From: nina@panix.com (Nina Yuan)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Re: Asking someone his "nationality" (Today's "Dear Abby")
Date: 24 Jul 92 02:32:45 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC

In <1992Jul23.191332.18333@oakhill.sps.mot.com> jpak@oakhill.sps.mot.com (Jim Pak) writes:

>In article <yuan1.711896952@husc9> yuan1@husc9.harvard.edu (Nina Yuan) writes:

>Well, I think you're right, but then again, many other times that question
>doesn't presuppose that you're not American.  It's just a lazy way of asking
>your ethnicity.  And if so, I won't get too offended.  (Like I said before,
>all bets are off if they ask it like an a**hole.)

>>This may be an overly sensitive interpretation, but when people ask me where
>>I'm from, I see no reason to tell them anything but the truth, which is that
>>I'm from New York.

>Hmm.  This is interesting.  Maybe there's something to being an Nth-generation
>American of Asian descent (where N >= 2) that causes that extra "sensitivity."
>See, I'm a generation or two or three closer to my Asian heritage than you
>probably are.  Therefore, it's not surprising we might look a bit differently
>on something like this.

Hmmm...I find it very interesting that I come across as an (n >=2 )-generation
Asian-American.  Actually, my parents immigrated to the United States, so I
guess that makes me a first-generation Asian-American (I could never get
these numbers straight.  :) )  I certainly don't consider myself far removed
from my Chinese heritage, and I feel (proudly, I might add) that have retained
many of the "traditional values" of my parents (I won't attempt to define or
justify these "values," particularly to certain members of the s.c.a.a.
community).  At the same time, I consider myself 100% American, with the same
rights and responsibilites as anyone else, and I get angry when people see me
as a "lower-class American" because of the way I look, or where my parents 
are from.  I'm curious, is my attitude relatively unusual for a child of
immigrants as opposed to, say, a 4th-generation AA?


>>I don't think I'm trying to be coy, and I certainly have no desire to lecture
>>strangers on the semantics of their questions, I'm just answering their
>>question with the truth.

>See my above comments.  Perhaps this is something that I, since I'm still
>first-generation (or 1.5), can't quite fully grasp like you.

Also see above.  :-)

>>Certainly, people with accents are a different case, both for European-
>>Americans and Asian-Americans.  Note also that you asked "where are you from
>>ORIGINALLY," the assumption being that since this person has accent, her
>>or she must not be a native-born American.  A perfectly valid assumption,
>>IMHO.

>OK, BUT... Native-born or not, they're still just as "American" as anybody
>else, no?  I mean, who says you have to be born here to be a True American(tm)?
>And if so, they have the same "right" to get offended as someone who merely
>looks "foreign," right?  I mean, why wouldn't they?  Maybe they don't feel
>like talking about their ethnicity any more than you do.

>See, in both cases, something stands out to make both of you "unique."  In
>your case and mine, it's the look but not the accent.  In the European-
>American's case, it's the accent but not the look.  (In some people's cases, 
>of course, it's both.  In Henry Cho's case...  :-) )  Why single out being
>asked that question soley because of your *look* while ignoring that people
>also get asked that question solely because of their *voice*?  They're both
>rather superficial qualities in people, no?

I'm certainly not trying to say that naturalized Americans are any less
"American" than native-born Americans; far from it.  What does bother me is
that, all else being equal (i.e. no accent), a European-American will not
be asked this question while an Asian-American will, because, as someone else
(sorry, I forget who) has pointed out in another post, European-Americans
are considered the "norm" while Asian-Americans are "unique."  While
uniqueness per se is not bad, it does lead to problems such as the failure
to distinguish between "Asian" and "Asian-American" which in turn leads to
problems such as questions of patriotism (i.e. WWII internment camps).
It may be impossible to erase this "uniqueness", indeed it's questionable
whether that's desirable.  But we can do everything we can to educate people
about this issue.  It would be nice if "Dear Abby" could play a part in this
education.

>>Granted, this is not an earth-shaking problem.  But lots of the problems
>>faced by Asian-Americans today can be traced back to a confusion on the
>>part of everyone else over the difference between "Asian" and "Asian-American"
>>(i.e. Japan bashing and similar incidents).  What disappoints me is that
>>Abby, who has succeeded in many ways in educating people though her column,
>>has also failed to make this distinction.

>That's a nice point.

As a side note, did anyone catch the item in the "That's Outrageous" column
of the August issue of "Reader's Digest" which criticizes the Civil Rights
Commission report on Asian-Americans as being useless because, after all, what
problems could all these college-educated, well-off Asian-Americans face?
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nina H. Yuan            Panix--Public       Molecular Biology Computing Lab 
Harvard College         Access Unix of NYC  Rutgers University
yuan1@husc.harvard.edu  nina@panix.com      yuan@mbcl.rutgers.edu (Summer 1992)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american