Macguffined!

How Anti-Anti-Blackness Failed Asian-America.

In the hours and days following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001, President Bush was quick to separate Islamic belief from the actions of Muslim terrorists. Perpetrators of terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam were, it was, and is, suggested, not acting in accordance with the true tenets of the faith. Additionally, the mainstream media largely supported this sentiment. The aim here was to guide society away from reprisals against Muslims and stave off anti-Muslim sentiment. Given America's history of racism, this political and media approach was quite remarkable.

It might be naive to think that our political/ruling classes simply and suddenly developed a conscience about racial and religious minorities that prompted this response. More likely, a combination of successful activism/lobbying by Muslim-American activists along with the need to avoid offending our oil-rich, Muslim allies around the world, led to this progressive-seeming reaction.

From an Asian-American perspective, these responses reveal what is possible for minorities to achieve politically. At the same time, it lays bare just how far Asian-Americans have yet to go to be considered an integral part of America. It is at times when America's other phobia - Sinophobia - rears its casual and normalized head that this contrast in attitudes becomes most starkly apparent.

Sinophobic sentiment is an issue that all Asian-Americans of East and South-East Asian descent need to be concerned about since casts a shadow of suspicion and hostility on Asians of all backgrounds and not just those of Chinese descent. Although politicians and the media scramble to assert the "American-ness" of Muslims in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, few, if any, take the time to reassure the Asian minority or the American majority of our Americaness during times of Sinophobic sentiment that is typically focused on alleged unscrupulous Chinese trade practices, claims of sneaky spying, sly intentions of conquest, as well as theft of technology.

So, how can we account for this disparity in the relative political and social empathy displayed by politicians and the media towards Muslims that is largely absent in its dialogue on Asians? The clear answer is that Muslim advocacy has embraced and pushed the interests of the Muslim community, succeeding in a relatively short period of time in positively changing how politicians and the media engage with, and describes them. By comparison, Asian-American advocacy has embraced a different strategy that leaves our community as a largely invisible non-entity who are given scant political consideration, and practically zero media empathy.

During the radical sixties, Asian-American activist groups were roundly criticized by Asian feminist factions for ignoring sexism within Asian organizations themselves. Many such feminists felt aggrieved at, apparently, being told that these issues should be placed on the back-burner and that feminists should "wait their turn" in the interests of the greater Asian-American good. Fast forward fifty years, and the Asian-American community faces a similar problem today: the "greater good" for Asians, we are informed, is in supporting the strategy of "centering anti-blackness" whilst placing Asian interests on  the back-burner.

Centering anti-blackness is a somewhat nebulous and - deliberately, perhaps - intangible notion. Not really comprised of many concrete, measurable goals, it seems to me to be more of an allusion to a kind of virtue ethics consisting simplistic, ad-hoc acts of "virtuous" centering anti-blackness behaviour, emphasizing the development of virtuous thought to this end.

This strategy places Asian interests on the back-burner by essentially denying the significance or severity of anti-Asian racism with the implicit reminder that "African-Americans have it worse!" Asian "advocacy", thus, pushes Asian-Americans into a falsely dichotomous position of either shutting up about Asian interests or be labeled as an unvirtuous anti-black racist. In other words Asian-American advocacy attempts to uphold the long defunct and never accurate notion of a black/white narrative to explain America's race woes.

Awkwardly, America has beaten Asian-American progressive racial trailblazers to the punch by several decades since the "righting" of anti-black wrongs has been central to much of American social policy since the nineteen-sixties. Securing the black vote is the priority of politicians at every election cycle, ensuring a commensurate black presence in all aspects of our society is considered a moral goal, and shooting of unarmed black men by the police is roundly centered in the media. That short list is indicative of a good degree of centering of black needs and the obstacles faced by black people.

This essentially means that Asian progressivism has been flogging a dead horse - the idea that we are achieving something that has already gone a very long way to being achieved (by black people themselves) and that to push Asian interests will, by definition, be an unvirtuous act of anti-blackness. Unfortunately for our virtuous friends, the success of Muslim activism in bringing Islamophobia to the social and cultural fore has obliterated the very premises of Asian progressive moral grandstanding.

Muslim advocates' success in bringing the concept of Islamophobia to the forefront of our political discussions, such that politicians are careful to clearly separate terrorist acts from Islam and Muslims, has expanded the scope of America's race dialogue beyond the archaic black/white narrative that Asian-American progressives insist upon. Even though "Muslim" is not a race, to all intents and purposes it is discussed in our society as though it is a race. This defining of Islamophobia in terms of race, itself, shows further evidence of how successful Muslim advocates have been in making the issue as relevant and significant as the issue of anti-blackness. I would even go so far as to say that America's race dialogue now, effectively, consists of a black/white/Muslim/Hispanic polychotomy with Asians silenced by their own activists.

Asian progressives have shaped our contribution to the race dialogue so that Asian voices are largely irrelevant except as mouth pieces screaming support safely from behind the dynamic activism of these other groups. Asian-American progressivism has largely undone the good work of previous generations of Asian-American activists by pushing an agenda of Asian submission to the black/white narrative that no other minority group seems to act in accordance with. Evidently, these other minority groups accept that the reality of America's race issues is that it has never - ever - been a black/white issue.

Even worse for our grandstanding friends on Asian-America's progressive left is that there is no indication that the success of Muslim advocacy has, or does, in any way detract from the interests of the black community - as has been suggested by the "centering anti-blackness" Asian activists who castigate other Asians for daring to speak for Asian interests. Surely, expanding the scope of America's race dialogue only weakens the power of white supremacy because it leaves less room for any outsider groups that can be harmed by it? Isn't the weakening of white supremacist power and thought a success for all people of colour?

Yet, it seems to me that this is exactly the place where Asian progressivism has led Asian-Americans. After, all, who would argue that anti-Asian stereotypes and mockery are still largely normalized in American culture, and that anti-Asian/China rhetoric is a significant detrimental factor in our society's conception of us as potentially treacherous permanent outsiders and foreigners? This represents an abject failure on the part of Asian progressivism.

Even as Presidents defend, propagate, and represent positive attitudes towards Islam and American-Muslims, at every opportunity, there are few, if any, equally glowing defenses of Asian-Americans in general, and Chinese-Americans in particular coming from any US politicians, at any level during times of high tension between the US and any Asian power. Just think about that for a minute: US Presidents are contributing to positive attitudes and media representation towards the Muslim minority - something that they don't even do for African-Americans. This is a clear indication that Muslim advocacy has succeeded in ways that Asian-American progressivism has not begun to conceive of as even a possibility.

Asian-Americans and Muslim-Americans share many similar experiences, such as originating from countries that have been on the receiving end of US military aggression, being subject to xenophobic ignorance, poor media representation, and being seen as potential fifth-columnists for foreign powers. Yet whilst Asian "advocacy" utilizes liberal media platforms to attack other Asians for being anti-black, privileged, misogynistic, and generally "in the way" of black advancement, Muslim advocacy seems to have actually striven to advocate for the interests of Muslims.

The result is that a Muslim minority of under 4 million are being positively represented in the media by US Presidents, in a surprising number of culturally popular TV shows, as well as a number of high-profile films featuring complex characters who challenge stereotypes. By contrast, Asian-Americans number nearly 20 million, and only two years ago, Hollywood racially mocked Asians live at the Oscars. An article from the "The Whisp" describes sixteen Muslim characters from film and TV who have been represented positively. I can barely think of a handful of positive, complex, representations of Asian characters in American film and television.

Asian progressivism's hegemonic appropriation of Asian-America's voice in order to push an anti-anti-blackness agenda - which black activists have already been in doing, successfully, without our help - has failed our community. It has been replaced with a delusional Asian progressive narrative that asserts that Asians are willing and sneaky beneficiaries of white anti-blackness, and those who speak up for Asian interests are labeled as implicitly anti-black. Thus, Asian progressivism has set our community back decades, and been successful only in marginalizing Asian interests from the mainstream.

The success of Muslim advocacy has exposed the absurdity of these Asian progressive claims. It has shown that America's race dialogue has changed forever beyond the archaic confines of the black/white narrative. Furthermore, the success of Muslim advocacy has shown that moving beyond the black/white narrative and pushing the interests of any group that is not black, does no harm, whatsoever, to black interests. This means that the entire dialectic of Asian progressivism of the past few years has been based on rhetoric alone with no meaningful epistemology to support its claims.

