So this past fall semester, especially towards the end, I was reminded how much winter sucks. I mean, it's pretty for a minute and then you get cold and your socks get soaking wet and then freeze etc., etc. Hence I ran away to Ecuador for study abroad. I figured, "Ecuador" being on the "equator" it would be warmer and sunny all the time and that I would be able to avoid getting SAD (ya know, seasonal affective disorder where you get all depressed cuz there's no sun). Also, I didn't know much of anything about Ecuador except that it is part of the Andean Community and like other members of that community has a strong indigenous presence. Ecuador, unlike say Chile or Argentina, boasts of its pluriethnic, multicultural society that to me was much more appealing than Spain and the other programs available in South America. After becoming much more active in the A/PIA community during the fall semester, I thought that studying abroad in a country that seemed so different but with such a supposed pluriethnic society would be a great opportunity.
And believe me, Ecuador is a beautiful country. Its Andes are perhaps a bit smaller and less jagged, the weather conditions less extreme and landscapes less stark than its neighbors to the south (Peru, and Bolivia) but they are no less dramatic. Not to sound like a tourist guide book, but it's true when they say that Ecuador has a little bit of everything, with so much of the natural beauty of the world in such a small country. Yet along with the beautiful views of terraced mountainsides comes with the realities of the economic conditions that come with a country developing at many different levels.
The construction of race in Ecuador historically and today has been mostly that of white (Spanish and other European immigrants) mestizo (of mixed white and indigenous heritage) and the indígenas or indigenous groups. The strong indigenous presence in Ecuador is a credit to their 500 year long struggle in the face of rampant racism both personal and institutional. The economic implications of this discrimination are obvious, but they affect non-indigenous racial minority groups even more. For example, Afro-ecuatorianos are very obviously discriminated against both in terms of the negative stereotypes that exist, but also how those stereotypes have shaped the kinds of economic opportunities available. (As in, there really aren't many, mostly domestic service. And unlike in the United States there isn't any kind of middle or upper class Afro-ecuadorian population to be in a position to denounce the stereotypes that exist.) Not only this, but their population is so small in comparison to other countries that had a far greater slave-economy that even to see an Afro-ecuadorian walking around is a rarity.
Needless to say, sighting a Japanese-American college-aged girl was even less common, and sparked reactions inversely proportional to how often this event occurred. And by that I mean, I got cat-called every freakin time I stepped out the door.
To be fair, I knew that there isn't a significant Asian population in Ecuador. And especially in comparison to Peru, Brazil and other countries in Latin America, the influence that that miniscule population has had both historically and today is limited at best. So perhaps I should have been better prepared and had a strategy with how I would deal with it. But I didn't, and every time I heard a comment, or my host sister’s attempt at an explanation, “oh no, you see, it’s okay because they call all Asians ‘china’ [Chinese person] here” doesn't really cut it and it was hard for me to accept with no further argument. Ignorance is never an excuse, and can never justify offensively racial or racist remarks. (Especially when the person affected says something about it.)
My host mother would play a game whenever she had guests over in the afternoon when I came home from the university. She would call me over to the kitchen table and sit me down and present me to her friend and say, “Qué crees que ella es? Nunca podrás decirme.” [“What do you think she is? You’ll never be able to guess!”] and inevitably the guest will guess Chinese and Mayu (my host mother) would kind of smile in a self-satisfied way as if my racial ambiguity was some clever trick she devised. Whenever my host mom would make comments like that, or, “Tú pareces una ‘geisha’ casi exactamente!” [“you look exactly like a geisha…] I couldn’t help but say something and express my discomfort. At the point where we stop voicing our opinions, where we stop questioning the rationale behind certain things is the point where such things become incorporated into our societies.
My program was primarily white, but had a few other exceptions besides me. Yet of these, I was the only East Asian American and in demographic situations like these, when some guy behind you is shouting, "Hey!! Chinita!" you know exactly who he's referring to. It was hard to address this issue, not just with my own personal misgivings with how to approach the incredibly different cultural traditions in Ecuador (namely, the widespread belief in racial stereotypes and the invisibility of non-indigenous racial minorities)but also because of pressures I felt from my friends. Several times over the course of the semester, some of the other students in my program would say something if I corrected a guy who just called me 'little Chinese girl.' They'd be like, "wow you get so annoyed!"
