From: rw@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Russil Wvong)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: FAQ
Date: 8 Jan 1993 15:52:18 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

Here's the latest version of the FAQ.  Thanks to Alan Hu, John Ho,
Wataru Ebihara, Vidhyanath Rao, and Arthur Hu for their comments.
(Even if I chose to ignore some of them. :-)

--
Frequently Asked Questions for soc.culture.asian.american


1.  What's an Asian-American?

An American of Asian ancestry (Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani,
Korean, Vietnamese, etc.).

Immigrants are "first-generation"; their children are "second-generation";
their grandchildren are "third-generation"; etc.

There's often a big cultural difference between the first generation
(who grew up overseas) and the second and later generations (who grew
up in America).  Sometimes "Asian-American" is used to refer only to
the second and later generations.

2.  What's the difference between Asian-Americans and other Americans?

As far as the second and later generations are concerned:  not much.
Public school and television between them do a very effective job of
assimilation.

Children of immigrants are often bilingual, using English at school and
their "ancestral" language at home, but this is not always the case:
many second-generation Asian-Americans can understand their ancestral
language, but not speak it.

Because of their appearance, Asian-Americans are often mistaken for
foreigners.  This tends to irritate second-generation Asian-Americans
especially.

Asian immigrants generally place high value on education, hard work,
family, and social status, and to some extent they pass these values
on to their children.

Asian-Americans often have relatives in Asia, and often have visited
Asia, but not always.

3.  How many Asian-Americans are there?

Asian-Americans make up about 3% of the American population.  Numbers
from the 1990 census (courtesy of John Ho):

    1,645,472       Chinese-American
    1,406,770       Filipino-American
      847,562       Japanese-American
      815,447       Indian-American
      798,849       Korean-American
      614,547       Vietnamese-American
      147,411       Cambodian-American
      149,014       Laotian-American
       90,082       Hmong-American
       91,275       Thai-American
    -------------------------------
    6,908,638       Asian-American

About 60% of Asian-Americans are foreign-born.

4.  Are Americans of partly Asian descent (e.g. one Asian parent, one
    non-Asian parent) considered Asian-Americans?

Depends.  Ohio State includes people of bi-racial descent in its definition
of "Asian American", and I imagine other universities and institutions
would also, but I don't think it's universal.  Also, I'm not sure all
Americans of partly Asian descent think of themselves as Asian-American;
it depends on the individual.

5.  What's the difference between "Asian" and "Asian-American"?

"Asian" refers to anyone of Asian ancestry.  "Asian-American" refers
to Americans of Asian ancestry.

6.  Does the concept of an "Asian-American community" make sense?

Maybe, maybe not.  It's true that different Asian-Americans may have
very different cultural backgrounds and experiences.  On the other hand,
all Asian-Americans have a common interest in improving harmony between
Asians and other ethnic groups and minimizing racial tension and violence
against Asians, if only because it's difficult for non-Asian Americans to
distinguish between some of the different Asian groups (e.g. Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese).

7.  What's the difference between "Oriental" and "Asian"?

"Oriental" is an older term, which some people feel has negative
connotations, but is still widely used.  As currently used, it does
not include South Asians (Indian, Pakistani).

8.  Is it "Asian-American" or "Asian American"?

"Asian-American" is still more commonly used, I think.  However, the
hyphen isn't needed ("Asian" is an adjective modifying "American"),
and more recent usage omits it.

9.  What does "Pacific Islander" mean?

Don't know.  "Asian or Pacific Islander" is sometimes used as a racial
classification, probably to include Hawaiians, Samoans, etc.

10.  What does calling someone a "banana" mean?

It means they're yellow on the outside and white on the inside (usually
applied to second- or later-generation Asian-Americans).  It's somewhat
derogatory.

Other labels:

"Twinkie" means the same, but has somewhat less negative connotations.

"ABC" stands for "American-born Chinese", i.e. second or later generation
Chinese-Americans.  Somewhat negative connotations.

"ABCD" stands for "American-born confused desi" (Indian or Pakistani).
Somewhat derogatory.

"FOB" stands for "fresh off the boat" (an immigrant).  Derogatory.

11.  What does "Chinese-cu" mean?

It's a term invented by Dwight Joe to differentiate American-born Chinese
from other Chinese.  Most Chinese are "Chinese-cu"; American-born Chinese
are "Chinese-ge, but not Chinese-cu".  The "-cu" suffix refers to "culture".
"-ge" refers to "genetics", and "-ci" to "citizenship".

Many of the participants in this newsgroup dislike Dwight, and would prefer
to ignore him, because of his frequent attacks on Chinese people.  See
George Wu's FAQ.  Andy Shaw suggests that, consciously or not, Dwight
actually *wants* Chinese people to express hostility towards him, because
this reinforces his existing beliefs and justifies his own hostility towards
Chinese people.  (Note that Dwight is Chinese himself.)

12.  Why do interracial relationships more commonly involve Asian females
     than Asian males?

There's a million theories.  See Alan Hu's FAQ on the topic.

13. Why do Asian males complain about it, when Asian females don't?

Why do you think?

14.  Who participates in this newsgroup?

It seems to be mostly American-born Chinese, with some Japanese- and
Korean-Americans, and some non-Asian Americans interested in the
Asian-American community.  Anyone is welcome to participate, however.

15.  Why isn't Asian culture ever discussed in this newsgroup?

This newsgroup is supposed to be for Asian-American culture, not Asian
culture.  There's a number of newsgroups devoted to various Asian cultures,
including soc.culture.japan, hongkong, indian, china, taiwan, asean (for
the ASEAN nations), and several more I can't think of right now.
There's also soc.culture.usa, which discusses American culture.

16.  So why isn't Asian-American culture discussed in this newsgroup?

Is there such a thing as Asian-American culture?  (Why are you looking
at me like that?)  Like most "soc.culture" newsgroups, this newsgroup
serves mostly as a place for people with related backgrounds to socialize
and exchange bits of information.  Racism and dating are the two big topics.

If you want to talk about languages, literature, theater, cooking,
movies, or whatever, feel free to post an article on the topic.

17.  I'd like to meet some Asian girls.  Is this the right place to post
     a personal ad?

Probably not.  A lot of people here get irritated by this kind of personal
ad.  There's a newsgroup for personal ads, called alt.personals.

18.  Is this the right place to discuss martial arts?

Again, probably not -- another thing which irritates second-generation
Asian-Americans is people assuming they're interested in martial arts.
There's a rec.martial-arts newsgroup.

19.  Why aren't there any Indian-Americans or Pakistani-Americans here?

Don't know, but probably because "Asian-American" is a somewhat artificial
category.  There's another newsgroup called alt.culture.us.asian-indian.

20.  Why do some of the non-Asian Americans here sound so damn condescending?

Who knows?  I suspect it's because they subconsciously think of us as
foreigners who need help adapting to the American way of life; I guess
they're just trying to be helpful.

21.  Are there any Asian-American magazines or periodicals?

There's a glossy magazine called "Transpacific" which is the Asian-American
equivalent of "GQ" or "Cosmopolitan", if I understand correctly.  (I've never
read it.)  Some people like it, others hate it.

There's a couple others -- "Asian Week", "A." -- which I don't know anything
about.

22.  How about some books on Asian-American history?

There's lots, but I haven't read any.  "Strangers from a Different Shore",
by Ronald Takaki, is a commonly used text.  "Sons of the Yellow Emperor",
by Lynn Pan, discusses the history of the overseas Chinese, including
Chinese-Americans.

23.  Why is your name spelled so weird?

Don't ask.

--
Russil Wvong
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
russil@idacom.hp.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american