Asian-America has been Macguffined.

The Asianization Of Donald trump

The Media Is Still Not Our Friend......

I came across an interesting article on the fact-checking site, Snopes, that examined various claims made in the media about Donald Trump's actions/behaviour since he began his run for Presidential office. Despite stating numerous disclaimers of its author's opposition to Trump (Snopes does have a someone leftist lean), the piece is nevertheless mostly exemplary as a model for unbiased reporting. What's interesting is that the article describes biased and hostile media reports and portrayals of President Trump that are based caricatures. Caricature are often used to establish and propagate stereotypes.

The article says this....

This article is intended as a neutral, reliable analysis of the lies, false allegations and misleading claims made about and against Donald Trump since his inauguration in January 2017. We’ve attempted to strip away the hyperbole, name-calling and generalizations, and examine the patterns and trends at work: what characterizes these lies and exaggerations, the effect they have, what might explain them. 

We pay particular attention to selected examples — claims that have gained prominence among the mainstream opposition to Trump, revealing much about the methods, priorities, and tone of that opposition, and illustrating how this movement both cultivates and plays off a number of caricatures of the 45th President and at times falls prey to a handful of identifiable and repeated errors of thought.

The highlighted part of the second paragraph, above, is noteworthy: the hostile media plays off and cultivates caricatures of Trump to publish untruths or half-truths that cast a negative light on his presidency, morality, and character.

The piece goes on to outline the caricatures utilized by the mainstream media to shape, foster, and propagate negative attitudes towards Trump.....

Broadly speaking, most of the falsehoods levelled against Trump fall into one or more of four categories, each of them drawing from and feeding into four public personas inhabited by the President.  They are: 

• Donald Trump: International Embarrassment
• Trump the Tyrant
• Donald Trump: Bully baby
• Trump the Buffoon. 

Some of these claims are downright fake, entirely fabricated by unreliable or dubious web sites and presented as satire, or otherwise blatantly false. But the rest — some of which have gained significant traction and credibility from otherwise serious people and organizations — provide a fascinating insight into the tactics and preoccupations of the broad anti-Trump movement known as “the Resistance,” whether they were created by critics of the President or merely shared by them.

....there's something eerily familiar about about all of this. With each bullet point above, we could substitute the word "Asians" for the word "Trump" and the article would be unintentionally providing an uncannily accurate description of how Asians (particularly Asian men) are portrayed in the media.

It is routine to see Asian men portrayed as misogynistic tyrants who bully helpless Asian women (as popularized by the Joy Luck Club) and whose masculinities are lampooned as buffoonery. From internationally embarrassing Chinese ghost cities to mockery of Chinese and Japanese tourists, and from supposedly poor quality products to Asia's sometimes imitative engagement with western culture, Asia and its people are generally portrayed as an embarrassing imitation of western sophistication and rational comportment.

All of these Asian portrayals play off caricatures cultivated or propagated across the spectrum of America's media from comedy, light entertainment, movies, literature, and television, to current events programming and news reporting. The media has even ridiculed Trump about the size of his penis. They really hate this guy almost as much as they seem to hate Asian guys!

The key difference here is that Trump's race is not the motivating factor in how the media portrays him. The media is responding to Trump as an individual whose actions and words have rubbed many people the wrong way. Consequently, reporting on Trump is often emotional (i.e. irrational), hostile, suspicious, often paranoid, and uncompromisingly one-sided in its misrepresentations of him. Yet, this is precisely the way the media - including, and, perhaps, particularly, the liberal media - misrepresents Asia and Asian men.

This phenomenon further cements my belief that liberals and the liberal media are unreliable allies, fickle and dishonest, but most problematic of all, politically biased such that it cannot be trusted to report objective news about Asians, nor can entertainment media be trusted to divest itself from propagating racist stereotypes of them. My conclusion here is that Asian commentary at this time - if it is to be taken seriously - needs to highlight the implicit dishonesty of the liberal media regardless of whether it is talking about Trump or Asian men. At least we know where we stand with Trump, the media on the other hand, claims to be "liberal" on one side of its mouth whilst giving platforms and credence to those who spout casual anti-Asian racism on the other.

This uncomfortable truth is a huge slap in the face for those in Asian-American reactivism who suggest that our concerns about media representation and portrayals are somehow overblown. The fact that the media has successfully - so far - managed to galvanize widespread opposition, overlook and "re-frame" leftist violence, and successfully propagate admitted lies to disrupt the world's most powerful politician, shows just how significant the issue of media representation is for Asian-Americans. Obviously, some of our self-righteous friends in Asian progressive fantasy land can't imagine just how significant a role the media can play in the democratic process. More on that in an upcoming post.

We have to remember that an unbiased media is hugely significant for any democratic society. If it makes things up and becomes politicized and biased, the effect of this misinformation is that democracy becomes dysfunctional. When media reporting and representation strategies are based on caricaturing and stereotyping of Trump that is designed to foster abuse and hostility towards him rather than honestly inform people of his statements and actions, that takes away our ability to make informed decisions about our democracy.

If media reporting and representation strategies - that are based on caricaturing and stereotyping -  targets an ethnic minority with few means or opportunities of responding, that becomes a repression. Sadly, Asian men are the prime targets for liberal media racism - of course, Asian re-activism has no thoughts on that.

The article continues...

Generally speaking, we discovered that they are characterized and driven by four types of errors of thought: 

• Alarmism
• A lack of historical context or awareness
• Cherry-picking of evidence (especially visual evidence)
• A failure to adhere to Occam’s Razor — the common-sense understanding that the simplest explanation for an event or behavior is the most likely. 

Infused throughout almost all these claims, behind their successful dissemination, is confirmation bias: the fuel that drives the spread of all propaganda and false or misleading claims among otherwise sensible and skeptical people. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, find, remember and share information that confirms the beliefs we already have, and the tendency to dismiss, ignore and forget information that contradicts those beliefs. It is one of the keys to why clever people, on all sides of every disagreement, sometimes believe stupid things that aren’t true.

And there you have it - an accurate description of the nature of media representation of Asian men. I don't support Trump, but in all consciousness, I cannot give my acquiescence to media strategies that are casually turned on Asian men. The enemy of my enemy, is definitely not my friend in this case.

Word To Your Mother.

Asians And Hip-Hop Machismo.

I came across this article written back in 2005 by African-American activist/writer, Kenyon Farrow, in which he explores the (to him and others, probably) irritating appropriation of rap music and culture by wannabe Asians.

I won't go into great depth about Farrow's charge of appropriation of culture simply because most culture is appropriated in some way or another (and is not an implicitly bad thing), often with the result that those who have appropriated a style, art form, or belief system, have taken it to new heights it may not have reached otherwise. For example, the "hand-gun machismo" present in hip-hop culture wouldn't be possible without the anonymous Chinese alchemists whose culture produced both the gunpowder and the first guns. What we would be left with, instead, is the more absurd notion of "popping arrows", or "slingshot" in opponents' asses instead of "caps".

Facetiousness aside, short of authoritarian legislation enforcing strict cultural segregation of those deemed unworthy to participate in a particular form, the idea of "illegal" or "unfair" cultural appropriation is too vague, and simply, silly, to foster any meaningful discussion. Unless you are stealing specific works or limiting opportunities, then trying to limit the transaction of cultural ideas or structures is little more than petty posturing.

But what most interested me about the article, is the idea that young Asian men are looking to the hyper-masculinity of black hip-hop as a potential model for their own burgeoning masculine identities. This would make sense; a group that is culturally emasculated would logically be attracted to the most opposite extreme of the hyper-masculinity of hip-hop. Yet, strange as it may sound, despite what may seem to be obvious displays of masculine power, I think that "hip-hop masculinity" is actually nothing of the sort, and, in fact, is too limited in scope to offer Asian boys (and perhaps any boy) a meaningful masculine identity that can foster their maturity into manhood.

Ostensibly, this sounds odd - ghetto-spawned hip-hop evolved out of a culture of want, discrimination, toughness, and rebellion, producing men who were confrontational, aggressive, sexualized, tough, and uncompromising. These men would rip your head off if you so much as looked at them the wrong way. And if we look at the present-day ghettos of the US, we might see that this type of masculinity seems dominant; confrontational, aggressive, and uncompromising. Of course, hip-hop - especially in the popular perception of it - reflects these characteristics.