As if I didn't have a right to be annoyed?
I don’t really think there is a fine line with a grey area between right and wrong in situations like this. Am I being oversensitive? If someone hears a comment that is directed towards them or not and is offended then the comment is offensive. How a comment is judged is subjective to the listener and they ultimately have the opinion that matters most. Intention is important given certain contexts, if the comment refers to something the listener has control over intention plays a bigger role. But in the case of race, if the person at whom it is directed deems a comment racist, intention matters little.
So, unfortunately I was unable to talk to everyone in Ecuador and I'm sure that the few people I did talk to will probably still call every Asian traveler in Ecuador a Chinese person. Be that as it may, I have no regrets with how I tried to handle those situations in Ecuador. As I mentioned before and that I cannot stress enough, ignorance is never an excuse for racial discrimination and racist remarks. Ignorance isn't an indicator of a primitive culture, nor is it inextricably tied to cultural practices that can never be eliminated. It is instead a marker of how much work and organizing is left to be done.
These, among many other experiences I had in Ecuador, have reminded me why it's so important to be involved in community organizing and outreach. Why it's so important to remember the history of various racial struggles in the United States and all over and try to bring that knowledge to others. The lessons I learned have renewed in me my want to see racism ended, and upon reflection of my semester, it was refreshing to have experienced it all. I know that for the upcoming year, in whatever capacity I can, I'll be striving towards making real changes on campus and hopefully in the community and on a greater scale. And I hope anyone who reads this (or really just everyone in general) will do the same. I know it seems so improbable that the actions of one can really make a difference, and I know it seems trite to say but all we need is to just keep going one person at a time and at some point we'll reach that critical mass necessary to make lasting change.
~Laura
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Dreams and Identity
Let me preface this entry by paraphrasing Frank Wu: we're all social scientists - it's just that most of us are really bad at it. And that's the problem.
The DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a proposed federal bill that would give the children of undocumented immigrants the chance to gain legal status if they graduated from high school and sought to attend college or serve in the military. There are several technical details, such as what qualifies as attending college or the number of years of military service - this page lays out those details.
How does this affect APIAs? According to the Department of Homeland Security, an estimated 9% of unauthorized immigrants in 2006 were born in Asia - Vietnam, China, Korea, India, and the Philippines. In absolute numbers, this comes out to about 1.1 million people. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that most illegal immigrant families have children born in the US. I will note that this is a generalization, and a distributional figure - what percentage of families in different immigrant populations has US-born children - should qualify the PHC's findings.
It often seems that discussion about APIA issues revolves around broad societal and cultural trends - model minority, perpetual foreigner, representation in the media. That's why I decided to turn around and look at specific legislation affecting APIAs. Although the DREAM Act affects APIAs less than other groups by proportion, 1.1 million people are far too many to neglect.
In reading arguments against the DREAM Act's passing, I've found a streak of nativism. "Unfair", "cutting in line" and "our parents were legally here first" crop up in discussion like hundreds of angry weeds. Make no mistake, the bill's opponents most likely do feel that it is genuinely unfair. To quote Frank Wu again, it does no one any good to claim that others have no principles. But there's more to the opposition than just vitriol and a different definition of fairness. There's something deeper in the bitterness permeating this bill's existence, and that's the question of what it means to be not an American with citizenship, but rather an American.
It's easy to conflate the two. I would argue that someone born in the US, someone raised in the US, someone who has learned and socialized and achieved in the US is an American. I would argue that citizenship is artificial, except that it provides very real social benefits. Should someone who has spent their youth in the US have opportunity wrenched away simply because their parents came here illegally? Are they no longer Americans simply because their parents don't have legal citizen status? It's a matter of identity and claims to identity, among other things.
These questions are entangled in other issues, as well. Reform of immigration law has become an issue in the upcoming election. An inefficient and slow immigration process contributes to the rates of illegal immigration. But it would take far more time and text space than one blog entry to cover all the facets of immigration and the DREAM Act, because this is a complex issue with no small amount of passion and no small number of stakeholders on either side.
Currently, the DREAM Act is in legislative limbo. The official page in the Library of Congress can be found here.
arthur
The DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a proposed federal bill that would give the children of undocumented immigrants the chance to gain legal status if they graduated from high school and sought to attend college or serve in the military. There are several technical details, such as what qualifies as attending college or the number of years of military service - this page lays out those details.
