� Universal | Main | Cringely Gets Tribal �
October 14, 2003
Yellow Unity
I wonder if any of you would agree (and why) that it should be a priority of people of color to gang up on white supremacy. If part of the problem is that asians have in America is that being 'asian' submerges their identity / culture in debilitating ways that some collaborative expression under the rubric of 'PoC' is appropriate. If so how much?
It may be that the culture wars are over and multiculturalism has won, but it has won on white terms, ie 'diversity'. I for one prefer being a black unit than a 'diverse' unit, because I want folks to understand the positive and unique aspects of black culture and politics, not only for its effect on whitefolks but for its own intrinsic value and history. That the NAACP is not the focus of such PoC activity is a constant source of annoyance to me. Nevertheless, it's difficult to say how necessary such activism is.
We've all witnessed the model minority thing, and I've always presumed that 'asians' were simply incapable of raising a large enough voice to keep themselves from being used as a club over the heads of blacks and browns. Surely some fraction decided to go with the honorary whiteness, but did most? I doubt it. What did the white politics of Affirmative Action backlash interrupt in Chinese American affairs, or was it the biggest issue to date? Without some grasp of various asian political and cultural activities, its nearly impossible to disaggregate what they say about themselves from their portrayal by white partisans. As a parallel, now that Cruz Bustamante has failed to win in California, you'll hear no more about MEChA. But I for one, can't even identify a similar Japanese American group.
What I am coming to believe is that 'asians' are forced to be individuals and simply deal with assimilation on a family by family basis; that they are incapable and despair of defending their ways. This despair results in a greater insularity which hurts average and poor asians much harder than successful ones. So I percieve an invisible majority of asians which is neither assimilated nor truly able to resist assimilation, while a highly visible cherry picking minority of asians are assimilated and taking all the credit/blame for their race.
Posted by mbowen at October 14, 2003 02:21 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/869