model minority: Asian American Empowerment - In Our Own Language
Self-hatred is a complicated concept....or Inbonics, Pakinics, Japanics, whatever you call the idea, fact is it is stupid. Why is speaking proper English white? Why is it that you cannot assert your cultural identity without mandatory skewering of a good language? That aside, how are you going to decide on what language to get your street slang from? Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Urdu or one of the 14 official languages spoken in India? Why are all these so-called APAs "oriented" (according to them "oriental" is a slur, so obviously, I have to use forms of it) towards the "yellow" people? What about the brown ones? Aren't we Asians? We Indians already have "Hinglish", that is hard for any non-Indian, non-Hindi person to understand. Does that put us in a better position as minorities than other APAs who don't have a bastardized version of English to call their own? Posted by shanti at January 27, 2003 4:33 PM
Cowardly assimilation to white ideals is what immediately comes to mind. When we speak of Asian Americans abandoning their ethnicity, we tend to only consider complete cultural surrender to the white mainstream.
However, for many Asian Americans at Berkeley who posses a higher ethnic awareness, it's possible to go running to the other extreme. In a society ruled by white culture, it's tempting to latch on to African America as the only strong, identifiable alternative. But let's not fool ourselves. Jazz and rap are culturally ours as much as Bach and Brahms. James Baldwin speaks for Asian Americans as much as Shakespeare does. Taking African American culture as ours is a delusion and a violent misappropriation.
A community of color is an admirable long term long-term goal, but it is no excuse to be intentionally imitative and submissive.
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