How does this affect APIAs? According to the Department of Homeland Security, an estimated 9% of unauthorized immigrants in 2006 were born in Asia - Vietnam, China, Korea, India, and the Philippines. In absolute numbers, this comes out to about 1.1 million people. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that most illegal immigrant families have children born in the US. I will note that this is a generalization, and a distributional figure - what percentage of families in different immigrant populations has US-born children - should qualify the PHC's findings.
It often seems that discussion about APIA issues revolves around broad societal and cultural trends - model minority, perpetual foreigner, representation in the media. That's why I decided to turn around and look at specific legislation affecting APIAs. Although the DREAM Act affects APIAs less than other groups by proportion, 1.1 million people are far too many to neglect.
In reading arguments against the DREAM Act's passing, I've found a streak of nativism. "Unfair", "cutting in line" and "our parents were legally here first" crop up in discussion like hundreds of angry weeds. Make no mistake, the bill's opponents most likely do feel that it is genuinely unfair. To quote Frank Wu again, it does no one any good to claim that others have no principles. But there's more to the opposition than just vitriol and a different definition of fairness. There's something deeper in the bitterness permeating this bill's existence, and that's the question of what it means to be not an American with citizenship, but rather an American.
It's easy to conflate the two. I would argue that someone born in the US, someone raised in the US, someone who has learned and socialized and achieved in the US is an American. I would argue that citizenship is artificial, except that it provides very real social benefits. Should someone who has spent their youth in the US have opportunity wrenched away simply because their parents came here illegally? Are they no longer Americans simply because their parents don't have legal citizen status? It's a matter of identity and claims to identity, among other things.
These questions are entangled in other issues, as well. Reform of immigration law has become an issue in the upcoming election. An inefficient and slow immigration process contributes to the rates of illegal immigration. But it would take far more time and text space than one blog entry to cover all the facets of immigration and the DREAM Act, because this is a complex issue with no small amount of passion and no small number of stakeholders on either side.
Currently, the DREAM Act is in legislative limbo. The official page in the Library of Congress can be found here.
arthur
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Higher Higher Education
During the general meeting today, we talked about several important issues the Democratic and Republican candidates address. One of them is about higher education. Now, as a non-citizen permanent resident, I don't have the right to vote, and this may be why I care about the issues much more than the candidates. One of the issues brought up today was about education, and very interestingly, a community member suggested the idea of not ranking higher education institutions.
His idea is that, with the ranking system in place, people attach prestige to institutions, giving the institutions the incentives to raise tuition. Many top institutions, public or private, charges astronomically high tuitions, making it affordable mostly to people from privileged backgrounds. Getting rid of the system, he said, would probably help bringing the cost down, and the prestige, and people can afford to go to wherever they want to go.
Not surprisingly, other people argued against his idea. What's the point of that? We go to Michigan because of its prestige, because it leads us to great jobs and huge, multi-national corporations. We are used to think that we are top of the top, better than everyone else. Harvard is the Michigan of the East. If we don't have this ranking system in place, how do we separate the better from the worse? "Then we might as well be a communist country," someone said. I smirked.
It's interesting that we want to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, yet at the same time we want to keep each other separate to distinguish the best, better, worse, and worst. We fight for social justice, try to erase glass ceiling, but from the discussion today, it seems that we're only willing to do it to a certain degree-- until our very own status quo is challenged. I'm not going to argue whether communist is good or not. I'm sure some people think it's great, some think it's awful, and some think it's great in theory, awful in practice. And we know what happens when we attach -isms to things-- there are too many things associated with them and that defeats the whole point of tackling the issue straight. So what are we fighting for? So that the A/PIA community can be empowered and rise upward, while keeping other oppressed people on the bottom, so we can separate the better from the worse?
I'm not an expert of open admissions, and Wikipedia does a better job than I do. And if you know more about open admissions, feel free to comment on this entry. To be honest, I have my own hesitations about it, since "I worked so hard to get into the second best public institution in the country." But I'm definitely more open-minded about open admissions now than four years ago, when I first entered college. It took a lot for me to recognize my own privileges, to be honest with myself that I have resources others don't have, and this meritocracy talk is bunch of bull.
cc
His idea is that, with the ranking system in place, people attach prestige to institutions, giving the institutions the incentives to raise tuition. Many top institutions, public or private, charges astronomically high tuitions, making it affordable mostly to people from privileged backgrounds. Getting rid of the system, he said, would probably help bringing the cost down, and the prestige, and people can afford to go to wherever they want to go.
