For Asians who hate other Asians
(The following post is an assignment for my class, Imagining Asian Americans, but that doesn’t make it any less real talk.)
I used to be one of you. Yeah, two years ago I would have skipped out of this post like you’re tempted to right now just after reading the title.
What happened?
Early on, I was taught without words that if I didn’t think I was a minority maybe they won’t treat me like one. That I was better than those minorities. So like a camel sticking its head into the sand, I disavowed that I was different and loudly questioned why we spent so much time studying race at schools. I argued against affirmative action because I thought we should be postracial and colorblind. Whenever minority issues came up, the knee-jerk reaction was to shrug it off, to prove that I wasn’t like those militant-for-no-reason minorities.
In this way I isolated myself from the other minorities. And then I left the Asian-Americans behind, too. I traded in my model minority mandates for new-to-me white rebellion (as much as I could, anyway) because sex, drugs, and rock and roll were way more appealing than the only agenda pop culture ever laid out for me. I avoided other Asians like the plague, worried that people would think I was one of those Asians. I fought to be included in that edge case of “cool” Asians as if my lives depended on it–my throat hoarse from proving that I can be just as loud as anyone else, my purity score plundered by (occasionally reckless) experimentation. Fighting the expectations with increasing intensity, I broke free of the gravitational pulls of the communities I grew up with–to find myself eating moon cakes alone.
It wasn’t really until I went to Jamaica that I started questioning all of this. First, I learned that despite answering “China” for the last 12 years when asked where I came from, I actually identified more as an American at a third point because it explained much more about who I was. Second, I learned that I was pretty happy with my perch outside of the racial binary in Jamaica, which made me realize that I was on a similar perch here. Finally, despite the racialized (racist?) catcalls (“Pssssst Ms. Chin” and “Chinese Japanese!”) that hurricaned on me, I found myself happier about being Asian than I had been in a long time. Why? Because despite the frequent politically-incorrect statement from black Jamaicans, Asians in Jamaica didn’t seem as constrained as Asian-Americans in terms of expectations and stereotypes. They were accepted as just as Jamaican as everyone else. All of a sudden, I felt freed from having to constantly distancing myself from The Stereotype (because it didn’t exist on the island!), an activity that occupied far more of my time and energy than I realized. And then I started wondering why things were so different in America.
Filed under: Reflection | 7 Comments
Tags: asian american studies, asian-american
Coincidental Beauty
Screenshot of "archives" sidebar
How nice that the names of the months, when arranged chronologically, happen to form this gorgeous curve! Thanks, serendipity, for making me smile at 4 AM.
Filed under: Discoveries | 3 Comments
Pretty Maps for Post-Exams
I came across this stuff while digging around the internet for my thesis (yes, I think of thesis research as a hunting-and-gathering kind of process. Yes, there is definitely war paint involved), and was reminded of Ethan Zuckerman’s idea for an atlas of globalization. Thanks, Ethan, for pointing out the beauty and value of these maps!
1891: Telegraph Lines
2004: Major undersea Internet cables
I love how, because of the different legends used in the two maps, it looks like the connections around Africa/the Middle East/”the third world” have remained unchanged while infrastructure has gotten fatter and fatter inna di north. Inaccurate in actuality, but basically what’s happened proportionally anyway.
Idle, unscientific, unresearched musings, but that’s what you get at the end of the semester. Now all that’s standing in between me and “Senior Spring” is this thesis!
Filed under: Discoveries, Thesis | 2 Comments
How Many Monks…?
Uncovered this gem of a story just now while learning all about telegraphs for Chapter 2 of my thesis…
“Jean-Antoine Nollet, the Abbot of the Grand Convent of the Carthusians in Paris decided to test his theory that electricity traveled far and fast. He did the natural thing on a fine spring day in 1746, sending 200 of his monks out in a line 1 mile long. Between each pair of monks was a 25-foot iron wire. Once the reverend fathers were properly aligned, Nollet hooked up a battery to the end of the line and noted with satisfaction that all the monks started swearing, contorting, or otherwise reacting simultaneously to the shock. A successful experiment: an electrical signal can travel a mile and it does so quickly. Of course, this is the kind of experiment you can only run once as your monks may prove less-than-cooperative the second time around. So, in another demonstration he discharged a Leyden jar in front of King Louis XV at Versailles by sending current through a chain of 180 Royal Guards. The King was both impressed and amused as the soldiers all jumped simultaneously when the circuit was completed.” (from this biography)
On a scale of 1 to 10, how totally unkosher is that by modern-day scientific standards??! Still, I have so much admiration for people who come up with ideas and just go for it. I suppose these people are called scientists and engineers, and I suppose that is why I like studying them so much.
A good thing to remember, 46 days before my thesis is due.
Let's Gooooo!
Filed under: Discoveries | Leave a Comment
Tags: electricity, experiments, History of Science, Jean-Antoine Nollet, Leyden jars, monks, science
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