the landmark legal petitions Asian Americans brought to the bar of the Supreme Court; the many powerful strikes on farms and industries to assert for racial and labor rights; the militant uprising against the Vietnam War and fighting for Ethnic Studies with the Third World movement – Asian Americans would not have much of the privileges present today. There would be no fair wages, right to jobs on the free market, or access to a college education. Hell, we wouldn’t even have the name.

We have bought too deeply into today’s prevailing rhetoric of individual will and material success. Fact is, we do not operate in a vacuum – and we cannot ever underestimate how societal institutions privileges or burden us at life’s every turn. Everyone remember that popular and notorious t-shirt Abercrombie & Fitch made with two Chinamen dancing around a laundry sign? The reason why the stereotype of Chinese launderers “made sense” and resonated with the public consciousness is because it (obviously) drew upon the historical pattern of laundries to be owned by Chinese. But this in -no way- justifies the derogatory stereotype on Abercrombie’s t-shirt as somehow presenting a historical and statistical fact. Not only is the depiction essentializing and reducing the dignity of an entire American ethnicity, it also overlooks a powerful force of economic discrimination that afflicted the Chinese American community. Through social and institutionalized legal exclusion, urban Chinese in the late nineteenth century were actually barred from sectors such as mining, carpentry, etc. For instance, almost as soon as the Chinese arrived in California in large numbers during the gold rush, the state legislature added a foreign miners’ tax specifically targeting them – and this is ignoring for the meanwhile the racial violence which physically kept out the Chinese. With few economic sectors remaining, Chinese Americans in large numbers were forced to take up laundries – and they proliferated. (The situation is also strikingly similar with Korean Americans and small shops, or Vietnamese and nail and hair salons, etc.) Yet state laws soon turned to exclude the Chinese from laundries, though one Chinese man named Yick Wo combated this racially-specific discrimination in the Supreme Court and won a monumental victory for early modern civil rights.

For another example of how rigid and unbending racial identities – and their corresponding histories and modern day significance – affect lives, take the case of Japanese Americans in the past century. Unlike most other Asian nations, Japan in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century was an economic and political might in Asia and the Pacific. In 1905, coming on the heels of victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan presented a formidable imperial Asian counterpart to that of the Western European powers. Indian economist Amartya Sen reminds us that Japan also had some of the highest literacy rates in the world at the time, with strong rates of educational access for both men and women – both of which competed if not exceeded with those of even the most developed European nations. In the 1880s, the flourishing Japanese government finally repealed a long-standing law forbidding emigration. Turning its scope to America, Japan sought to learn a lesson from the well-known and humiliating experience of the Chinese, who was the first Asian group to emigrate in large numbers to the U.S. – and also the first to be excluded (1882). The Japanese ensured education, health, and material wealth for all its emigrants – unlike the previous Chinese, who were mostly refugees of natural disaster, mass social rebellions, and state persecution. Once in America, the Japanese community also defined itself by distancing from the Chinese, and sharpened the appreciable class differences between these two ethnicities.

Yet the Japanese, despite the educational background, wealth, contributions to the national economy – they still got hit with the racial experience which likewise oppressed the Chinese. Anti-Japanese organizations came into existence very suddenly, leveraging the momentum and successes of anti-Chinese legislation. In 1907, the state of California sought to segregate Japanese students in schools, grouping them with blacks, Native Americans, mulattoes, and Chinese rather than whites – I need not say which had the better, more well-funded schools. The Japanese government was furious at such treatment, and threatened to levy embargoes and cut off diplomatic relations with the United States if this statute were to be upheld. In fears of alienating the Japanese, President Theodore Roosevelt personally strongarmed a compromise, and even raised the threat of using federal troops to ensure Japanese children were not segregated – a foreshadowing of Little Rock perhaps. (It should be noted Roosevelt later formulated a plan of excluding Japanese anyway, so his intentions are not entirely all altruistic.) From this tension arose what is called the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907 (and a Lady’s Agreement soon thereafter) which was a mutually recognized pact to limit Japanese emigration to America. But here’s the clincher: in 1924 the passage of the landmark Johnson-Reed Immigration Act established two concepts of 1) national origins, and 2) quotas based on those origins. It effectively banned all Japanese immigration against the threat of Japanese reprisal – and at what cost to America itself? The Japanese government instituted a 100% tariff on American goods and effectively bankrupted all American trading companies in Japan. Japanese Americans two decades later also suffered what was arguably the gravest injustice of being interned en masse in concentration camps during World War II, an act which glided by German and Italian Americans – who were logically speaking “equally” suspicious of treason and espionage.

Again, what do these historical examples highlight? That coming together as Asian Americans has offered a unified front to respond to prevailing forms of discrimination and oppression. Or in a positive direction, we unite in order to best demand an equal redistribution of resources and rights in a pluralistic democratic system. Although the concept of “Asian” was not entirely self-defined and instead invented by both immigration laws, government, and social prejudice – this has not hindered the fact that the individuals within this construct immediately resisted and asserted their own agency in the matter. The proliferation of social, political, and business organizations in dealing with Asian Americans attest to this strong consciousness, which recognize the relevance of having a united, diverse, and empowered community to continue to advocate for social change and progress.

Does it suck that Asian Americans have to contend with an identity imposed upon them? Yes and no. Yes, because it seems disempowering and we feel helpless when others have the power to define you. But this mentality is at most a matter of pride – and taken to its extreme, to believe it is ultimately disempowering is to engage in victimization. The fact is, it -does- suck that others have defined us as a community, especially in instances when people cannot tell apart Chinese from Filipinos from Bengali. But I ask that perennial question of, So what? While we should advocate and raise awareness of the vibrant diversity that exists within the Asian American community – a movement reflected in the new census subcategories for “Asian” – there still is the basic fact that we are objectively seen as Asian regardless of how we may understand ourselves subjectively. This is in the nature of racial identity as ascribed and ineluctable, and is the burden of people of color everywhere who must contend with the essentializing, disempowering aspects of race.

But this one-sided focus on our own Asian American identity is to overlook how the formation of Asian American identity has interacted with other social groups. Takao Ozawa v. U.S. (1922) and U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) are two landmark Supreme Court cases both of which successively declared that 1) Asians are not Caucasian; and 2) even though South Asians can claim to be Caucasian racially speaking, they are not “white” in the common understanding. So Asian in its entirety became non-white. Rather than a positive reading of what -Asian- became, however, sometimes we forget that in these cases white identity was also buttressed and reinforced. That is, white identity was here legally affirmed in opposition to Asian identity, sustaining the definition of white as absence of color and racial taint. Exploring Asian American identity is thus a way into the larger racial and social construct.

Moreover, let’s borrow Derrida’s notion of bricolage: it means to mold what is around you to your own design and will. The fact of modern existence is that race will privilege or burden you – no matter how you may or may not “think racially.” But what are we to do in response? Some commentators advocate for a rejection of racial thinking and adopting a color-blind society, yet this reactionary attitude is too spontaneous and sudden to actually remove an integral feature of society centuries-long in the making. Instead, color-blind or a-racial approaches would simply perpetuate standing forms of racial subordination anyway. It is just as the idealist who claims not to see race – excellent work, but his or her life is still profoundly determined by race. That said, we as racial agents must then exert our force in re-molding the oppressive confines of race. Answering the second question of “What is Asian American identity?” may shed light on not only what we are now, but how we may progress for the future.


[The third section is forthcoming.]


:exl