Yet, my sense is that what is portrayed or perceived as hyper-masculine is not really as masculine as we think. In the course of my internet travels I happened across an article called "Myth Of The Ghetto Alpha Male" I believe written by a black blogger. The gist of the post is that ghetto hyper-masculinity is largely over-rated. The reasoning is that due to the circumstances of the ghetto, young African-American males are largely raised in environments controlled by women because most of the older men are either dead or imprisoned. Men - importantly older men - are largely absent in the fostering of young black male identities, leaving young African-American boys to scavenge their masculinity from their innate testosterone, and a masculinity learned from women. He describes the consequences thus.......

Supermacho, obnoxious, fearless to the point of knuckleheaded, overaggressive…basically the parody of manhood we see in gangster rap. It’s overcompensation to the worst degree.....But even though they are doing their best to be superthug, they still end up doing things in a subtly feminine (not effeminate) way because feminine influences are most of what they know....

.....Most of their role models and involved family members are women, and the few men in their lives were likely raised by only women too. And it shows in how they handle conflict: grudges are held forever, they never know how to let anything slide, they think primarily with emotion and are prone to outbursts, drama and confrontation and most importantly, they don’t know how to choose their battles. True male behavior isn’t being a drama queen, emotional outbursts and holding onto grudges...

A chick in the hood can get away with all the drama queen meltdowns and public displays of emotion and confrontation....When guys are the ones getting overly emotional and confrontational, it’s a lot scarier and it invites a much more serious retaliation, because now the behavior’s coming from a man, which means possible escalation into serious, possibly fatal, violence.

Although I agree that lacking older male role models and guides wreaks havoc with masculinity, I don't necessarily agree that what the author has described above can truly be said to be feminine. Yes, the emotionalism is feminine, but whereas what is being described above is emotionally confrontational, women tend not to use their emotional skills in that way. I think it is more accurate to say that this kind of behaviour is juvenile, or even childish, and childlike, as opposed to feminine. Boys who who come into manhood without the input of older, wiser, mature, men, remain childish adults.

Children and juveniles are impulsive, sometimes unreasonably aggressive, overly emotional, seldom utilize rational thinking to choose reasonable actions, poor at compromise, argumentative, and are poor at managing their emotions. This corresponds more closely with the type of behaviour described in the quoted piece, as well as more closely resembles the kind of affect and attitude present in much popular hip-hop; ostensibly masculine posturing, but if we were to be honest we would admit that it is actually juvenile (and to be fair, I tend to see all popular culture as juvenile in some ways). It would seem obvious then, that hip-hop's childishly aggressive posturing parading as pseudo-masculinity is a poor basis upon which to build a genuine masculine identity for Asian boys and probably even for young black boys. You cannot learn masculinity from juveniles.

Strangely enough, Asian-Americans also have a similar process of femininizing and infantilizing how Asian men interact with mainstream America. Because it is the voices of Asian females that have reached the mainstream consciousness, Asian men have adopted the feminine manner of commentary. As I have pointed out in several previous posts, our tendency to continually frame our commentary of race issues through the framework of our passive emotional responses - notably by being "offended" - illustrates just how profoundly we have adopted the passive and unthreatening feminine voice as the voice of our masculinity. It may be that the hyper-aggression of hip-hop is speaking to an aspect of Asian youths' innate masculinity that our own Asian-American culture may not cater to.

So, although I can see why hip-hop's charismatic pseudo-masculinity would appeal to young Asian boys who notice their cultural invisibility in mainstream America, it seems to be little more than the immature parody of true manhood. This is not to say that Asian-American boys should reject hip-hop as a means to explore their cultural voice - culture can sometimes be utilized as a tool for self-exploration. Plus, despite the prickly negativity of Farrow's article, Asians exploring the culture of African-Americans - particularly in light of black/Asian racial tensions - can only lead to good things. Farrow has this to say.......

....how does the presence of Asian Americans in hip-hop, this black cultural artform, look any different than that of white folks in Jazz, Blues, and Rock & Roll?

By referring to the historical exploitative appropriation of black culture by white people Farrow paints an  understandably bleak, yet, incomplete picture of the phenomenon. Yes, white people stole black artists' songs, styles, and adopted their culture, but it was also a small minority of whites who brought black music to the public consciousness in genuine ways that could be said to have led to the explosion of mainstream black artists into the mainstream charts in the 1960's. It was white British musicians of the late 1950's and early 1960's  who were fans of obscure black blues and R&B musicians that brought these styles and their black originators to the public attention and which might be said to have contributed to the softening of attitudes such that it fostered opportunities for black artists where they didn't exist previously.

So as uncomfortable as it might be to admit, the white "presence" in black culture has been both mostly extremely negative but also positive - and who can say whether, overall, the white presence won't turn out to have been resulted in something that was ultimately positive? I see no reason to see why the Asian "presence" in black culture would not or should not be a positive thing - just don't take the hyper-masculinity too seriously!

Wrong Again!

The Folly Of Taking Asians For Granted.

One of the more surprising outcomes of the recent Presidential election was the overwhelming support shown for Obama by Asian-Americans. Almost invisible during the campaigns (particularly in the Romney camp) the way that Asians voted went against all expectation. my sense is that this is because, as I've written before, much of the commentary that I have read that has been written by western "experts" on Asia and its peoples often seems made up or largely coloured by preconceived ideas that can only be described as chauvinistic in nature.

A recent report from the Pew Corporation seemed to suggest that Asian-Americans have achieved a level of economic success equal to, or slightly better than, that of the white majority. In terms of both household and personal income, Asian-Americans rate as some of America's highest earners. Although disputed by many Asian-American commentators for not taking account of higher per-household earner rates amongst Asian families, and for completely ignoring around 17% of Asian-Americans from some Southeast Asian groups whose high poverty rates and chronically low employment and below poverty-line income would have lowered average income rates for the entire group considerably, the Pew report was widely lauded as evidence of a successful immigrant minority group that has moved passed issues of racial inequality and "come good".

Most importantly, for this essay, is the fact that the findings of the Pew report seemed to show that Asian-Americans were almost no brainers for the election - their income levels, and even purchasing trends, all suggested (according to some) that the community would be full-on for the Republican cause. The completely unpredicted outcome of the election has shocked many of the commentators on Asian-Americans, although I would suggest that Asian-Americans themselves are far from surprised that so many of us would vote the way we did. What this highlights is the degree to which the dialogue on Asian-Americans is out of touch with the reality of our experience and that much of the certainty and truth about what Asian-Americans think and believe derives less from what they say about themselves and more from self-proclaimed "experts" taking advantage of the fact that Asian-American opinions are invisible in most of the narratives about them.

It probably should go without saying that much of the thinking on Asian-Americans is built fundamentally on a foundation of stereotype and gross generalization. The outcome of the election has defecated in the gaping mouths of shocked observers whose smug assertion of Asian predictability has been shown to be an embarrassing folly. What it revealed is that despite commentators claiming to "know" the Asian-American community, much of what is predicted about us must be appallingly ignorant and perhaps even informed more by cultural and racial stereotypes than an unbiased assessment of reality.

So what does the outcome of the election say about Asian-Americans? In terms of stereotypes the Asian vote seemingly belies several things that are believed about us in one fell swoop. Asians are often derided for being driven by money over everything else - making them a-political in their pursuit of the dollar - unconscientious and inconsiderate of social inequality, and racist towards African-Americans. Strange then that such a group would vote for a black man, whose party stands for social justice, greater inclusiveness, and fairer wealth distribution. It is no longer politically expedient to assign qualities and beliefs to a group of people about whom very little is actually known whilst cynically excluding them from the dialogue. 

And it is really quite a simple concept to understand - reaching out to Asians like they are actual human beings instead of a formless mass of de-individuated statistics with no human qualities might yield more positive results. Despite being not yet substantial enough to necessarily swing anything less than the tightest election - although this is likely to change in the not too distant future - the Asian vote illustrates how deceiving it can be to rely on income stats, and the opinion of self-proclaimed experts, when discussing Asian-Americans. These tactics have been used as a means to feign inclusiveness and understanding, whilst in reality is a way of avoiding meaningful engagement.

Another One Bites The Dust

Asian Girl Boasts About Her Own Stupidity - Receives Cyber-Beatdown.

Several weeks ago, another Asian woman stepped up to provide more evidence that despite having high college graduation rates and a forbidding reputation for educational attainment, intra-community-stupidity remains one of the biggest obstacles to Asian-American flourishing.