Not surprisingly, other people argued against his idea. What's the point of that? We go to Michigan because of its prestige, because it leads us to great jobs and huge, multi-national corporations. We are used to think that we are top of the top, better than everyone else. Harvard is the Michigan of the East. If we don't have this ranking system in place, how do we separate the better from the worse? "Then we might as well be a communist country," someone said. I smirked.
It's interesting that we want to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, yet at the same time we want to keep each other separate to distinguish the best, better, worse, and worst. We fight for social justice, try to erase glass ceiling, but from the discussion today, it seems that we're only willing to do it to a certain degree-- until our very own status quo is challenged. I'm not going to argue whether communist is good or not. I'm sure some people think it's great, some think it's awful, and some think it's great in theory, awful in practice. And we know what happens when we attach -isms to things-- there are too many things associated with them and that defeats the whole point of tackling the issue straight. So what are we fighting for? So that the A/PIA community can be empowered and rise upward, while keeping other oppressed people on the bottom, so we can separate the better from the worse?
I'm not an expert of open admissions, and Wikipedia does a better job than I do. And if you know more about open admissions, feel free to comment on this entry. To be honest, I have my own hesitations about it, since "I worked so hard to get into the second best public institution in the country." But I'm definitely more open-minded about open admissions now than four years ago, when I first entered college. It took a lot for me to recognize my own privileges, to be honest with myself that I have resources others don't have, and this meritocracy talk is bunch of bull.
cc
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Reproductive Justice and NAPAWF* Potluck
I went to the first U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Georgia over the summer. It was both an exhilarating and frustrating experience, and looking back, I definitely appreciate having been dragged out there by peer pressure. There was once piece of the Forum I couldn't quite comprehend until very recently. During an informal Asian American caucus meeting, I met this woman from the Bay Area, who was working for Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, and she was telling me about this nail salon workers' rights campaign she was advocating. My initial reaction was, "Oh, cool! Yeah, I know nail salon workers always work overtime, and they need better benefits." It wasn't until half a year later that I linked reproductive justice with nail salon workers' rights at the first National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum Michigan chapter's potluck.
What does reproductive justice mean? When I was in high school, I just thought it mean giving women the rights to abortion, because that's how my 97% liberal high school framed it. It wasn't totally a religious issue, and my feminists friends back then told me that women should be able to make choices for their bodies. It was a challenge to the traditional, patriarchal society. It was about self-determination. What they didn't tell me, and perhaps they didn't know, was that reproductive justice has more than just choosing to make babies or not. Think about it this way: what if you can't reproduce because of external conditions that have affected you biologically? And sure, if abortion wasn't a controversial issue, would every woman have equal access to it, and other necessary post-operative services?
So back to the nail salon issue. I only got half a point during my initial appreciation for the woman's job, that nail salon workers are often overworked. Because of the amount of time they spend at nail salons, they are constantly exposed to chemicals that are hazardous to many women, and it can affect these women's ability to reproduce in the future. Although this wasn't discussed extensively at the first NAPAWF meeting, I was glad to finally have the connection explained to me. I am by no means very knowledgeable in reproductive justice issue, but I was excited to find out that reproductive justice matters beyond the pro-life and pro-choice debate.
cc
p.s. Happy New Year!
*The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum Michigan Chapter is an emerging chapter that welcomes interested A/PIA women and girls' participation, and it's not restricted to University of Michigan students. If you'd like to be involved, please email napawf07@umich.edu.
What does reproductive justice mean? When I was in high school, I just thought it mean giving women the rights to abortion, because that's how my 97% liberal high school framed it. It wasn't totally a religious issue, and my feminists friends back then told me that women should be able to make choices for their bodies. It was a challenge to the traditional, patriarchal society. It was about self-determination. What they didn't tell me, and perhaps they didn't know, was that reproductive justice has more than just choosing to make babies or not. Think about it this way: what if you can't reproduce because of external conditions that have affected you biologically? And sure, if abortion wasn't a controversial issue, would every woman have equal access to it, and other necessary post-operative services?
