i feel myself mentally and emotionally collapsing. flashbacks of time during junior year when all i could think of was how to run away. the past couple of days, this emotion has returned again. i think one direct reason is that i havent been meditating, havent found a religious community.
the asian-american question is raging in my mind again. i still cannot come to terms fully with the impulse of my friends to say that the self-defense of koreatown against the black rioters is reactionary. i have the impulse of saying that in the US there really doesnt seem to exist any room for Asians. i know this isn’t true instinctively, that this is a reactionary conclusion to come to…but i just can’t help but feel detest for this place, and what i have a hunch in describing as US chauvinism — the immigrant store owners should put themselves at the mercy of white-black tensions and politics.
I think in the 60s, internationalism was articulated on the lines of solidarity across nations. Asian Ams in the US identified w the struggles of the Chinese and Vietnamese resistance against US imperialism. This gave Asians in the US a sense of being part of an “Asian peoples” that could work with the Black power movement, the Pan-African movement, to fight against white supremacy here in the US. Today, that sentiment doesnt seem to exist. Asians must cast themselves either as White or Black. White= assimilationist, and Black=anti-white supremacist. In the end it really bottles down to this choice: Are Asians White or Black? And if they choose the Black side, I would say then that Asians are more like Afro-Asians in this country. They arent Asians anymore. They arent part of the Pacific Rim anymore. They arent a distinct identity on their own, but their identity must be read through an “Blackenized” Asian-ness.
This is a very profound, and difficult, realization for me to come to. I am a very proud Asian. One could say its elements of Asian chauvinism, but I call it a good sense of self-respect. I know my people contributed to history, to civilization, we have a proud legacy. Its hard for me to accept that apparently Asian culture does not have any independent validity on its own. I feel that Asian culture has to be subordinate to Black American culture before it has any value. In this another form of cultural imposition too?
I suppose one could argue that every culture is borne out of intermixing, out of diffusion, and interaction w new ideas, new cultures. It is a very static notion of a culture, to say that it should not change, should not interact…I need to have a broader conception of what Asian means…It IS integration. It’s not separatist, or separate but equal kind of mentality. We need to move forward..we need to be able to have the self-confidence to say that culture and tradition evolve in creative, new ways…
The LA Riots question, regarding the self defense of the Korean community was hard for me to address also because of the implications on Southeast Asian Chinese identity. Its a time for me to put the money where my mouth is. In many situations, Chinese immigrants have been seen to be economic predators – in Indonesia, in Vietnam, Thailand…would the race riots against Chinese communities in these countries also be justified as a class issue? Its hard to me to accept that the Malaysian Chinese community in 1969 should just have sat around and let nationalist minded Malays loot and burn..or Indonesian Chinese in 1995, or Vietnamese Chinese in 1970s…
Are Chinese people always Parasites wherever they go..? And in the US, do they replicate those dynamics too…?
ARE ASIANS SO UNREDEEMABLE?!?!?!
…..
as i am feeling these frustrations and contradictions so intensely, i am really trying to curb the impulse to arrive at reactionary conclusions: of like, i need to go back to Asia…where Asians arent a minority, where Asian culture is normative and class conflicts dont reek of racist undertones…as w the LA riots v/v Koreatown….I have such an impulse to do that but its yet also uncannily similar to Zionist justifications of Israel…the need for Jews persecuted all o the world to have a homeland, and having that romanticist reason be the basis for politics, often conservative ones that contradict class struggle and anti-racism. I am wary of that impulse in myself too…I can understand why it can be so attractive when your community has been under attack, has been racially profiled. Do the Right Thing. I know what it is but I can’t bring myself to do it..
Where is the Buddhist in me?
as I tackle w these questions, i am feeling a lot of confusion. Matt presented a v articulate commentary on Sman’s piece for the Asian journal while I didnt have much to say. Usually it would have been fine and I would have chalked it up to me simply not having prepared and reviewed his piece…but today I suddenly felt like the Asian version of the Invisible Man…You know, the Token Asian person who needs to be on the editorial board even when she doesnt know jack shit, and is damn stupid, but is needed for her face. I want to tell Matt H sometimes that he needs to shut up and hold off on his brilliant comments so that I can grow, even if the theory isnt as refined and perfect, and take billion times longer than it would be if he did it…
This is a confusing time, a complicated issue.
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