This has been the 10th year of my column in AsianWeek, a fact that I am forever grateful to the late John Fang and his family.
You’d think after 10 years of going amok, the picture for Asian Americans would be far rosier, with my column topics indicating a broad acceptance and understanding of our group’s diverse cultures, with open lines of communication and an emerging sense of love and respect flowing all around us.
Okay, occasionally, I am deluded with an ideal sense of the world.
Still, wouldn’t you think we’d be inching ever closer to that ideal state? What with so many more Asian Americans in society, is it so outrageous to think we’d be a few millimeters further ahead in the evolution of American race history?
Even the most cynical would have to agree that our great society is capable of a few millimeters of change.
So why does 2005 turn out to be among the worst years for basic transgressions and misunderstandings by others of Asian Americans in general?
The things I’ve been amok about the last 10 years had a nice bull-market run in 2005.
From that tsunami song in New York, to that 49er video, to the recent video made by members of the San Francisco Police Department, Asian Americans were dissed with ease.
And don’t think that just because you define yourself by your individual Asian ethnicity that you are free from the broad brush of hate. Filipino, South Asian, it doesn’t matter. To the ignorant transgressor, we are all Chinese. It’s the one-stop shopping of Asian American stereotypes.
And how’s this for a new trend — there’s a growing tolerance of the intolerant — sthose who trade in the stereotypes.
In fact, the intolerant are practically a new protected minority.
After all, what’s a transgression? Not much when it’s defined by the transgressors, who are seen as merely exercising a little good-natured, immature fun.
The deejay behind that tsunami song was reinstated after a brief suspension. Her producer actually got a new job — in San Francisco. The 49ers still haven’t done enough to make up for that horrid video that mocked Chinese Americans. And the SFPD? The police are back on the job after a short suspension.
As a society, we seem to have gone away from recognizing the pain of those transgressed upon. Feeling any pain? Better not make it known. When you speak your pain, you’re suddenly called a politically correct whiner.
Witness how Mayor Gavin Newsom has been treated after he showed the appropriate outrage at the SFPD tape.
Even former Mayor Willie Brown, who should know better, questioned whether Newsom overreacted.
In the clips of Newsom I saw in the news, he was strong and firm.
Maybe next time he should go amok, and really get a rise out of Willie.
Let me say again, I’ve criticized Newsom in the past. But my respect and admiration for him grew after he acted quickly to the SFPD tape.
The general reaction to his reaction, however, is nothing less than shameful.
It shows a different kind of societal atmosphere, where racism is now considered just a joke, and those who are at the brunt of the joke considered lacking in humor.
Ha ha.
When people are so quick to excuse the most obvious slights, it shows how hard it is to expose those racist forms that are insidious, institutional, and therefore, invisible to people who see racism as a joke.
This is what marks 2005, a year where whatever triumphs Asian American individuals may have achieved, it all must be counterbalanced by an overall sense that Asian Americans as a whole are still dissed with great ease by the majority.
Why is it that no modern person dares test the humor of black Americans with a watermelon or fried chicken joke about blacks.
But Asian American stereotypes are still quite common. Why are we still subjected to all that “bucktoothed, accented, good at math, bad at driving, tai-chi moving, karate-kicking” nonsense. And all with that Asian-sounding music, single notes plucked, to accent the mockery.
Strike gong here.
That’s 2005 for you.
Still, there were hopeful signs. For Asian American jocks in particular, it was a great year. There’s the ascendancy of Michelle Wie, who fights race, age and sex discrimination every time she swings a golf club.
There’s the World Little League champs from Pearl City, West Oahu. May that shining moment not be the last they experience in their lives.
This year also marks the passing of great civil rights icons: Fred Korematsu, the man who refused to give in to internment. Korematsu’s action was Rosa Parks-ian.
Ironically, we lost her, too, in 2005.
Is it coincidence that as civil rights pioneers fade away, the fight seems to have diminished as the targets become less obvious, more underground and easier to rationalize?
The year 2005 was the year of the transgressor. If we are to reverse and fight that trend, we must think of Fred and Rosa and not give up their fight.
It’s the spirit that will lift us in 2006, where we shall dare to go amok yet again.
Happy New Year to all.