So I I was having an IM conversation with my brother, Ben, the other day. This is the brother who took over the dead Pan-Asian Society, raised it to active participation in the DTF and campus life, and renamed it the Asian Student Association.
I was complaining to him about how Asians don't fit well into the "minority" group. (Though he did remind me that our family doesn't even fit very well under the umbrella of "Filipino")
cazilla11: I want to fight for equality, but the truth is, I've faced so little discrimination in my life.
Vizilla: There are lots of ways to fight inequality, you don't have to pretend to be part of the discriminated group.
cazilla11: But if you don't, people turn around and say, "Well, what do you have to worry about?"
Vizilla: Exactly.
You have to realize it's a mostly thankless thing.
You have to do it because you think it's worth helping people, because most people are pretty rotten, worthless, pieces of shit even if they are discriminated against.
So you just have to believe in justice, or some crap like that.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Take a Bite Out of THIS Twinkie
So, I received an invitation to the "New England Afro Latino Student Alliance." Their mission statement reads:
"NEALSA is a regional support group for minority boarding school students in the New England area that addresses common issues within each individual school. The mission of this group is to help minority students happily exist at their various schools."
When are people going to start understanding that minority is not always equal to "black or latino"?
Now I know the critics are going to say, "Do you really think discrimination against Asians is equivalent to that experienced by black of hispanic people?"
And I will readily admit: no. But that doesn't mean we don't face it as well.
We're lucky: the majority of Asian immigrants come from educated backgrounds, and if you'd really like to hold on to stereotypes, parents drive their children like workhorses when it comes to school.
So America turns us into the "model minority."
"Asians work hard, and they hold the top percentiles in standardized tests. We can always rely on the stereotypical awkward-but-hardworking ching-chong lacky in the office. They made it as immigrants, they started off at the bottom. So why can't you?"
Let's add on top of that the tightly-knit communities formed (especially by Koreans) that refuse to mix with other minorities.
So of course, none of the other minorities consider us "people of color." Of course they laugh in your face if you say, "Well I've been discriminated against too."
Well you now what?
Being a "model minority" doesn't erase the word "minority". It doesn't change the fact that we're in the great big "not white" crowd.
In addition, being Filipino is something different from being the stereotypical Chinese of Korean.
We're sort of....the "mutts" of Asia, if you will.
Culturally and ethnically, we're a medley of colors. Ranging from pale white Europeans, "yellow"-skinned Chinese, and dark-brown Malays. Culturally, I can feel at home with a Chinese family, or a Mexican family.
The majority of Filipinos who come to US are dark-brown skinned, dark-haired, and their eyes aren't quite "chinky" enough to instantly label them as Asian. Back home in LA, the culturally ignorant might as easily label them as Mexican.
And it has happened many times, of course. My own brother, medium-toned but wearing a summer tan, once walked by one of those anti-(illegal) immigration rallies, where a group of white supremacists proudly wave the American flag. A middle-aged white woman yelled in his face, "Go back to your country, Jose!"
When my parents arrived at Connecticut in 1986, people still called my father a "brown monkey" even though his skin was no darker than the beach-bunny tan that so many girls at Deerfield aspire to.
And if you'd like more evidence that we are not on the same level as white Americans, realize how rare it is to see an Asian girl with a white guy unless she debases herself as some cute, little exotic sex kitten.
Now it's a shame that at Deerfield, the Asian Students Association only showed its face at a few of the many Martin Luther King Jr. Day planning committee meetings. It's too bad that it takes a DTF meeting involving Dr. Curtis and Mr. Emerson to warrant their attendance.
Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh:
The leaders of the ASA, like most of the Asian students at Deerfield, are international students.
It might seem like the same thing to you: they all have chinky eyes, and they all care about grades excessively.
But believe me: growing up Asian is a very different thing from being Asian-American.
Whereas those international students have lived in in entirely Asian communities, first-generation children of immigrants go through something else.
Life is one great balancing act, caught between "the homeland" and America. Growing up, my father always said to my brothers, "Do you really think you're an American? Ha! Look in the mirror."
Integrate too much, and next thing you know, you're a Twinkie: yellow on the outside and white on the inside. But even if you were a Twinkie at home, you were still "ching-chong" to the kids at school, the math and science whiz.
"NEALSA is a regional support group for minority boarding school students in the New England area that addresses common issues within each individual school. The mission of this group is to help minority students happily exist at their various schools."
