I found this blog on The Economist’s website recently and felt virtually REQUIRED to comment on it. The article is basically a reflection on a July 25 demonstration in Guangdong Province, China, during which over a thousand protestors (mostly young people) stood in opposition to a local politician’s recommendation to replace the Cantonese evening news with a Mandarin broadcast. The government has suspiciously censored most coverage of the event from internet forums and other forms of online media, indicating that the battle of the dialects has become what the New York Times calls “a politically delicate matter.”
by joanna kwong
In America, I am still an outsider. My exterior gives me away—the black hair, the olive skin, the almond-shaped eyes. Though I was born here and act American a girl as any, I am only what I appear.
But for years, I claimed—clung to, even—my American identity. I didn’t want to be the girl, 5’4″ with the thick, toneless American accent, the one relatives called gwai lo (鬼佬)—ghost person, white. I didn’t want to be the lost cause, the girl too American, a walking symbolic gesture of the Chinese culture that was to be lost with my generation.
I couldn’t handle that burden.
I remembered all too well that, in my sixth grade year, I bunked with three Chinese girls for science camp in the Santa Cruz mountains. We ate spaghetti in the mess hall, and while brushing our teeth and peering into the bathroom mirror to check our complexion, I confessed that I had never once used chopsticks; the fork was my tool of choice. Through the mirror, I saw their faces contort and I witnessed my own alienation. “How can you be so white-washed?” said one girl with braided pigtails and wire-framed glasses.
Later that year, my mom handed me a book, with a missing cover and pages bound together by a single strip of yellow masking tape: a Cantonese how-to book in blocky serif. For weeks, I pored over characters, repeated phrases in my room, said I would be Chinese, wished so hard I once yelled at parents over dinner, “Why couldn’t you teach me?” Faces blank, they stared across the dinner table, before speaking softly, “But then you wouldn’t know English so well.” I folded my arms, and sunk into my seat.
Somehow, I got to thinking that if I couldn’t be Asian, I could be American. I could be what I had always been—the girl in jeans and a tshirt, listening to rock music, dreaming of someday being a songwriter or an author.
I thought these things, but when I was 21 and in Nevada, seven white boys looking no older than 12 biked by and yelled, “Asian domination! Go back to your own country!” There were folks around—all white, all older—but no one looked, didn’t even say a thing. I’ve never even been across the Pacific Ocean.
Still, there were other reminders indicating that I did not conform to the traditional expectations of America—in magazine racks at the supermarket or while window-shopping in the City. A flip through a beauty magazine usually meant more years spent toying with makeup, uninstructed. Shopping at large retailers only meant needing to special order my petite-sized jeans.
I once knew a girl who went card shopping for Father’s Day, looking specifically for a card featuring an Asian father. Having finally found a greeting card with an Asian baby on the cover, she flipped it open to find the words, “Congratulations on your adoption.”
Thus, still stands the definition of American that is left unspoken: one converging on white America. We amend the term to Asian American, Latin American, African American, because American alone doesn’t seem to describe our plight. It seems to betray the struggles before us and omit the fact that America isn’t always made for us minorities, that we still are very much confined by the skin from which we have tried to escape through our American identity. The American nationality is not the great melting pot of lore, but rather one that hinges on the idea that the “true American” belongs to the white culture of which we, the minorities, are not necessarily a part.
Though there is no easy answer to who is American and who isn’t, I suggest that these are titles—Asian American, Latin American, African American—that are more than categories for surveys or censuses. They are forms of identification and, as such, comprise a person at some basic level. The term Asian American specifically is necessary because it represents who we are, and to call us only American or only Asian is to deny the complications that make these demarcations difficult.
* * *
On a slightly related note, happy 4th! Check out that Jump 5 performance—it’s a favorite of mine. Makes you feel patriotic, doesn’t it?
God Bless the USA
lawl, so let’s break this down. I think there’s something really sad to be said when policymakers in charge of education start not making much sense when it comes to justifying their “reforms.” Take the sad case of Arizona, which has probably proven to be the most favored state of people of color this month (heart heart <3). As you may already know (and you should have, because it was already discussed on this blog), Arizona Governor Jan Brewer recently signed a bill into law banning ethnic studies, particularly targeting high school classes on African American, Native American, and Mexican American history. In the words of the law itself, this statute denies funding to any programs that ”promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
I’m an Asian American studies major. I’ve taken a few ethnic studies classes. I intend to take a few more ethnic studies classes. None of those that I’ve ever taken “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals” (to be fair, that last one was part of the original intent of ethnic studies, but I argue that that’s not necessarily how it’s been implemented). This legislation, I’m sure, was designed to make public school curricula more “inclusive” for all. That said, if someone were to propose a bill denying funding to any classes that unfairly aggrandize the U.S. government, whitewash the histories of a particular race or class of people, or marginalize students that are not of a particular (i.e. white) ethnic group, I wonder how well the Arizona legislature would receive it.