So back to the nail salon issue. I only got half a point during my initial appreciation for the woman's job, that nail salon workers are often overworked. Because of the amount of time they spend at nail salons, they are constantly exposed to chemicals that are hazardous to many women, and it can affect these women's ability to reproduce in the future. Although this wasn't discussed extensively at the first NAPAWF meeting, I was glad to finally have the connection explained to me. I am by no means very knowledgeable in reproductive justice issue, but I was excited to find out that reproductive justice matters beyond the pro-life and pro-choice debate.
cc
p.s. Happy New Year!
*The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum Michigan Chapter is an emerging chapter that welcomes interested A/PIA women and girls' participation, and it's not restricted to University of Michigan students. If you'd like to be involved, please email napawf07@umich.edu.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Expressions of A/PIA: Jenny Lares's Chapbook Release Party
On Saturday, I attended the chapbook release party of Jenny Lares (yay!), and listened to a few of her spoken word poetry pieces. Blame the fact that I am an emotional person (my ups are really up there and my lows are really sad) or hormones if you will, but I found myself in tears at a point...during a poem called "Patawad," which apologized to her grandmother about not learning about her experience in the Philippines, her culture, her tradition, her struggles in this country and her native one. There was something that sent chills up and down my spine...something about understanding what the poem was saying so exactly, so deeply, so empowered by the fact that there was someone else in this world who felt exactly as I felt. That feeling of remorse from not learning more about my own Filipino grandmother, my lola, who I called "Inang," which is a word that means "mother." How much of my identity have I lost as a result of passing up that opportunity to know about her experiences...they were her struggles, her life, and I valued it that little to let it slip away?
Yet it's not too late, at least to learn about the struggles of Filipino Americans in this country. Hearing about I-Hotel, how that community - those people who were forced to leave their home, all they had, as little as it was, and how hard they fought to keep it...that effort is something that I recognize, that I value, that I'm proud of.
My Inang - I'd loved her! She remains a part of me. Her history was my history and a part of my identity. It's no wonder I felt that dissonance - that regret, remorse, disappointment, that damned shame for not preserving it. It's no wonder I'd cried...
...And that must be the power of shared experience.
This post is to be continued, by the way, for the next time I post. :) I really wanted to talk about avenues for expression and using our voice in unique ways for A/PIA activism!
Yet it's not too late, at least to learn about the struggles of Filipino Americans in this country. Hearing about I-Hotel, how that community - those people who were forced to leave their home, all they had, as little as it was, and how hard they fought to keep it...that effort is something that I recognize, that I value, that I'm proud of.
My Inang - I'd loved her! She remains a part of me. Her history was my history and a part of my identity. It's no wonder I felt that dissonance - that regret, remorse, disappointment, that damned shame for not preserving it. It's no wonder I'd cried...
...And that must be the power of shared experience.
This post is to be continued, by the way, for the next time I post. :) I really wanted to talk about avenues for expression and using our voice in unique ways for A/PIA activism!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
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
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
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Why Asian America
I.
College is a torrent of sensation. And it is never static. One moment may be of euphoria – another, of frustration and doubt. Most often, however, we find ourselves somewhere in between these extremes: elated and exhausted, cheerful but grave.
College is also a time and place of self-discovery and growth. Through the trials and rigors of balancing an overwhelmed schedule of studies, extracurriculars, work, friendships, life-planning – we come to new insights about both ourselves and the world around us. As a senior soon to embark into post-college existence, I have spent much time reflecting on my past four years and charting my self-development throughout. I remember the gray April chill of my first visit to Ann Arbor and how I hated its dreariness compared to my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. I remember the awkward, vain attempts to redefine myself in this new place, one where the burdens of my past were unknown and unimportant. I remember the haunting hollowness I felt during my initial months, at how strangely detached I was when everyone else seemed to just “get it.” As a matter of personal taste, I am not interested in professional sports or big, raucous parties with drunken bodies milling about – and even if I pretended to care about them I always walked away by the end of the night both empty and dissatisfied. In a way I was a shell of a being, and I still remember the loneliness of coming back to my quiet Mosher Jordan dorm, blinded by the sterile, searing fluorescent lighting, and feeling as if my childish, overblown expectations at a new college self – strong, social, outspoken – were just that. Childish and overblown.
I also remember the early days of sophomore year, when I finally decided to do something about it.