In an article published in an online mag called XOJane, agent provocateur hopeful and latest outspoken useful idiot, Jennifer An, wrote a flighty confession on how her racism determines her choices in the world of dating and love. In short, she relates how she simply not only doesn't date Asian men, but will only date white men, and all because she is a racist. Better still, not only is she a racist, she's happy to be that way, so there! Unfortunately for An, being so casual about anti-Asian racism is a big no-no in America's "pretend it doesn't exist" consciousness. The negative reactions to her article from non-Asians, in particular, highlights the degree to which An, and other Asian women like her, over-estimate the value of their perennially childish contributions to the society they hope to ingratiate themselves into.

Despite this, it has to be acknowledged that the issue of race has many facets and nuances. So while it is true, in my opinion, that social and cultural conditioning create a default mainstream position that is hostile and suspicious of Asians, I also maintain that there are some who might be willing to look beyond the the pervasive anti-Asian attitudes, recognize it for what it is, and reject it. This is only one part of a larger race dialogue within American society that seems to be trying to negotiate the meaning of the American identity and how the multi-racial and multi-ethnic character of 21st Century America has or will alter that identity. In this light, this might be why An's piece (and its back-pedaling follow-up) elicited negative reactions from so many non-Asians. The nature of the opinions of An (and many other Asian women) opt to drag the conceptualization of this complex dialogue down to a high-school level and trivialize a subject which is a major issue for many people - of every race - and who are genuinely working to find resolution.

In other words, An's post is stupid and just as I alluded to here, the trend of young, well-educated, career-oriented, Asian-American women, who view their dating choices as some kind of grandiose activism and inflate its social, cultural, and political relevance is actually exposing itself as the work of attention-seekers who have no substantial insight to offer the race question - or even the interracial relationship question. No wonder white-male-run-mainstream-media loves to give these girls a platform to express their pointless opinions - it diverts the attention away from meaningful dialogue that recognizes the unfairly maintained power share that white males enjoy. Nice one.

Even though I'm disinterested in the combative character of the typical dialogue of Asian-American out-marriage and dating rates, there are aspects to the subject that are pertinent to the Asian-American experience. The first point of relevance is that Asian "IR" rates are often put forward as an indicator of decreasing anti-Asian racism. As I wrote here even academic studies cannot hide the fact that interracial marriage indicates an uneven softening of anti-Asian attitudes along gender lines with seemingly more willingness to integrate Asian women than men. Clearly, in the case of Asian-Americans, interracial relationships are a poor indicator of a general decrease in racism towards Asians. In the unintentional manner of an idiot savant, An's piece actually shows this to be true with some Asian women adopting - rather than changing - negative attitudes towards Asians as part of the integration process.

The second point of relevance is that interracial relationships between Asian women and white men have become (because of, and evidenced by, articles like An's) the central theme of the Asian-American dialogue - it even occupies the central theme of many (possibly most) mainstream depictions of Asian-Americans. What this means is that the predominant Asian-American story has become a story of white men and their Asian partners - diminishing or excluding all other narratives in the process. This is something verging on a moral issue since issues such as endemic racially biased physical and psychological abuse of Asian children in America's schools receives considerably less media attention than the problem requires even as the frequency of media coverage of Asian women's dating choices increases.

The third point is that the many articles written by Asian women on the subject display a remarkable childish self-absorption that is embarrassing at best and just plain creepy at worst. This phenomenon is bad for Asian people in general but it is especially dis-empowering for Asian women. One of the justifications for racist thinking in America and Europe's history has been that people of colour are childlike in their emotions and their intellectual capacity. Thus, because people of colour are unable to manage their own affairs it justified colonization, stealing of land and resources, and worst of all it justified slavery and indentured servitude and ultimately the second-class citizen status of non-white peoples - even in their own countries. Asian women who through this kind of flighty affect, and dizzy thinking, are simply prolonging the demeaning role outlined for them by white chauvinism. And these girls don't even have the excuse of being poorly educated.

Perhaps even more interestingly is that for many Asian-American women, like An, it seems that dating white men informs a significant aspect of their identities without which their sense of "American-ness" might be diminished. Furthermore, the basis for their sense of belonging in mainstream American culture hinges largely on their relationship to white men. This means that for some Asian-Americans (and it is not only the women), being American means absorption into white culture and unconscientious adoption of it sensibilities without questioning or challenging any prejudices that may underlie it. It also means that for some Asian-Americans what they have to say is meaningless without a white presence in the narrative.

Of course, it comes down to a conflict between the historical perspectives that inform cultural endeavour. Since historical experience forms the basis for culture, the fact that Asian and Asian-American history is written and owned by Western perspectives that are fundamentally hostile and disdainful of Asia (and often driven by racial chauvinism), any Asian-American culture is suppressed almost by definition because the history that should give rise to it is skewed. To express an accurate Asian perspective will necessarily be a source of conflict which is why is easier to adopt mainstream prejudices at the expense of an original or oppositional perspective.

This is the underlying reality of articles like An's. Instead of rising to the challenge of thinking for oneself, the authors choose a parasitic approach that is neither original, nor insightful, but instead upholds the status-quo of prejudicial thinking.

http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/asian-woman-dating-asian-men-jenny-an

A Lesser Racism?

Choosing Your Poison.

I came across an article on a website called "Jade Luck Club" written by a Chinese-American woman named Ying Ma. Ma has written a book called "Chinese Girl In The Ghetto" (which I haven't read), in which she describes her experiences growing up as an immigrant in the pre-dominantly black neighbourhood of Oakland, California. In the book Ma describes how she and other Asians were (and are) targeted for racially motivated violence and harassment by some members of the black community, and how this often violent anti-Asian racism seems almost universally present where Asian and black minorities find themselves living in close proximity to each other in America's inner-cities. Ma is also an economist and runs a blog (here) in which she writes on the ideologies behind the economic systems of China and the US as well as expounding further on black/Asian racial disharmony and racism.

Although I find plenty of points on her website where I disagree with her - her overzealous (and apparently xenophobic) anti-China commentary, and her economic and social conservatism, - her article on Jade Luck is a straight-forward account of what seems to be an increasingly pervasive phenomenon of black on Asian violence, as well as honestly highlighting the apparent evasion and indifference from Asian-American activists and community leaders when it comes to speaking out about this problem. It is this aspect of the issue - the lack of  an assertive Asian-American voice in addressing the problem - that I will focus on because of the many things it reveals about the experience of being Asian in America.

To begin, here are some excerpts describing Ma's experiences and accounts of African-American anti-Asian racism......

At age ten, I immigrated from China to Oakland , California , a city filled with crime, poverty, and racial tension. In elementary school, I didn’t wear name-brand clothing or speak English. My name soon became “Ching Chong,” “Chinagirl,” and “Chow Mein.” Other children laughed at my language, my culture, my ethnicity, and my race. ......... 

........But even when I sat in the front, fire crackers, paper balls, small rocks, and profanity were thrown at me and the other “stupid Chinamen.” The label “Chinamen” was dished out indiscriminately to Vietnamese, Koreans, and other Asians...... 

.......My English was by now more fluent than that of those who insulted me, but most of the time I still said nothing to avoid being beaten up. In addition to everything else thrown at me, a few times a week I was the target of sexual remarks vulgar enough to make Howard Stern blush. When I did respond to the insults, I immediately faced physical threats or attacks....... 

........The racial harassment wasn’t limited to bus rides. It surfaced in my high school cafeteria, where a middle-aged Chinese vendor who spoke broken English was told by rowdy students each day at lunch time to “Hurry up, you dumb Ching!” On the sidewalks, black teenagers and adults would creep up behind 80-year-old Asians and frighten them with sing-song nonsense: “Yee-ya, Ching-chong, ah-ee, un-yahhh!” At markets and in the streets of poor black neighborhoods, Asians would be told, “Why the hell don’t you just go back to where you came from!”....... 

......In poor neighborhoods across this country Asians endure daily racial hatred just as I did. Because of their language deficiencies, their small size, their fear of violent confrontations, they endure in silence.......

Harrowing, yet experiences of this kind have come to almost define the character of black/Asian relations in recent years, with stories of anti-Asian violence against children and adults alike becoming an ever more frequent phenomenon. The accepted (and acceptable) narratives - as Ma notes - cite economic disparities as the motivation for the violence, yet as Ma points out.....

