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Asian American: We Aren’t All Chinese
A friend of mine calls with an odd request. “Do you have any clothes or something?” she asks. “You know, something to put on display?”
Happy Asian American Heritage Month. Show us your culture. And, by the way, do you have any coconut half-shell bikini tops?
My friend is desperately scrambling to assemble “Filipiniana,” stuff from the Philippines, or at this late hour, stuff from Filipino folks she knows for an exhibit at our local suburban library. In her mind, what could be more colorful for a display than some of that Filipino clothing we know from the Marcoses. You know, Imelda’s formal gown with the big butterfly shoulders. Or Ferdinand’s formal Barong Tagalog, the long sleeved see-through shirt that Filipino men wear to local beauty pageants.
“Don’t you have any of that stuff, Emil?” my friend asks.
I scrambled through my closet to find something that would be perfect. I had it in mind. My sister brought it back from the Philippines after a visit years ago. It’s a barong with embroidered fighting cocks straddling the side if the shirt at approximately the love handle position. I go through the hangers, but the straddling cocks cannot be found. Nor can my dress with the butterfly shoulders.
I offer my friend a double-edged Moro knife, a kris. It’s sort of like a glorified cultural envelope opener. But it is in fact, the traditional weapon used by amoks of a by-gone era. A kris is to an amok as a sword is to a samurai.
“No shirt, huh?” my friend says. I withdraw my kris offer, and send along a little water buffalo carved out of monkey-pod (the Philippines is #1 in monkey pod, podner). And I send her my book, which is Filipino and Asian American, and suitable for giving this Asian Pacific American Heritage season.
Once again, we come upon the season where we show our complete and total ignorance of each other.
It just shows that while we celebrate a kind of unity during May for the general public, Asian Pacific American heritage month is for us too.
Just who the hell are we?
And why do we come together but for the accident of biographical geography, or a similar eye-shape and skin color, or a variation of the eggroll in our family cuisine?
The answer to that usually comes when we are all lumped together by our detractors into one group in a kind of “negative unity.” Our commonalities are pointed out to us by the small-minded, who fail to see our differences and see us as all the same. Our existence is put at their convenience.
Sometimes we call these folks “racists.”
In an act of solidarity, we come together under an umbrella that is larger than one you’d find in a Mai-Tai. Or Singapore Sling. But relatively small. And made of material so paper thin. But when we look around us, we find we don’t know our umbrella-mates very well at all.
When we realize our own ignorance of each other, it’s sometimes easier to take the ignorance of others toward us.
The recently released survey done by Yankelovich Partners for the Committee of 100 is a good example of that.
The nationwide survey of 1,216 Americans showed that 25 percent of respondents had very negative attitudes toward Asian Americans and Chinese Americans.
It was uncanny. Ask anyone how they felt about Chinese Americans, whether they “always like to be at the head of things,” were “hard to get close to, make friends with,” were “overaggressive in the workplace,” or had “too much power in the business world,” roughly a quarter to a third said the negative stereotypes were probably true.
Thank goodness, they didn’t ask questions like, “slurps noodles loudly.” Or the infamous, “drives poorly in heavy traffic.”
On the subject of Asian Americans in general, the surveyors asked a random public if they’d be comfortable with an Asian American as president. Roughly 25 percent said they wouldn’t. You can name your kid Lincoln, just don’t expect him ever to get to the White House.
The surveyors also asked if people would feel comfortable if a family member married an Asian American. About 25 percent said no. They should check with their relatives. It may be too late.
Twenty-five percent seems to be the magic racist number in the country.
But what disturbed me the most about the survey is how it reveals one of the little discussed problems with being Asian American. In America, “Asian American = Chinese.”
Is there anything that could be further from the truth?
Even though I call myself Aspanic™, as that unique form of Asian Hispanic that is the Filipino, I add it to the lump of Asian Pacific Americans out there. We’re Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Bangladeshi, Burmese, Indonesian, Malayan, Okinawan, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Tongan, Tahitian, Northern Mariana Islander, Palauan, and Fijian. Not to mention Japanese, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, Hawaiian, Samoan, Guamanian, Chinese and Filipino (the last of which is the largest Asian American group in California, if not the United States).
We’re not all Chinese. But that’s the stereotype. It’s as ridiculous as putting a coolie hat on Imelda Marcos. It doesn’t go with the butterfly shoulders. We are different and we are one. The moral to our story? Unity counts, but ethnicity does matter. Especially when we come together in May. |