Initially I returned to campus very zealous and ambitious. I felt that my first year was complacent and meek, and I pushed myself very little – at most a halfhearted nudge – to seek new things and experiences. So I went out to a number of organizations, each with different focuses (though they were mostly political and always left). Yet throughout my hunt I never discovered anything which spurred the unique combination of interests I had. With every organization there seemed to exist a gaping hole where my passions would have laid. And when I did muster up the courage to finally attend an Asian American organization – tepidly embracing an identity of mine that for so long had been disparaged and insulted – I faced the greatest disappointment yet. I recall walking out of a United Asian American Organizations mass meeting, talking to my friend who came along and swearing at how angry I was that a group claiming to represent the community was simply social and basically selling out. And this futile search continued until the mass meetings ended, flyers trickled to nothing, and I ended up at the beginning.
This changed one October afternoon. I sat at the computers on the second floor of Hatcher, coming out from a long reading session in the Reference Room. What my eyes stumbled upon this time, however, was an email which described a Daily article that day concerning a hate crime committed against Asian Americans on campus. I immediately felt a surge of both disgust and affirmation – feelings which stemmed from the years of a collective build-up of suspicion and unconscious reflection on an identity that had always been imposed on me. Growing up during my pivotal years of middle and high school in Tucson did not provide a place to foster ethnic identity, especially in the wealthier (and thereby isolated) northern foothills of the city. My Asian-ness – the American name had yet to appear – was always a salient marker of difference that I carried around with me in every situation. Now, we are all different from one another, inside and out, ranging from the clothes we wear to the size of blood cells flowing in our veins. Yet the difference represented by the term Asian was more fundamental and profound than our preferred brands of clothing or the music we enjoy. My experience was and has been prominently defined by this racial difference, whether I like it or not, and as I ran (literally) to the first place I knew would have a copy of the Daily that day, I was taking the first step to embrace this identity of mine.
I came upon a stack of newspapers in the lobby of Hatcher and began reading nervously. My mind traced the incident, its often vague details, the diluted response by the police and University. Through my anger and trembling fingers, however, I felt various threads of my life slowly tying together. I began feeling justified for the awkward and sometimes painful experiences that had burdened my racial identity. The hate crime symbolized to me the nexus of my – and my people’s – inexpressible inabilities at times to fit in, feelings of estrangement from situations local and in the broader American community. Simply put, things began making sense. And as I found myself back in the Yuri Kochiyama lounge, discussing these issues of Asian America which my subconscious obsessed over – but I never had the courage to admit to care about – I finally discovered that splendid, wonderful something I had long been searching for: Community, strong and vibrant.
Yet as Asian Americans and people of color, discovering a community requires intrepid work and courage. It is a burden we face, for our community is not handed to us, especially not by society – in fact, prevailing social discourse actually stigmatizes Asian American and people of color activism and frames it as unnecessary, trouble-making, illegitimate, or silly. But there would be no America had its peoples not agitated and struggled – had women simply stood by as their gender was objectified and exploited, had blacks acquiesced to their dehumanizing state of chattel slavery and institutionalized segregation, had Native Americans or Chicanos let their lands be overrun and accept it as a fact of nature. Only we, as the bearers of our unique identity, have the responsibility to embrace and empower ourselves along these lines. Otherwise no one will.
Identity, however, is complicated, and we sometimes possess ones that overlap, conflict, or flat out contradict one another. One individual may be a Democrat, soccer fan, professor of anthropology, mother of three, Vietnamese American, lesbian, and an avid swimmer. But we cannot mire ourselves in every complexity of the individual self – not only is that task much too daunting, it is also to overlook one important fact of human existence: we after all are not islands. We are social beings operating in a system of prevailing norms, values, and histories. These social spaces then prioritize or highlight various identities over others – and these social identities serve as rigid, definitive categories of our individual selves: race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, etc. Although basically speaking they are indeed socially constructed to a degree, this does not make them any less real. Money and marriage, for example, are also social constructions, yet they also function as provocative determinants of society and our existence.