When are people going to start understanding that minority is not always equal to "black or latino"?
Now I know the critics are going to say, "Do you really think discrimination against Asians is equivalent to that experienced by black of hispanic people?"
And I will readily admit: no. But that doesn't mean we don't face it as well.
We're lucky: the majority of Asian immigrants come from educated backgrounds, and if you'd really like to hold on to stereotypes, parents drive their children like workhorses when it comes to school.
So America turns us into the "model minority."
"Asians work hard, and they hold the top percentiles in standardized tests. We can always rely on the stereotypical awkward-but-hardworking ching-chong lacky in the office. They made it as immigrants, they started off at the bottom. So why can't you?"
Let's add on top of that the tightly-knit communities formed (especially by Koreans) that refuse to mix with other minorities.
So of course, none of the other minorities consider us "people of color." Of course they laugh in your face if you say, "Well I've been discriminated against too."
Well you now what?
Being a "model minority" doesn't erase the word "minority". It doesn't change the fact that we're in the great big "not white" crowd.
In addition, being Filipino is something different from being the stereotypical Chinese of Korean.
We're sort of....the "mutts" of Asia, if you will.
Culturally and ethnically, we're a medley of colors. Ranging from pale white Europeans, "yellow"-skinned Chinese, and dark-brown Malays. Culturally, I can feel at home with a Chinese family, or a Mexican family.
The majority of Filipinos who come to US are dark-brown skinned, dark-haired, and their eyes aren't quite "chinky" enough to instantly label them as Asian. Back home in LA, the culturally ignorant might as easily label them as Mexican.
And it has happened many times, of course. My own brother, medium-toned but wearing a summer tan, once walked by one of those anti-(illegal) immigration rallies, where a group of white supremacists proudly wave the American flag. A middle-aged white woman yelled in his face, "Go back to your country, Jose!"
When my parents arrived at Connecticut in 1986, people still called my father a "brown monkey" even though his skin was no darker than the beach-bunny tan that so many girls at Deerfield aspire to.
And if you'd like more evidence that we are not on the same level as white Americans, realize how rare it is to see an Asian girl with a white guy unless she debases herself as some cute, little exotic sex kitten.
Now it's a shame that at Deerfield, the Asian Students Association only showed its face at a few of the many Martin Luther King Jr. Day planning committee meetings. It's too bad that it takes a DTF meeting involving Dr. Curtis and Mr. Emerson to warrant their attendance.
Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh:
The leaders of the ASA, like most of the Asian students at Deerfield, are international students.
It might seem like the same thing to you: they all have chinky eyes, and they all care about grades excessively.
But believe me: growing up Asian is a very different thing from being Asian-American.
Whereas those international students have lived in in entirely Asian communities, first-generation children of immigrants go through something else.
Life is one great balancing act, caught between "the homeland" and America. Growing up, my father always said to my brothers, "Do you really think you're an American? Ha! Look in the mirror."
Integrate too much, and next thing you know, you're a Twinkie: yellow on the outside and white on the inside. But even if you were a Twinkie at home, you were still "ching-chong" to the kids at school, the math and science whiz.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Wintry Mix
Play it again, DJ.
You know, that sweet cacophony
Half-rain, Half-ice
Ragged cross breed
Encasing trees in that
sleek silver sheathe.
Here comes the sun
To set off the sounds
Of a rainforest track.
But it's blaring,
Form the naked boughs
And barren ground.
The unceasing
plink, plink, patter
Of frozen fingers melting
Like slender widows
.weeping.
Unto pock-marked snow.
_________________________________
Ah yes. Another poem written when snow was oh-so-magical, when I'd stop in the middle of a path to stare at snowflakes in my hand, and frozen puddles were anomalies, not the nuisance they are today, when I'm dreaming of spring.
You know, that sweet cacophony
Half-rain, Half-ice
Ragged cross breed
Encasing trees in that
sleek silver sheathe.
Here comes the sun
To set off the sounds
Of a rainforest track.
But it's blaring,
Form the naked boughs
And barren ground.
The unceasing
plink, plink, patter
Of frozen fingers melting
Like slender widows
.weeping.
Unto pock-marked snow.
_________________________________
Ah yes. Another poem written when snow was oh-so-magical, when I'd stop in the middle of a path to stare at snowflakes in my hand, and frozen puddles were anomalies, not the nuisance they are today, when I'm dreaming of spring.
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