Sunday, May 22, 2011

"My Mom's A Fucking Bitch Too.....!"

Asian-American Get Rich Quick Schemes

The Asian-American blogosphere has been abuzz in the past week over an article written by Wesley Yang in the New York Magazine entitled "Asian Like Me". My reaction to the article is mixed. On the one hand Yang has accurately  described the degree to which some Asian men may feel a sense of disconnect from their own, as well as from mainstream American society and culture. At the same time, I couldn't help but feel that ultimately, Yang hasn't actually said anything substantial to shed light on this state of affairs, choosing instead to apparently allow the overly-dramatic tone of the article to become the content of the essay.

Okay, I get it, some Asian parents drive their kids hard but so what? People of all races experience disconnectedness from their societies, cultures, families, and peers, what is different about the Asian experience that warrants such heavy soul-searching and self-recrimination? Because Yang's article doesn't really shed light on any dynamic that might be specific to the experience of Asian men, I couldn't help but wonder, why on earth did he racialize his essay to such a great degree. To me, based on what Yang wrote, he could have completely left out the racial aspect and been left with a much more powerful human story that would have made more sense.

How can this be? Ultimately, all Yang seems to be saying is "be more like your peers if you want to be more like your peers". Really?! In order to say that, he could have avoided the sappy dramatics and the issue of race altogether because although the article hints at a racial component to the issue, it never really goes all-out to address it head-on. If, as Yang seems to suggest, the race issue is secondary (or perhaps even irrelevant) to the problems he raises, then why bring race into it at all? But this is a dilemma - cultural differences aren't a sufficient explanation for the degree of marginalization described by Yang, but we'll never know because he avoids meaningfully addressing racial issues at all.

In some ways, we could conceive of this approach to describing the Asian-American experience as a  kind of "movement". This movement reflects a worldview and an approach to life and literature that seeks mainstream recognition and success at any cost. We could label this movement, "Kingsto-Tan-ism", in honour of the cultural figurines who modeled and popularized the literary approach of avoiding holding a mirror up to mainstream America's ugliness, and instead creating myths and fantasies based on wishful thinking and ingratiatingly downplaying of racial marginalization of the Asian minority. Ironically, Yang's article effectively perpetuates the process and reality of the feminization of the Asian-American experience by adhering to this philosophy.

Unfortunately, this is what sells, i.e., this is what it is widely believed white people want to read and believe about Asians - that their cultures are so dysfunctional that any racism directed at Asians by mainstream America is actually better for them than what they do to themselves and one another. I would love to be able to say that this is a state of affairs that is inflicted upon us by white hegemony, and that may well be part of the truth. The reality seems to be that Asians themselves play a role in maintaining the delusion because it's a way to sell books, get published, or become the toast of a mainstream that doesn't take too kindly to being called out on its prejudices - especially not by the likes of us.

8 comments:

  1. "Because Yang's article doesn't really shed light on any dynamic that might be specific to the experience of Asian men, I couldn't help but wonder, why on earth did he racialize his essay to such a great degree."

    Because Asian American men face the greatest marginalization in American society. Unlike Asians, Hispanics and blacks are widely accepted in mainstream media, Democrats pander to them, and colleges want to accept NAMs (non-Asian minorities) to promote an image of diversity.

    I think the point of Yang's article was to highlight the directionless despair of the AA non-community. When one rejects traditional Asian values and is rejected by the adopted Western society (unlike other minorities), there's only a vague sense of disconnectedness left. In other words, when society as a whole takes a dump on you in every way, in dating or the workplace or academia, you don't know where to begin to improve your lot in life. Some resort to pickup-artistry which I think is a scam, some just work harder despite not being able to break the "Bamboo ceiling" as the author puts it, and some simply resign from it all. We have no heroes, no visible AA men to look up to. The women in our non-communities reject us for the most part, and the most we can realistically aspire to is to be doctors, engineers, computer programmers, accountants, etc.

    I don't know where your accusation of Yang being a sellout comes from. He's not towing the same line as Kingston or Tan. Although all of them point out that Asian men are of low social status in American society, and all of them identify the issue and offer no solutions, Yang does not act to perpetuate it. Perhaps the first step is to get angry at the problem, which most AA men are not doing. AA men are lost in Western society, but it seems that the internal conflict in most AA males remains repressed. We need more AA men like Wesley Yang to speak out. At this point, any publicity for Asian men is good publicity, as the mainstream discourse has ignored us for so long.

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  2. @Dali: did we read the same article through its entirety?

    seems to me that Yang was more blaming AM ourselves rather than the racist institutions.

    he blamed Asian tiger parenting and our own supposed inability of not being sociable and lack of charisma as the cause of the "bamboo ceiling"

    hardly what you're espousing as the problems facing AM (which I wholeheartedly agree) is racism against Asians.

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  3. Hi Dali

    I sincerely hope that more Asian men speak out about our experiences - but I pray that they don't do it like Wesley Yang!

    Directionless despair is a feature of modern life and is probably experienced by more people than we might think. Much of modern thinking explores this idea of despair as notions of meaning and intrinsic value have become challenged.

    My post asks what is unique about Yang's description of this sense of alienation that he feels the need to racialize it.

    In my opinion he does a poor job of placing our experiences in their racial context. If I were a neutral observer and I read Yang's piece I wouldn't come away from it with the feeling that race has anything to do with what Yang is describing, and I certainly wouldn't be any the wiser on the role that invisibility, xenophobia, stereotyping, discrimination, and experiences of personal prejudice, plays on shaping our lives and outlook.

    In fact, in discussing the bamboo ceiling, Yang dismisses it off-handedly as unconscious bias. So, I see little in Yang's article that connects negative mainstream attitudes with any sense of marginalization - Yang avoided that altogether.

    That's why I would put this piece in the same category as a Tan or Kingston - it has downplayed prejudice, and relies heavily on dramatic emotionalism, presumably to make it acceptable to the mainstream.

    I don't see how that good for me in particular and Asian men in general.

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  4. Considering that this is an article that was published in a mainstream media outlet, perhaps he was pressured into removing parts of his writing that would reflect on the racial aspect of marginalisation that AMs face in Western society, as it is a touchy political subject. I don't want to censure Yang right away, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he's onto something. This article might have been much better without the editors, but it was a tradeoff to get it into the mainstream.

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  5. Dali

    That's the crux of the issue. The message is so diluted that it has become nonsensical, which in turn makes its publication in mainstream mag somewhat pointless.

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  6. @Dali: while I agree it's true that the mainstream media outlets would want to censor anti-establishment views, you have to read Yang's other comments that's been out there:

    http://utsun.org/the-asian-value-that-wesley-yang-doesn%E2%80%99t-reject/#comments%3C/p%3E


    if the poster is indeed Yang, then he's a complete asshat and prick. saying the reader is too stupid to not understand his BS ego tripping reveals more about this ingrained auto-racism than anything else.

    even the askakorean folks caught on to his machinations to sell articles:

    http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-you-should-never-listen-to-asian.html

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  7. The Korean's criticism of Yang seems solely based on his "Writerly" lifestyle choices, an ad hominem.

    I don't think it's "ingrained auto-racism" to point out that despite best efforts, AA men are disadvantaged in every aspect of society. Self-defeating, maybe.

    I think his article speaks out to marginal Asian American males, the ones who lose out in winner-take-all games, who are not comedians and fashion designers, nor or are they competent lawyers, engineers, doctors, etc. The point is there are far more marginal AA men than there are successful ones. And the marginal ones are pissed for not having an acceptable place in society.

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