In any case, the economic disparities rationale falls apart in the many instances where racism flourishes in the absence of class differences. At San Francisco’s Hunters Point public housing complex, for instance, low-income Southeast Asian residents, who are in the minority, have consistently encountered racial harassment from their black neighbors. Racial slurs, physical threats, violence, and destruction of property have festered for years. Philip Nguyen of the Southeast Asian Community Center, who has worked on the case for years, notes that there are no economic differences between the Asian and black families in the complex. The Asians, he says, are very quiet and have made every effort to befriend the black residents, yet serious friction has persisted for ten years. 

Even worse (and this is an argument put forward by many Asians themselves) is the accusation that Asians are racist and therefore bring the prejudice and racial violence upon themselves. I have to give kudos to Ma for having the courage to write on this subject when so many of us in the Asian-American community simply avoid the issue altogether or deflect legitimate dialogue on the subject by making Asians responsible for anti-Asian prejudice. 

What I think Ma misses is the larger context of anti-Asian racism in the US (and the western world in general)  within which black on Asian violence thrives. In fact, looking at some of the content of Ma's blog I would say that  she has actually followed the lead of those Asian activists whom she criticizes by downplaying (or not even mentioning) the anti-Asian attitudes that pervade mainstream American culture and society. So although Ma should be praised for speaking out about the reality of the black/Asian conflict, the failure to place black anti-Asian prejudice in its proper social context dilutes her effectiveness.

There is no difference between an American politician (blue or red, and most usually white) goading American society into boycotting the products of an Asian economy by stoking xenophobic attitudes that create resentment and hostility for political gain, and an on-the-make black community leader goading a black community to boycott the local Asian-owned 711 for the same reason - all based on largely unfounded and never proven claims that Asians (both in the US and in Asia) are somehow cheating Americans out of their economic prosperity, or exploiting Americans in some way, or simply taking wealth that rightfully belongs to Americans. Likewise, there is no difference between a popular and well-loved American celeb pulling his or her eyes into slits and ching-chonging their heart away, and an African-American doing the same to an Asian on the school bus, Asian restaurant, or on the street. 

Furthermore, it is almost impossible not to consider a likely connection between America's acceptance and depiction of casual violence towards Asians (men in particular) in the media and the increasingly casual and seeming normalization of anti-Asian violence in society. This cultural depiction of gratuitous violence against Asians is typically sadistic in nature, and is portrayed as the almost preferred mode of dealing with conflict with Asian people. Sometimes - as was the case in Men In Black III which re-enacted and made the racial murder of Vincent Chin into a cartoon to be enjoyed by America's children- the sadistic violence is presented as something that is funny and comical. Yet, always this violence is shown to be something that is deserved and therefore justified - just like in American society in general and mirrored in black on Asian violence in particular - anti-Asian prejudice is somehow legitimized by the assertion that it is various qualities in the Asian character itself that causes the violence against them.

What is even more perplexing is that Ma herself engages in demonization of China and Chinese people and this is where she shoots herself in the foot and defeats her own crusade against anti-Asian violence in the black community. A peculiar feature of anti-Asian prejudice is that it is heavily driven by a "bleedover" of resentment stemming from the combative and xenophobic political or economic nature of America's foreign policy agenda with various Asian economic powers. By making such simplistic, jingoistic, and inflammatory, observations on China and its people, Ma mimics those who propagate and legitimize that aspect of American culture that demonizes Asians and leads to casual prejudice (and violence) towards them. 

The screaming irony is deafening. Ma criticizes Asian activists for their reticence on (and blindness to) black on Asian violence - and rightfully so! - yet she is guilty of blinding herself to the larger picture of white America's incessant cultural expressions of xenophobia that legitimizes and normalizes the very casual anti-Asian violence that exists in black America. Anti-Asian racism in the black community is simply a subset of the general culture of anti-Asian prejudice that characterizes America's attitudes towards Asia and its peoples.   American culture models behaviour towards Asians that makes mockery and harassment the cultural norm - why should we expect African-Americans to have different values than the general culture? It makes no sense to complain about the black racism coming from the back of the bus, but ignore the white racists who are seemingly free to broadcast their racial harassment into your living room on a regular basis.

Now one might argue that we don't see white people going around violently attacking Asians for no reason (I don't necessarily believe this is true) and thus American culture plays no role in how people behave towards Asians. But this is where the unique experiences that divide the races plays a role in how America's culturally promoted anti-Asian racism manifests in society. If you are live in an environment that is violent, hopeless, and offers you little opportunity, then your anti-Asian racism will manifest as violence. If you have the privileges of opportunity that being white offers then your anti-Asian racism might be likely to manifest non-violently - but it does manifest. The racism of the tenured college professor who limits Asian enrollment because he doesn't like Asians causes as much damage as a black thug in the hood.

This doesn't justify black on Asian violence by citing poverty as a cause, it simply means that because American culture nurtures and promotes a culture in which demeaning behaviours and ways of conceiving of Asians through mockery, celeb harassment through the mass media, and ubiquitous fantasies of sadistic violence in film and television, society sees this as the acceptable mode of interaction. This is why there is little outcry against anti-Asian racism from mainstream America - it is simply considered normal to mock, harass, and, if necessary (or desired), violently attack Asian people. Clearly, there is no way that black on Asian racism can be divorced from the phenomenon of mainstream American anti-Asian prejudice and addressing one without acknowledging the other is a self-defeating exercise.

What all of this highlights is the lack of an autonomous Asian-American narrative or point of view that stands separate from the black minority narrative of social oppression, as well as separate from the white narrative of  opportunity and privilege. The truth is, that the Asian experience has and does traverse both these narratives in a way that makes it impossible to make sweeping generalizations about Asian-Americans and their experience. As illustrated by Ma in her essays and her own experiences of dealing with apathetic and seemingly indifferent Asian "leaders", Asians seem to polarize between the black and white extremes and take sides accordingly - victims of black racism seek white allies, victims of white racism seek black allies. In either case (and as followed by Ma), the price is that each side downplays the anti-Asian racism of the ally with whom they have chosen to align. This approach offers refuge - somewhat - but cannot possibly address the underlying issues that lead to anti-Asian prejudice.

Choosing between two different types of racism is not really a choice but it is a feature of the Asian-American struggle against prejudice that we have to seemingly accept racism in one form or another because we have not successfully forged an all important "third option" that recognizes the specific narratives of anti-Asianism as a unique historical phenomenon that lies at the root of much of the inequalities and conflicts we see not only in the US but across the world. It is fundamentally the same as a choice between poisons.

Black racism can only disappear simultaneously as white racism - we can't pretend that because white anti-Asian racism isn't violent (is that even true?) that it is less damaging - the framework of anti-Asian racism as it manifests in the US is a construction of white power without which black racism could not propagate. Overall, Ma must be praised for her willingness to speak out on a subject that many Asian-Americans find taboo - black on Asian violence - but at the same time her seeming blindness to ingrained white cultural anti-Asian prejudice contributes little to a meaningful solution to the problem.

Some Olympic Musings

Asian Men Walking Tall.

Although often billed as a gathering of the world's athletes coming together to compete in the name of goodwill and international understanding, the Olympics are just as often a proxy for nations to vent their political frustrations on one another through winning on the field of sport. In some ways and to some minds, winning at competition reflects the superiority of a political, social, or even moral, system of a given country. With this in mind I fully expected these London Olympics to provide us with some tense competition and commentary that reflected the present-day economic and political reality of our times. I wasn't disappointed.

Unsurprisingly, the nail-biting anxiety (and the accompanying xenophobic hostility) felt in the West about China's economic rise and its increasing influence in the developing world has been reflected in reactions to China's Olympic successes. Various outraged (and unfounded) insinuations of doping made against victorious Chinese competitors were a simple reflection of Western society's resentful attitudes towards Asians - it is a given that any success or excellence has to be the result of some kind of cheating or underhandedness. Even worse is the fact that stereotypically weak Asians are proving to be just as physically capable as their non-Asian competitors. It is said that when the human mind is presented with evidence that contradicts what it has believed for its entire existence, it will respond rage against the new information and attempt to find any ad-hoc rationalization (regardless of how irrational or unreasonable it may be) to will enable it to maintain its false belief against all the evidence - then the mind will resent you for making it see a truth it didn't want to see.

