From: sedayao@sousa.intel.com (Jeff Sedayao)
Subject: Re: What Separates Us?
Reply-To: sedayao@chopin.intel.com
Organization: Intel - Information Technologies
Distribution: soc
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 00:44:51 GMT

In article <SHAW.92Aug14015434@whopper.lcs.mit.edu>, shaw@whopper.lcs.mit.edu (Andy Shaw) writes:

[stuff about cultural and race divisions deleted]

>   c.  Are Indian-Americans Asian-Americans?  I think so, but why?

Yes.  Why?  Because they are from Asia.  "Asian-American" is such a
broad category.

Also, Indian-Americans have many of the same issues as other
Asian-American groups.  I am sure that Indian-American professionals hit
the glass ceiling like other groups.  They are victims of hate crimes.
Like some (but not all) Asian-American groups, I am sure that they have
issues dealing with immigration and assimilation.

> 3. "FOB"'s vs. "ABAA"'s -- Asian-Americans are relatively recent immigrants
> to the US.  The experiences, problems, and expectations of first generation
> Asian-Americans are quite different from nth generation Asian-Americans.
> 
> Often, this causes fights between first generation and nth generation
> Asian-Americans who feel that the other group is "selling out" the other.

These is really true.  Some Filipino gangs divide up along generational
lines.  I wonder if this is true for other Asian ethnic groups.

[more deleted]

> 4. Geography -- I love hearing about the perspectives from Hawaii and CA,
> where Asians have much more power than where I came from (Cleveland, OH)
> and where I live now (Boston, MA).  Clearly, our experiences are amazingly
> different.  I also like to hear about Texans and other sorts of experiences
> of AA's living in the South.  People who've lived in more than one area
> bring a great perspective to the issue.

This is very true.  I grew up in California and went to college on the 
East Coast.  Some of the other Asian Americans from California would
occasionally make snide comments about "East Coast Asian-Americans".
I just returned from vacation in Hawaii, and I had trouble understanding 
some of the Asian-Americans there because of their local dialect.

[stuff deleted]

> 6. Economic Status -- Not all Asian-Americans are well off.  I taught
> English to several recently immigrated Vietnamese refugees who were living
> on welfare last year.  What do they have in common with me, a PhD candidate
> at MIT?  (besides our take-home check, I mean.  just kidding.)
 
This is very true.  You should probably add this one to your list of
major divisions. 

A related topic is class/social divisions.  My godfather lives in
Norfolk, Virginia.  Norfolk has large Navy presence, and has a lot of
retired and active duty Filipinos (he is one of them).  Navy men and
nurses are the second wave of Filipinos entering the US.
One of the big conflicts in that Filipino community, he says, is 
between the Navy veterans and the professionals who make up much
of the third wave of Filipino immigrants.  I don't think the conflict is
all economic, because some of the veterans are as well off as some 
of the doctors.  

I find the above conflict interesting because my parents came as part of
the second wave.  I used to think that all Filipino-Americans were 
Navy families, because the families I knew then were all Navy families.
I remember meeting another second generation Filipino-american in
college.  She said to me, "Don't you get tired of people thinking your
father is a doctor?  My father is an architect!".  I was shocked at the
comment, because my father is a retired Navy veteran and fixes air
conditioners and refrigerators for a living.  I explained this to her,
and she said that she had heard of "those" kind of Filipinos.  I guess
my family is one of "those" kind of Filipinos, and it was apparent
that "those" kind of Filipino-Americans do not live in her neighborhood.

Another division is cultural/ethnic/linguistic divisions within an
individual Asian ethnic group.  Filipinos have over 100
organizations in the Bay Area dedicated to an area of the Philippines
where they are from.  People from the different regions of the
Philippines have different languages and customs and often think
of themselves as Cebuanos or Ilocanos rather than Filipinos.  In 
Hawaii, most Filipinos are Ilocano and seem rather militant about it.
My father says that it used to be that if you were a non-Ilocano 
Filipino, you were not welcome in Hawaii (by the Ilocano Filipinos
there).  I don't think that is true nowadays, but I am not sure.
I am sure that other Asian ethnic groups have internal divisions like
this.

> Naturally, all of these divisions have some sort of relationship with other
> divisions.  However, I think it would be a good exercise to deal with each
> in isolation, hammer it down, and try to understand it before dealing with
> interacting issues.

It's good to identify these divisions, but I don't think that they can
be totally isolated.  Take for example, the case of my brother.  He
worked as a design engineer in a large silicon valley firm.  Many
Filipinos would give him strange looks and he felt uncomfortable around
many of them.  There are many reasons for this, and they are hard to
separate.  First, he was a design engineer, and there were very few
Filipino engineers there.  Most of the Filipinos were technicians or
assembly workers.  Second, because he was a design engineer, there were
economic and social differences.  Finally, he is second generation and 
does not understand Tagalog at all.  All of these differences add up yet
are related.

I remember when I worked in a fab (a facility for making semiconductors).
There was an economic/racial hierarchy there.  Most of the
assembly workers and operators were Filipino or hispanic.  The
technicians were mainly Filipino or Vietnamese.  Engineers were
typically Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian or white.  Managers were usually
white.  I am pleased to note that much of the hierarchy has been broken
up and things are better integrated, but I am willing to bet that this 
sort of economic/racial hierarchy still exists in other companies.
ranking stills exists in places.

[rest deleted]

> -Andy

-- 
Jeff Sedayao
Intel Corporation
sedayao@chopin.intel.com
..!uunet!intelhf!chopin!sedayao
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american