Now, to make things a bit more interesting, the Texas Board of Education has decided it wants to love people of color too (aren’t you feeling the love? ;D <3 <3) by authorizing blatantly biased new guidelines for the state curriculum. These reforms, eerily similar to the Orwellian education indoctrination tactics seen in fascist states, strike from school textbooks the mention of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Latino advocacy organizations LULAC and MALDEF, and promote American ideals as good for the rest of the world while arguing that the UN threatens freedom. They also drop Thomas Jefferson from a list of studied Enlightenment thinkers because he coined the term “separation of church and state,” which they claim was never intended by the Founding Fathers. The Board also apparently attempted to replace all mentions of the slave trade with the euphemism “Atlantic Triangle Trade,” but that was thankfully stopped.
Considering how ludicrous this all seems, I’m really tempted to think this is all one massive IRL trolling project. Then again, one of the virtues of ethnic studies (which I believe should be one of the primary objectives of education) is how it teaches its students to recognize bullshit when one sees it. These laws teach nothing but the continued subjugation of people of color by enforcing an epistemological hierarchy. Fuck Texas and Arizona. It’s really sad that the privilege of learning about one’s own history is limited to a select few. -_-
What the hell, Arizona?
First you pass a blatantly racist law that is reminiscent of Nazi Germany and now you pass a law banning Ethnic Studies in schools.
Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin. I feel like I shouldn’t even need to say this. I shouldn’t have to write this blog. I shouldn’t have to defend the value of Ethnic Studies in Arizona, this nation, this world.
I don’t understand how someone can deny the right of an individual to learn about his or her own history. I don’t understand how Arizona legislators can justify the censorship of people’s stories and experiences.
As a student of color, my history is excluded from the high school textbooks. My people’s contributions to this country are not acknowledged. If they are, their stories are merely footnotes in the hundreds of pages glorifying America.
Ethnic studies provides a space for students to learn about the marginalization of different groups within this country. It provides students with the opportunity to not only learn about their own history, but the history of their classmates as well. Ethnic Studies is about bridging cultural differences and creating understanding between different groups of people. It is about SOLIDARITY, not the resentment that Arizona Governor Brewer says that it promotes.
“Governor Brewer signed the bill because she believes, and the legislation states, that public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people,” spokesman Paul Senseman said on behalf of Gov. Brewer.(1)
What does high school U.S. history teach us, Governor Brewer?
When I took high school U.S. history, I definitely did not study about the contributions that Chinese immigrants made to this country. I did not learn about their contributions to the Transcontinental Railroad and to the building of the western frontier.
I would argue that high school U.S. history teaches students to resent other races or classes of people. Why? Because U.S. history teaches students that it is okay to marginalize different groups of people. It teaches them that it is okay to exclude people’s stories and experiences from the history books. It teaches them to devalue their own history and that of others.
Ethnic Studies was created out of a problem of marginalization and exclusion. It was created in response to the exclusion of people’s stories and experiences from the history books. If anything, Ethnic Studies builds solidarity while high school U.S. history promotes exclusion and marginalization.
This past year alone has proven the need for Ethnic Studies. The Compton Cookout at UCSD, the unrelated incidents of swastikas spray painted at both UC Davis and UC Berkeley…these incidents are reminders of why we need a space for dialogue and solidarity-building. We, as a BROKEN community and nation, NEED Ethnic Studies more than ever.
The year is 2010. Let’s not revert back to the racist regimes of Nazi Germany, Jim Crow, and the Apartheid in South Africa. Arizona may have taken a step back, but what about you? What will YOU do to reclaim YOUR world and make it the best it can be?