This is what has been so clearly displayed at London 2012 - stereotypes about Asians have crumbled in plain sight of everyone and the resulting outrage and resentment in some quarters indicates the degree to which the Western mind that has created a xenophobic fantasy about Asian inferiority that it is unwilling to let go of.

The most charming thing about the Chinese athletes is that they seem oblivious to this negative racialization of their success as they speed past their competitors. They simply don't know that their ethnicity is supposed to be an obstacle to athletic excellence. One way that I have noticed this is in the swagger of the Chinese men's gymnastics team.....

 

These guys range in height from between 5'3 to 5'6, but they don't seem to have heard that being short and Asian means that they aren't masculine. Their confidence and self-assurance was so jarring because American culture insists that Asian men have no reason to possess these qualities of confidence and self-assurance. Of course, the reason that they may seem so confident is that they haven't been raised in a culture that mocks their masculinity and racializes their achievements and potential - the world has been presented to them in a way that it might not have been presented to Asian men raised in the US, a world in which their race need not influence their opportunities, ambitions, or what is expected of them. The Japanese men's gymnastics team has also performed extremely well, taking the silver in the team event - even though they could have done without the Boy Band feminine hairstyles....



Having said that, the guy on the right is 18-year-old Ryohei Kato whose looks have apparently caught the attention of thousands of Chinese female fans who have overcome decades of mutual Sino-Japanese distrust to register their lust for him. Women like pretty boys sometimes!

In other good news for Asian men - and for Asian soccer fans - Japan and South Korea have both reached the semi-finals of Olympic soccer tournament. Japan will play Mexico, and Korea will play Brazil in the next round. Although not considered anywhere as important as the World Cup - mainly because most of the players making the teams must be under 23 - the Olympic soccer tournament is still a good indication of a country's pool of talent. Japan have played some really nice football, whilst S. Korea apparently outperformed and outplayed their more highly-regarded British opponents. It is also interesting to note the reaction of a Swiss player to discovering that Asians aren't racially weaker after his side was beaten by the Koreans. People don't like having their strongly held beliefs challenged.

On a final note, it has been interesting to note the success of China's female athletes. For a culture that gave us footbinding - a practice that was ended decades ago, but for which China is still being irrationally castigated - and is held by many as a hell on earth for women, the Chinese seem to hold women's athletics in high esteem, and also seem to be heavily invested in promoting sporting excellence for their women athletes. In this regard, it might even be suggested that Chinese women have greater opportunities in sport participation and success than their Western counterparts. Who knows, maybe China isn't still culturally stuck in the 9th Century like many commentators would have us believe.

Hollywood's Anti-Asian Tourette's

Hitting Chinese Is Fun.
 
I came across this article just today from the ever-Sino-xenophobic British news site, The Daily Mail, in which we learn that China is censoring around 15 minute long scene from the movie, Men In Black III. Funnily enough, I just saw this movie this past weekend and was in the process of writing a post about this very scene! Apparently, China's censors have taken exception to the scene for seemingly vastly different reasons than I have - that is if you choose to believe the spin from an explicitly hostile-to-East-Asians publication.

In the offending scene the two heroes - Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones - enter a typically Hollywood hate-inspired version of a Chinese restaurant (complete with disgusting hygiene, disgusting food sources, and dirty Chinese employees) and proceed to interrogate the restaurant's owner, who, it turns out happens to be an actual slimy alien, as opposed to an actual slimy Chinaman. Either way, he is a filthy and disgusting alien possessing none of the common values of decency, hygiene, and courage, that America holds dear. In fact, he possesses the same characteristics that America most often attributes to Asian people (especially men), so, even though he is an alien in disguise as an Asian, he actually possesses the disgusting qualities that Hollywood also insists Asians possess.

Almost as an inevitable consequence of this self-evident lack of humanity the Chinese, alien, Chinese Alien is violently interrogated by Tommy Lee Jones during which he is repeatedly hit about the head with an object and ridiculed, with Will Smith in the background making light of the whole mindless and casually violent episode with his cheerful quippiness. In the ensuing fight all of the "Chinese" employees turn out to be aliens and suffer an epic ass-whipping - one of whom is brutally beaten with a pan until he falls to ground dead, the side of his head caved in.

Of course, there is a kind of absurd violence that is characteristic of the whole Men In Black franchise - the fight scenes are filled with aliens who explode into a green goo or whose deaths are cartoonishly gruesome - but you won't find many (if any at all) with the sadistic brutality exhibited in the restaurant scene. American culture has a perverse love for this type of explicit depiction of cold, frenzied violence against Asian men and it may be the most common manner in which Asian men are represented in Americas's media. In fact, as this fight scene from the 1950's movie, The Manchurian Candidate, the depiction of sadistic violence against Asian men has been popular for decades.........

That scene was one of the first instances where I had seen any kind of depiction of an Asian man and the experience opened my eyes - especially that maniacal sadism at the end in which the Asian man lies defeated at Sinatra's feet receiving his brutal comeuppance for not knowing his place. What I came to realize is that America, as expressed through its culture, views itself as being locked in some kind of heroic conflict with Asia in which any and all means of violence are justified. This is as true now as it was in the 1950's, and has been true ever since the first Western warships sailed into Asian ports to claim Asian territories for themselves.

It should come as no surprise that the Asian-American experience in the 21st Century is often characterized by frenzied violence arising seemingly out of nowhere and manifesting as random acts of sadistic rage, yet paradoxically - and chillingly - there is a casualness about anti-Asian violence that is empowered by widespread social indifference. These types of depictions document, propagate, and perhaps even create, America's cultural  acceptance and maybe even desire for violence against Asian people.

In fact, I would suggest that this attitude is so ingrained in Americas's consciousness that it has become integral to the American identity, so much so that these American expressions of "two minutes hate" have a "Tourettes" quality about them. This example from the Men In Black is a clear case of this - the whole scene would have worked just as well without the sadistic violence, which seems to manifest out of nowhere, for no reason pertinent to the plot, and for no other reason than to express sadistic violence towards Asians yet occurring almost reflexively.

Of course, none of this would seem relevant if it weren't for the fact that violence towards Asians seems to be a normalized and an accepted mode of interaction for mainstream Americans with its East Asian minority. Racially biased bullying and violence towards Asian children in America's schools is extremely common and often goes unaddressed by school authorities. Mirroring widespread movie depictions of comically casual, sadistic, violence, some Asian kids are beaten for the fun of it. Then there's the hilarious practice of throwing old Asian people onto train tracks. Of course, there is the racially inflected harassment and  violence towards Asian merchants both in the inner cities and the suburbs as well as escalating degrees of harassment in the workplace. Everywhere you look the violence and harassment of Asian people is characterized by its casualness and often sheer sadistic enjoyment in its perpetration.

At this point a causative relationship between casual violence against Asians in the media and real life hasn't been determined (but who is investigating?), but there's little doubt that the absence of mainstream opposition suggests that America is comfortable, or even enjoys, the fantasy of inflicting sadistic violence on Asian men. Consider, for example, if the characters at the receiving end of this violence in the Men In Black movie had been African-American - my guess is that it wouldn't have made it passed the editing room.

A Perfect Crime.......

The L.A Riots.

It's hard to believe that twenty years have passed since the Los Angeles riots erupted into the most violent urban disturbance in recent history. Although the US has seen many riots in its cities over the years, the LA riots were somewhat unique because the racial antagonism went beyond the traditional white/black hostility and brought to light racist attitudes between ethnic minorities.

Of course, although it was the acquittal of the policemen who participated in the beating of Rodney King that sparked the rampage, in the ensuing days it was the tension and hostility between the African-American and immigrant Korean community that became the focus of the media's commentary and attention. During the unrest, Korean businesses were targeted by the mob who first looted and then set fire to them.

Naturally, the disturbance was turned into a major television event by a media who, with a good degree of cynicism, chose to spin the riot like an old-time movie in which the various parties involved were characterized as good-guys and victims (the rioters), bad-guys (the Koreans), and the well-meaning but helpless (the police). Its fair to say that fair and unbiased reporting seemed to go out the window - particularly in their coverage of the reaction of some Korean shop-owners.

As you may discern from this report from 1992 - which to me is a good example of the uncompromising and reproachful character of the media's attitude towards the Koreans - the fact that these shop-keepers were defending themselves and their property elicited much sickening condemnation from many self-righteous observers whose own lives and livelihoods were not under threat, but who seemed to insist on a saintly martyr approach to racially motivated mob violence by those who were targeted.