So this discussion forces us to invariably ask two fundamental questions: 1) Why do we come together as Asian Americans? 2) What is Asian American identity in the first place? I see these questions as necessary if we are to survive and progress as a community, since they often go unevaluated in much of Asian American activism despite their significance for the existence of such a movement in the first place. In our investigation, however, we are constrained by the nature of racial identity itself – that is, we can never essentialize or proclaim to define what one identity is. This desire to cleanly locate one social group in exclusion of others is wrong on two counts: it not only plays into the discriminatory history of racial discourse, it also seeks to erect barriers where there can be none. Identities are fluid, two-way transactions, and they interact in many interesting ways with one another. For instance, individuals of “mixed” background claim unique racial identities which do not fit the standard American ethno-racial pentagon of black, brown, white, red, and yellow. Some individuals can also “belong” to one race, but pass for another. And race is extremely contingent what about peoples who by definition do not fit cleanly? Filipinos presented unique racial cases for American law, as they did not fit with the standard “Mongolian” designation given to all previous Asian immigrants.
What we can do is to be contingent and critical in our evaluation. To discuss an identity and recognize its ever-changing, amorphous nature are compatible principles, and it requires any rigorous reflection to keep both in mind at all times. Also, to dispel fears of speculation in a project like this, racial identities and their social meaning are in fact quite tangible and definitive, even though they are also muddled and confused. Racial identity is, after all, founded on the solid bedrock of public discourse – and the reason why it “makes sense” when television shows broadcast stereotypes of this or that racial group is because the concept of racial difference is built into American culture itself. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle presents an accessible symbol of the prevailing nature of racial identities and stereotypes, since we would not understand the film’s motif of toying with racial identity were we not in tune with the social meanings of “Indian,” “Korean,” and “Asian” alike.
This reflection will be continued in the following post.
:exl
College is a torrent of sensation. And it is never static. One moment may be of euphoria – another, of frustration and doubt. Most often, however, we find ourselves somewhere in between these extremes: elated and exhausted, cheerful but grave.
College is also a time and place of self-discovery and growth. Through the trials and rigors of balancing an overwhelmed schedule of studies, extracurriculars, work, friendships, life-planning – we come to new insights about both ourselves and the world around us. As a senior soon to embark into post-college existence, I have spent much time reflecting on my past four years and charting my self-development throughout. I remember the gray April chill of my first visit to Ann Arbor and how I hated its dreariness compared to my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. I remember the awkward, vain attempts to redefine myself in this new place, one where the burdens of my past were unknown and unimportant. I remember the haunting hollowness I felt during my initial months, at how strangely detached I was when everyone else seemed to just “get it.” As a matter of personal taste, I am not interested in professional sports or big, raucous parties with drunken bodies milling about – and even if I pretended to care about them I always walked away by the end of the night both empty and dissatisfied. In a way I was a shell of a being, and I still remember the loneliness of coming back to my quiet Mosher Jordan dorm, blinded by the sterile, searing fluorescent lighting, and feeling as if my childish, overblown expectations at a new college self – strong, social, outspoken – were just that. Childish and overblown.
I also remember the early days of sophomore year, when I finally decided to do something about it.
Initially I returned to campus very zealous and ambitious. I felt that my first year was complacent and meek, and I pushed myself very little – at most a halfhearted nudge – to seek new things and experiences. So I went out to a number of organizations, each with different focuses (though they were mostly political and always left). Yet throughout my hunt I never discovered anything which spurred the unique combination of interests I had. With every organization there seemed to exist a gaping hole where my passions would have laid. And when I did muster up the courage to finally attend an Asian American organization – tepidly embracing an identity of mine that for so long had been disparaged and insulted – I faced the greatest disappointment yet. I recall walking out of a United Asian American Organizations mass meeting, talking to my friend who came along and swearing at how angry I was that a group claiming to represent the community was simply social and basically selling out. And this futile search continued until the mass meetings ended, flyers trickled to nothing, and I ended up at the beginning.
This changed one October afternoon. I sat at the computers on the second floor of Hatcher, coming out from a long reading session in the Reference Room. What my eyes stumbled upon this time, however, was an email which described a Daily article that day concerning a hate crime committed against Asian Americans on campus. I immediately felt a surge of both disgust and affirmation – feelings which stemmed from the years of a collective build-up of suspicion and unconscious reflection on an identity that had always been imposed on me. Growing up during my pivotal years of middle and high school in Tucson did not provide a place to foster ethnic identity, especially in the wealthier (and thereby isolated) northern foothills of the city. My Asian-ness – the American name had yet to appear – was always a salient marker of difference that I carried around with me in every situation. Now, we are all different from one another, inside and out, ranging from the clothes we wear to the size of blood cells flowing in our veins. Yet the difference represented by the term Asian was more fundamental and profound than our preferred brands of clothing or the music we enjoy. My experience was and has been prominently defined by this racial difference, whether I like it or not, and as I ran (literally) to the first place I knew would have a copy of the Daily that day, I was taking the first step to embrace this identity of mine.
