From: mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Asian American culture (was Re: Some clarification)
Date: 13 Sep 92 18:47:58 GMT
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science


   kawakami@ocf.berkeley.edu (John Kawakami) writes:

   I believe the more "Asian American" issue at hand would be tse's question
   of what constitutes Asian American culture.  The question of how it can
   be defined and classified.  The inital problem is finding a culture which
   encompasses all Asian groups.  

Let's distinguish some different meanings for "Asian American":

1. "Americans with Asian ancestry": this includes most Russians.  It
seems that no-one actually uses this term, because these people have
essentially nothing in common that distinguishes them from other,
non-Asian, immigrant Americans.

2. "Americans with non-white Asian ancestry": this mostly means desis
(people of South Asian ancestry) and "orientals" (people of East Asian
or Southeast Asian ancestry).  Some people argue that this grouping
"ought" to be what this newsgroup covers, but in practice that isn't
true.  Again, it's not clear what these groups share except for being
neither white nor black (and therefore encountering some racism but
probably less than that encountered by African Americans).  It's
possible to argue for the influence of Buddhism throughout South,
Southeast, and East Asia, and perhaps (really straining here) for a
similarity between Confucian and Hindu notions of social hierarchy,
but I think the amount of shared culture here is pretty close to zero.
Again, these groups do share the "immigrant experience" of the tension
between integration and separatism, but in this they are similar to
many other ethnic groups such as Mexicans, Cubans, even the Irish and
Jews.

3. "Americans of East Asian and Southeast Asian ancestry": In common
American usage, "Asian American" means the same as the discredited
term "oriental", i.e. a person of East Asian or Southeast Asian
ancestry.  This seems to be because there are more East Asians than
South Asians living in the U.S.; in Britain the proportions are
reversed and so is the meaning of the term (there, "Asian" is roughly
equivalent to "desi").  I wasn't involved in the formation of this
newsgroup, but I would guess that this was the ethnicity that people
had in mind.  This group really does have some shared culture: every
culture in East Asia has some Chinese influence, whether they
acknowledge it or not.  There are also shared experiences of America:
white racists don't distinguish between Japanese, Chinese, and
Vietnamese, and will cheerfully beat up or kill a Vietnamese over
Japanese actions, whereas I have yet to hear of a desi who was beaten
by a crazed Vietnam-era veteran suffering a flashback.  Similarly,
most AEASEAAs who've attended an American grade school have
suffered some variant of taunts about "slit eyes" and similar
non-white "racial" characteristics.

As broadly construed (1 and 2), I don't believe there is a shared
Asian American culture.  As narrowly construed (3), I believe there is
a shared culture but "Asian American" is the wrong name for it.

--Mark Day

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