What is most striking to me is how, both then and now, the racist targeting of the Koreans by the mob has been either ignored, denied, or justified as an understandable act by a frustrated minority. Even coverage of the riots in Europe, where I was living at the time, sought to villify the Korean immigrants and characterize the violence being committed against them as somehow deserved.

Of course, in truth, the 1992 riots came at a time when anti-Asian hostility in America was particularly prevalent. The 1970's and 80's had seen some of the most overt and blatant anti-Asian rhetoric in politics and mainstream American culture. The 1970's and 80's had been a time of anxiety for the American economy because of stiff competition in the manufacturing sector from several East Asian countries. Resentment caused by the perception that these Asian competitors were taking American jobs was compounded by xenophobic attitudes that these nations were being diabolically underhanded or unfair in the way that they were developing their economies.

Consequently, American attitudes at the time reflected this hostility. The period was was full of anti-Asian political rhetoric, calls for boycotts, and retaliatory measures (often martial in nature) against Asians supposedly "cheating" their way to economic power. Culturally, the Asian bad guy became a staple for movies throughout the era and a general hostility towards Asian people was pervasive (in fact this is largely still true). This was the backdrop to the racist murder of Vincent Chin in 1982. Chin was bludgeoned to death by two very angry and unemployed white men, because they apparently blamed their unemployment on Asians and wanted to vent their anger through violent murder.

In a strange way, the targeting of Korean immigrants during the LA riots is fundamentally a crime of similar character as the murder of Chin, the only difference being that the Koreans were able to defend themselves more effectively - if this had not been the case my guess is that dozens of Koreans would have been killed. In both cases, widespread cultural xenophobia and hostility towards Asians that had been nurtured in the media, society, and politically, served to normalize the resentment and irrational anger that drove the mob violence. In the aftermath, the anti-Asian racism that made violent anger inevitable also served as a justification for the violence - after all, the Asians are sneakily taking jobs and money out of American communities.

And this is how it was possible to commit the perfect crime. Fully televised, and in full view of the entire world, a racially motivated pogrom that would have made the Nazis proud was carried out against a Korean immigrant community with the full perverse approval of the watching media and a resentful society seemingly rabid about the prospect of hitting Asians where it hurts. In some ways, in the pogrom of 1992, Korean immigrants became the focus for the simmering rage of an economically affronted America. Thus, the hate crime committed against Korean immigrants - and the general anti-Asian racism that enabled it - was marginalized from the story. Instead of becoming a means to highlight pervasive anti-Asian prejudice, the riots highlighted America's tolerance and full acceptance of it and made certain that this aspect of the story would not become part of the accepted history.

Like a perfect crime in an Agatha Christie novel in which a crime of murder becomes hidden within a crime of theft, the story of racist victimization of Korean immigrants was buried (and remains largely buried) and given lesser significance than the stories of the mob who committed it. America's anti-Asian racism ensures that empathy towards their experience will be rejected and their desperate (and brave) acts of self-defence - made necessary by police indifference - will continue to be irrationally and self-righteously condemned.

There were two perpetrators in the pogrom against Korean immigrants - the mob but also (and perhaps even more significantly) the general cultural racism that first enabled it, then provided the means to justify and downplay the racist crime that it was, and finally re-wrote history to exclude this aspect of the story from the accepted accounts.

"Asian Men Are Sexist - Fancy A Shag?"

Asian Sexism And The White Men Who Love It...

I came across this interesting blogpost recently, it was written by a white (American, I think) woman living and working in South Korea, and gives a brief commentary on sexism in Korea as compared to that in the U.SA. Two points stand out for me; the first is that the writer is challenging accusations of sexism brought by white male ex-pats in Korea, the second is that hardly anyone ever acknowledges challenges the idea that Asia is irredeemably sexist.

According to the blog post.....

.....sexism is an issue that comes up a lot when foreigners complain about Korea and so blogging about it is always relevant, I think........Let me be clear: I think a lot of aspects of Korean culture are sexist. What gets left out of the discussion (usually populated by white American males) is that America is sexist, too........That's how you use feminism to justify racism........So, if you are a Western guy blogging about how Korea is soooo sexist and how they could really learn a lesson from Western culture, kindly shut the fuck up.

My guess is that this faux rage about sexist Korea helps some of these white dudes to get some easy play - that's irony! And, evidently, an effective ploy. Also, it is nice to finally see someone who isn't an Asian man acknowledging that the sexism in Asia is often used to justify racist attitudes.

As an Asian man who has been raised in the West, I am accustomed to seeing, reading, and hearing, countless testimonies of how Asian men have and do make the lives of Asian women unbearably miserable. Such is the power of this narrative that it has become the story that underlies just about any account of Asian history, or the Asian-American experience. Naturally, according to this narrative, the remedy for this state of affairs comes in the form of an enlightened white man serving as the metaphor for the benevolent goodness of, well, white men. For instance, in American culture, it is almost impossible to find an Asian story without it somehow, some way,  involving a white man - often the white man provides the comfort from the misery inflicted by the Asian man, as well as offering the path to liberation for Asian women.

So strong (and obscenely commercially successful) is this narrative that even Asian-Americans themselves - of both sexes - eagerly contribute their own tweaked versions for mass-absorption. Consequently, this ontology describing the Asian-American inter-gender narrative as the Asian man's repressive bestiality is so well accepted as truth that it has become an integral part of mainstream America's cultural conception of Asian men.  Hence, western culture (and, therefore, the western man) is the best source of emancipation for the foot-and-mouth-bound Asian woman. Asians themselves share great responsibility for promoting this false notion of the sexist-free West.

It is sad that commercial gain drives so many Asian-Americans in creative fields to choose to pursue this avenue of expression that enables racist and sexist attitudes to proliferate. The biggest loser must be the cause of Asian feminism itself since this type of conditioning can only empower young Asian girls to replace one form of sexism for another, yet doesn't provide them with the skills or insight to counter, or even recognize, the racially inflected sexism that they must surely experience in western societies.

Someone Get's It!

Stephen Chan Telling It Like It Is.

I came across this fascinating debate on the subject of the China's investments in Africa. As you might notice the side opposed to Chinese investment employs mainly shrill, generalizations that are little more than xenophobic fear-mongering. In this video, some Chinese dude named Stephen Chan exposes, in the most eloquent way, the blatant racist attitudes towards both Africans and Chinese that underlies opposition to Chinese investment.



You should also check out Chan's website - he appears to be something of a Renaissance Man; writer, skilled martial artist, world traveler, philanthropist, intellectual, husband, government advisor, and the list goes on. Here's his website......http://www.stephen-chan.com/index.html. Sounds like a good role-model!

Also, check out what this lady has to say about the realities of Chinese investment in Africa.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHEpsXmmD48&feature=BFa&list=SPE7865CD7C141D230&lf=list_related

I'll Eat Any Bitch!

A Dog Dinner.

Asians eat dogs, or rather, in some Asian cultures dogs are included in the pantheon of acceptable consumable animal meats. Some Asian cultures apparently abhor eating dogs - the Japanese (I believe) find the practice rather disagreeable, as do some Islamicized Asians, whilst others are pretty unapologetic about it. Somewhat less known, is the fact that opposition to dog-eating exists within those cultures that practice it. In fact, some nations that are recriminated for their chow-munching habits - such as the Phillipines - have legislation outlawing the convention.

Western revulsion for the practice is well documented and as always it is the western perspective that receives the most consideration and thus defines the practice as both disgusting and immoral. Of course, in an objective sense, eating dogs is no more or less repulsive or immoral than eating chickens or cows. Granted there is the very real issue of cruelty, but if the practice was legislated to ensure humane treatment for the animal then I fail to see how there are any objective reasons for people - any people - to feel shame about eating dogs.

At the root of the fuss over dog-eating, is a very real clash of values stemming from differing cultural norms and attitudes ultimately deriving from colonialist notions. The "issue" over dog-eating boils down to a single factor; western (mostly white) people think it's disgusting. This, of course, is just an opinion mainly from emotion, but white privilege is able to transform this mere opinion into a worldview that seems to serve as a foundation that informs the western mind about the character of Asian people. Even without notions of cruelty, it is somehow implied that eating dogs reflects a bestial quality inherent in the character of Asiatic peoples.

