From: mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day)
Subject: Re: Oriental bias against Indians ? How true ?
Organization: /u/mday/.organization
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 03:53:25 GMT

   chrchan@ocf.berkeley.edu (Christopher S. Chan) writes:

   Is anyone here familiar with the concept of multiculturalism?
   I want to point out that it is no longer racist to believe in
   racial/cultural purity.  It seems to me (based on many of the
   feelings expressed here concerning interracial dating/marriage)
   that most of the people here believe in the melting pot thesis,
   which emphasizes assimilation, the creation of a uniform "American"
   identity, culture, and race.  

I think you may be confusing two separate issues: culture and "race".
Multiculturalism is certainly a notion that can be opposed to
assimilation, but it is different from the question of "racial
purity".  Consider a relationship between a white person and an
Nth-generation (assimilated) Asian American: this is interracial but
not intercultural.  Contrast that with a relationship between a
zeroth-generation AA and an Nth-generation AA: this is intercultural
but not interracial.  

The "melting pot" idiom usually refers to forming a common culture;
seeking a uniform American "race" is pretty far out of the mainstream.
(Not so long ago, there were miscegenation laws designed to prevent
such racial mixing.)

   Someone pointed out that she was "fortunate" to have been brought
   up by liberal parents who didn't mind interracial dating.  I
   consider myself to be unfortunate to have been brought up this
   way, as I have almost no knowledge of my own culture.  Certainly,
   I identify with my Chinese heritage, but I know nothing about
   Chinese culture.  

Again, you seem to be confused.  Acceptance of interracial dating is
not connected to whether you know about your heritage.  I know lots of
people who know next to nothing about "their" culture, but whose
parents are full of prejudices against, whites, blacks, anyone outside
the ethnic group.  It's hard to find anything good to say about this
kind of know-nothing racism.  I know at least a couple of AAs who were
pressured by their parents into marrying people who were really pretty
awful, just because it was an ethnically acceptable match.  They're
divorced now, of course.  So much for avoiding whites and their
terrible divorce rates.

And knowing your heritage and having parents who disapprove of
interracial dating doesn't prevent such dating: I also know a famous
AA scholar's daughter, a PhD student in East Asian Literature, who
married a white man even though it displeased her father.

   Additionally, I don't want my kids to grow up
   confused about their identities.  I think it's hard enough being 
   both an Asian and an American.  Imagine how hard it would be to
   grow up being half Asian, half something else, and American.  I'd
   have to agree with Spike Lee here, that, "mixed kids grow up to
   be mixed nuts." 

Spike Lee often says useful things, but he's just wrong here.  If I
were going to characterize "mixed" people based on the ones I've met,
I'd be more tempted to metaphors of "hybrid vigor": they're often
better-looking, wiser, and more capable than either parent.  Of
course, they also have a better perspective than monoracial people on
the absurdities of our various racial classification schemes, since
"mixed" people usually don't officially exist in those schemes.

BTW, don't forget that confusion about identity is common even among
white kids at certain ages.  If it's a developmental stage, then you
won't be able to prevent it by staying within your racial group.

--Mark Day

mday@lcs.mit.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american