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/education/14arizona.html
This is a few days late, but it is with great regret that hardboiled wishes a fond farewell to Tam Tran and Cinthya Felix, two of the most vocal and prominent fighters for the passage of the DREAM Act. Tran and Felix were both undocumented immigrants and UCLA graduates pursuing advanced degrees at Ivy League schools. They were tragically killed last Saturday in a fatal car crash: http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/celebrating_dream_act_sheroes_tam_and_cinthya
The two gained prominence by actively defying myriad stereotypes about illegal immigrants. Aside from their tireless work for immigrant students’ rights, both activists boasted amazing stories. Felix, for instance, was the first undocumented student admitted to Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. Tran, who, significantly, was API, gained fame after testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law in 2007 in favor of the DREAM Act. The ICE retaliated by arresting her family.
I wrote for 13.2 about the plight of undocumented API students at Berkeley [http://hardboiled.berkeley.edu/archived-issues/issue-13-2/the-nebulous-masses-cal’s-invisible-apis/], and it’s always astounded me how little discussion occurs in our community about this issue. I’m also personally extremely inspired by Tran’s courage after her whole ordeal. The unfortunate loss of Tran and Felix seems like a sort of fateful slap in the face, considering the ridiculous legislative shitshow that is Arizona right now (and apparently Texas? wow.) Nonetheless, it is hopeful that their loss will spread their stories and make the issue of documentation more salient in the API community. RIP, Tam and Cinthya. Your work was not done in vain.
Also, for more information about the DREAM Act, click here!: http://www.dreamactivist.org/
Today is the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, an event that holds symbolic significance to Vietnamese around the world. That it is known colloquially as Ngày Giải phóng (Liberation Day) in Vietnam and Tháng Tư Đen (Black April) among the Vietnamese everywhere else is a bitter reminder of the saddest irony of modern Vietnamese history: that the romantic dream of liberation from the yolk of colonialism could instead lead to the irreparable rupture of the unity of the Vietnamese people. On this day, hundreds of thousands of families who dared to dream more about feeding their children than to revel in the deluded fantasies of powerful men they’d never met were forced to make a decision that would alter the life trajectories of millions of Vietnamese forever.
Should we risk it all — our lives, our livelihoods, our families, our villages — in order to find a better life in a foreign land where we can’t communicate with anyone other than the very people who were forced to make the same heart-wrenching decision? Millions did, and yet for thousands of these brave souls this dream was lost in the vastness of the sea or in the onerousness of labor camps. Both of my parents had to make this decision. My mother, in particular, pin-balled from island to island — alone — for years before landing in Philadelphia, where she had to wait three years before she could write a letter to her family to let them know that they could take her picture off of the bàn thờ, the family altar.
In nature, some seeds are designed to sprout after fire has incinerated all else. What commonly rises from the ashes of the barren landscape is a new, stronger grove of trees that grow up together, united to face the onslaught of the coming winter storms. The overseas Vietnamese community, in some ways, is the same way. United by the sorrowful memories of a common ordeal, our parents and friends “who left it all behind” have adjusted to this foreign environment have have come out stronger because of it.
I wrote this because I am in a reflective mood. I invite you all (not just Vietnamese-Americans) to commemorate this day by wearing some article of black clothing. I am also providing some links to allow you all to learn more about this day.
VSA is screening a documentary tonight called “Saigon, USA” and is holding a candlelight vigil at 7pm in 88 Dwinelle.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=116110461750531&index=1
Texas Tech University has a emotionally powerful online photo archive that deals with this day.
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/saigon/1975.htm
More photos:
http://www.vnafmamn.com/black_april.html
Linh Dinh, author, op-ed piece in the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/30dinh.html?scp=1&sq=Linh%20Dinh&st=cse
Phan Thanh Hao, poet, op-ed piece in the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/30hao.html
Nguyen Ngoc Linh op-ed piece in the Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/30/culture-clash-and-communication-failure/print/
San Jose Mercury: “After the Fall: Vietnamese Remember ‘Black April’ 35 years later
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_14979954?source=rss
Divestment.
It’s been a big word lately. Senate Bill 118, to take away UC funds from companies investing in weapons that contribute to war crimes in Palestine, was passed by the ASUC a month ago. The senators voted 16-4 in favor of passing the bill, only to be vetoed by President Will Smelko. Tonight the Senate met and listened to public comment after public comment to decide whether or not to overturn the veto.