I came upon a stack of newspapers in the lobby of Hatcher and began reading nervously. My mind traced the incident, its often vague details, the diluted response by the police and University. Through my anger and trembling fingers, however, I felt various threads of my life slowly tying together. I began feeling justified for the awkward and sometimes painful experiences that had burdened my racial identity. The hate crime symbolized to me the nexus of my – and my people’s – inexpressible inabilities at times to fit in, feelings of estrangement from situations local and in the broader American community. Simply put, things began making sense. And as I found myself back in the Yuri Kochiyama lounge, discussing these issues of Asian America which my subconscious obsessed over – but I never had the courage to admit to care about – I finally discovered that splendid, wonderful something I had long been searching for: Community, strong and vibrant.
Yet as Asian Americans and people of color, discovering a community requires intrepid work and courage. It is a burden we face, for our community is not handed to us, especially not by society – in fact, prevailing social discourse actually stigmatizes Asian American and people of color activism and frames it as unnecessary, trouble-making, illegitimate, or silly. But there would be no America had its peoples not agitated and struggled – had women simply stood by as their gender was objectified and exploited, had blacks acquiesced to their dehumanizing state of chattel slavery and institutionalized segregation, had Native Americans or Chicanos let their lands be overrun and accept it as a fact of nature. Only we, as the bearers of our unique identity, have the responsibility to embrace and empower ourselves along these lines. Otherwise no one will.
Identity, however, is complicated, and we sometimes possess ones that overlap, conflict, or flat out contradict one another. One individual may be a Democrat, soccer fan, professor of anthropology, mother of three, Vietnamese American, lesbian, and an avid swimmer. But we cannot mire ourselves in every complexity of the individual self – not only is that task much too daunting, it is also to overlook one important fact of human existence: we after all are not islands. We are social beings operating in a system of prevailing norms, values, and histories. These social spaces then prioritize or highlight various identities over others – and these social identities serve as rigid, definitive categories of our individual selves: race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, etc. Although basically speaking they are indeed socially constructed to a degree, this does not make them any less real. Money and marriage, for example, are also social constructions, yet they also function as provocative determinants of society and our existence.
So this discussion forces us to invariably ask two fundamental questions: 1) Why do we come together as Asian Americans? 2) What is Asian American identity in the first place? I see these questions as necessary if we are to survive and progress as a community, since they often go unevaluated in much of Asian American activism despite their significance for the existence of such a movement in the first place. In our investigation, however, we are constrained by the nature of racial identity itself – that is, we can never essentialize or proclaim to define what one identity is. This desire to cleanly locate one social group in exclusion of others is wrong on two counts: it not only plays into the discriminatory history of racial discourse, it also seeks to erect barriers where there can be none. Identities are fluid, two-way transactions, and they interact in many interesting ways with one another. For instance, individuals of “mixed” background claim unique racial identities which do not fit the standard American ethno-racial pentagon of black, brown, white, red, and yellow. Some individuals can also “belong” to one race, but pass for another. And race is extremely contingent what about peoples who by definition do not fit cleanly? Filipinos presented unique racial cases for American law, as they did not fit with the standard “Mongolian” designation given to all previous Asian immigrants.
What we can do is to be contingent and critical in our evaluation. To discuss an identity and recognize its ever-changing, amorphous nature are compatible principles, and it requires any rigorous reflection to keep both in mind at all times. Also, to dispel fears of speculation in a project like this, racial identities and their social meaning are in fact quite tangible and definitive, even though they are also muddled and confused. Racial identity is, after all, founded on the solid bedrock of public discourse – and the reason why it “makes sense” when television shows broadcast stereotypes of this or that racial group is because the concept of racial difference is built into American culture itself. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle presents an accessible symbol of the prevailing nature of racial identities and stereotypes, since we would not understand the film’s motif of toying with racial identity were we not in tune with the social meanings of “Indian,” “Korean,” and “Asian” alike.
This reflection will be continued in the following post.
:exl
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