As a person who thinks that dogs are adorable enough to eat, I obviously share the cultural proclivity that sees dog-munching as undesirable. But for some reason I lack the arrogance to believe that I have the right to shame or pressure other people to think likewise. After my last pet dog died several years ago, I decided that I couldn't justify keeping another, because to do so would make me a hypocrite - particularly because so many people associate keeping a dog as a pet with humane-ness.

Many people in America treat their dogs better than they treat minorities, their employees, homeless people, or even their own elderly parents. For me, keeping a dog as a pet became morally unjustifiable precisely because I couldn't see how it is humane to have a clean, well-fed, well-housed dog, whilst everyday I would pass several smelly, homeless and hungry people on the street. I started to wonder why instead of trying to create cultural shifts amongst Asian societies that would see them motivated to not eat dogs, Americans didn't try harder to convince their own people to freely use whatever money they would spend on their pet dogs to better address the homelessness problem. A well-fed dog takes food out of the mouths of the homeless and diverts resources that might be better spent. Some dogs even have better health care than many Americans.

Amongst the many ironies of this situation is that dogs evolved to roam in packs in the wild outdoors, hunting or scavenging for food, and not to be kept as ornaments for the pleasure of man. Keeping dogs separated from their own kind, and indoors where they are unable to exercise their natural instincts, could itself be argued to be somewhat cruel. As it stands, American society is more comfortable with the reality that homeless people roam the outdoors, sometimes in packs, and scavenge for whatever scraps they can find amongst the shit and bloodied tampons of the humane, whilst society's pet dogs leave their warm, dry homes and bound along defacating and urinating under the canopy of overpasses and hidden corners of the buildings where the sleeping places of the homeless might be found.

The moralistic brow-beating of Asian cultures for their dog-eating habits, is simply one of many ways that western culture gets to feel smug about its own superiority. Yet, I see nothing inherently more moral or even more desirable about a society that has an entire industry devoted to elevating the comfort of dogs (who incidentally are happy to eat cat's shit!) over that of homeless and poor people. Now, it could be argued that Asians aren't particularly nice to their homeless masses, but -if true, and I'm not saying it is - this just means we are more honest. We're not the ones with pretentions of humane superiority!

Stupid Racists?

The Elephant In the Room....

The 8Asians blog recently published a post in which Eugene Lui, the founder of a political group called the Asian Conservatives, gave an interview in which he talks about how Asian-Americans might fit into the landscape of American politics via the ideology of conservatism. Also discussed was how he, as a conservative, conceives of the issue anti-Asian racism in the media, as well the reasons for the apparent dearth of Asian-American conservative bloggers. Here is what he has to say about perceived anti-Asian racism in the media......

Well, I think “racist” has been used so much in the mainstream media these days that the word has lost its meaning........The Civil Rights Movement — that was about racism. Somebody calling me names and making fun of my slanted eyes — that’s just an immature moron stating the obvious..............................Okay, I’m going to say it: Dear libs, stop being so sensitive to every. little. thing. If a popular sitcom doesn’t have an Asian actor, that doesn’t mean the viewers don’t know that Asians exist. If an Asian actor portrays a nerdy student in a Hollywood movie, that doesn’t mean everybody thinks we’re nerds (do you think blacks — ahem, African Americans — are nerds after falling in love with the Steve Urkel character?). It’d be an issue if Asian American citizens were denied voting rights. It’d be an issue if Asian Americans were being persecuted as a follower of Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Falun Gong, or some other religion. It’d be an issue an Asian Americans were being taxed differently than other ethnic groups. It’d be an issue if Asian American parents were prohibited from making babies. .......Remember: Life, Liberty, pursuit of Happiness.

I was quite surprised by this response for a number of reasons. The idea that media portrayals can challenge traditional family values is a prominent notion in conservative thinking. It is a conservative view that media depictions of glamourized casual sex, casual drug use, and homosexuality, can and do have negative affects on the thinking, moral decision making, as well as the behaviour, of America's youth in particular and society in general. Even foul language and explicit language in songs might be viewed as a potential threat to the morality of the traditional family.

The gist of such thinking is that culture influences (or even directs) public opinion and behaviour, and normalizes activities that run counter to traditional values of moral thinking. Thus, such unwholesome cultural endeavour is seen to play a major role in how individuals within a society views themselves, what they consider appropriate morally and behaviourally, and ultimately shifts the compass away from traditional concepts of moral and upstanding behaviour. Additionally, culture is also a reflection of what is actually socially acceptable - popular cultural depictions merely mirror the realities of social interactions. So whilst popular culture can direct opinion and behaviour, it also reflects the reality of how people within the society may actually be behaving and thinking, as well as identifies the ways in which individuals view themselves in relation to others within the society.

If the conservatives are correct that permissiveness in the discourse of popular culture has the capacity to alter individuals' social behaviour, then it must logically follow that negative depictions of Asian people have the capacity to promote and normalize negative behaviour towards Asians. Many people seem to believe that pornography and some depictions of casual sex in film and television can lead people to have sexist attitudes towards women which might ultimately contribute to an environment conducive to harassment, rape, or even violence. It should follow that any media representation of any given group that promotes a demeaning one-sided view can lead to negative social attitudes and behaviours. In order to deny that demeaning and negative stereotyping of Asians contributes to negative behaviours towards that group one must necessarily question or deny that media pornography or casual sex, violence, foul-language, and casual depictions of drug use, can negatively impact moral decision making, or normalize such activities. This runs counter to the claims of conservative moralism.

It is impossible to deny that most representations of Asian people in the American media are one-sided and tend to be derogatory, xenophobically histrionic, and generally dissmissive of any value in Asian people or contemptuous of any contribution of their cultures to the richness of the human experience. Whether it be movie characters, politicians looking for cheap votes, or celebrities trying to be controversial (paradoxically, without stepping on any important toes!), the general tone is the same - Asians are demeaned or dehumanized, ridiculed or mocked, villified or dismissed. Given this general conservative belief that the media and influential personalities can impact people's ability to make responsible moral decisions, and thus affect behaviour, it seems naive (or maybe dishonest in some cases) to offhandedly dismiss derogatory images of Asians.

Of course, one could read this post and think to oneself; "So what?!" Aren't Asian-Americans outperforming everyone in universities, the workplace, income levels and so on and so forth? Isn't it trite to complain about the media when Asians are so successful in America? Surely, our success is an indication that the negative attitudes and racism propagated by American culture do not affect our ability to prosper? Whilst I cannot disagree that some segments of the Asian-American community do succeed, such an attitude reflects a lack of nuanced thinking common amongst Asian-Americans that, I believe, is almost as big a detriment to our prosperity as are racist attitudes.

History shows that when a society promotes negative attitudes and stereotypes about an unpopular group, then the result is usually unpleasant - even in situations where the target group has acheived a degree of integration. The Jews of Nazi germany provide the best example of this. In the years before the Nazis came to power, Germans of Jewish descent were amongst the most prosperous and highly educated people within German society. Yet, the Nazis were able to exploit negative attitudes, behaviours, and stereotypes that had persisted about the Jews to bring about the holocaust. Smilarly, the South Indians of Uganda were a prosperous minority, but persistent hostility towards them led to their eventual expulsion.

Then there are the Americans of Japanese descent who, prior to Pearl Harbour, had become a somewhat integral part of west coast life. Their slow but definite progress towards prosperity was rudely interrupted by an internment process caused by paranoid fear, and enabled by the persistence of racial hostility and resentments. The point should be clear. Any minority against whom negative attitudes and resentments are harboured, are likely to fall victim to some kind of backlash. Unfortunately for us Asian-Americans, we live in a society whose culture actively, cynically, and deliberately, promotes harassment of Asian people.

In short, it's difficult to see how one can hold to the belief that the media and it's personalities can influence the moral compass and behaviour of American society, whilst downplaying the idea that media mockery, and misrepresentation of Asians can lead to negative outcomes for Asian people. For this reason, conservatives of all people should understand this better than anyone else - Asian conservatives even more so. It is simply avoidance to characterize as "stupid' or "immature", the casual and routine racism enabled by the cultural normalization of anti-Asian harassment. In fact, the culture of harassment of Asians is so integral to the American psyche, that it is even normal for America's children to routinely express hostile attitudes towards Asians. It may be true that many Asian-Americans have achieved prosperity, but given the fact that attitudes of resentment and distrust are spitefully promoted in American culture, any prosperity seems built on a weak foundation.