I’m not here to lament the lack of sleep I got from staying for the entire 8.5 hour duration of the meeting (10:30 pm – 7 am). I’m not here to air my personal opinion about the bill itself or some of the speakers I heard. I’m not even here to write with frustrated resignation about the fact that after 8.5 hours, the motion to override the veto was tabled, in hopes of a compromise brought up in the last hour.
I’m here to call someone out. Her name starts with an M. Rhymes with inji. Will the real Minji Kim please stand up?
13 senators voted to override Smelko’s veto, but 14 were needed. Kim was the abstention that could have swung the vote the other way. She said [these are not direct quotes, as my memory is rather faulty after an all-nighter] the ASUC does not have the right to decide the course of human lives. She did not feel comfortable speaking for people whose lives might either be saved, eradicated, or displaced by her decision. In the last month since the bill was first put to a vote, Kim said she did not have enough knowledge to vote one way or the other.
There is humility. And then there is foolishness.
It is an abuse of power to abstain from voting when you assumed a political office claiming to represent your constituents. I am not asking you to stray from your conscience; I am asking how members of my ASUC can fail their responsibility. In the end, how is Kim any better an advocate than those who did not gain a seat in the Senate? By refraining from taking a political stand, no matter how hard the decision, Kim is betraying the trust of her voters to listen to them. She stated that of the numerous e-mails she received, not one of them told her to abstain. Perhaps those writers caught onto something she did not.
There is no room for apathy anymore. If you seek power and are privileged enough to vote on issues with global implications, there’s no reason to not use that power. I do not understand how abstaining from this bill was any higher a moral ground than those who voted for or against it. Through her silence, Kim, willingly or not, supports Smelko’s veto. She acknowledged that it might be viewed as a cop-out. Well, in colloquial terms, DUH. If you are too afraid of the backlash of your decision, just say so, and I’ll respect you for your honesty. As it is, I cannot respect a senator, irrespective of political party affiliation, who stands for nothing.
For the first time since being at Berkeley, I came to understand today how people can become so disenchanted that they start to withdraw and just not care. If Kim, as an elected representative of the student body, cannot use her office, she serves as a sorry model for years to come.
Justice doesn’t sleep. Apparently, neither does apathy.
For starters, Manilatown is a neighborhood next to Chinatown in the San Francisco area. Manilatown is also known as “Little Manila,” a place where many Filipino immigrants once settled in hopes of earning a higher economic income and making better lives for themselves.
On a quest to find Manilatown, I walked down Kearny Street and automatically recognized the International-Hotel – a monumental building of Manilatown and a living representation of Filipino history.
At the slight turn of a corner, I faced a street of spaghetti restaurants and other miscellaneous restaurants and businesses. An Italian flag hung and waved patriotically as I passed by.
Where was Manilatown? One moment, I stood in front of the I-Hotel, and the next moment I could hardly recognize where I was.
I asked local pedestrians who shrugged as they walked away, not bothering to give me a second chance. I asked a personnel working for the I-Hotel if she knew where Manilatown was. She sweetly and apologetically responded that she had no clue. Finally, I asked a mail woman whether she knew of Manilatown and how I could get there. The mail woman replied that she had “been here for a long while” and had never heard of an active Manilatown. “Just these two blocks were dedicated to Manilatown,” she stated.
Suddenly confused, I thought, was there no such thing as a Manilatown? But there had to be – there’s even a sign that hangs on the light pole stating “Historic Manilatown.”
Hesitant to believe the mail woman, I decided to ask others: two local police officers. One officer, who grew up in apartments across from the I-Hotel, reaffirmed that there was no such thing as an active Manilatown – there were no Filipino restaurants, businesses, etc. This same officer stated, “There ain’t nothing left of Manilatown but the I-Hotel, and even that has been rebuilt.”
After nearly getting lost, circling around Kearny Street looking for some big obvious sign that would point me towards Manilatown, and asking around, I finally realized I WAS standing in Manilatown!
I was so disappointed to realize that this Manilatown that I have heard and studied so much about was now contained in a mere two blocks. How can a place that has been and is so culturally and historically rich fail to be acknowledged? More attention definitely needs to be drawn to Manilatown in order to acknowledge the history and struggle of the individuals who fought for the resurrection of the I-Hotel as well as the Manilatown space. Manilatown must be explored by individuals of our generation, to devise a plan of possibly expanding it with more local restaurants, stores, cultural organizations, etc. If this interests you, I encourage you to discuss it with Ethnic Studies or Asian American Professors such as Harvey Dong.
