From: yamauchi@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Re: Asian-American Political Agenda? (was Re: What is Asian ?)
Date: 19 Nov 92 08:48:11 GMT
	<YAMAUCHI.92Nov18182145@yuggoth.ces.cwru.edu>
	<1992Nov19.021802.11891@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Case Western Reserve University
NNTP-Posting-Host: yuggoth.ces.cwru.edu
In-reply-to: ajh@Xenon.Stanford.EDU's message of Thu, 19 Nov 1992 02:18:02 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.021802.11891@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> ajh@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Alan Hu) writes:
>In article <YAMAUCHI.92Nov18182145@yuggoth.ces.cwru.edu> yamauchi@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>>Is there a unifying Asian-American political agenda beyond fighting
>>anti-Asian racism?  My guess is probably not.

>My question is "Isn't opposition to anti-Asian racism enough, in and of
>itself, to justify some degree of political unity?"  I'd argue yes.
>In the US, power tends to come from group dynamics.  If we unite to
>fight prejudice in any form, we will be much less likely to be trampled.
>As I've mentioned before, I believe positive social change can conceivably
>take any form between quiet, hardworking passivity to massive civil
>disobedience, so long as people recognize and believe in the unifying
>anti-racist goal.

I agree.

>For instance, consider the Jewish community in the US.  This is a group
>of enormous socio-economic, political, geographic, and cultural diversity.
>Yet, when a public figure calls New York "Hymietown", or someone denies
>the severity of the Holocaust, or someone depicts the the stereotypical
>money-grubbing, stingy Jewish merchant, the outcry and disapproval is
>essentially universal.

I agree, again.  My guess is that, over the long run, Asian-American
integration with American society will resemble the Jewish-American
experience more than the African-American experience -- for reasons of
socioeconomics, educational level, career choice, and outmarriage
rates, as well as politics.

>You don't hear responses to hate crimes like,
>"Serves the Japs right, we Koreans had to suffer years of Japanese occupation,"
>or "Those Koreans are just stupid to open businesses in those ghetto areas,"
>or "You really can't trust the Japanese or Koreans; you must remain faithful
>to your Chinese ancestry," or "The Filipinos aren't really Orientals like
>us; they're lazy and not as educated,"

Yeah -- this sort of intra-Asian prejudice has always struck me as
being both bizarre and massively counterproductive.  I suppose I
shouldn't be surprised -- groups always seem to be able to fragment
into arbitrarily small, warring factions...

>"What a typical Chinese-cu attempt to obscure the real
>murders of Americans by KMT agents.  What's another Chinese-cu baboon dead
>here or there, what I want to know is why this group is so deafeningly
>silent about the murder of Joe Schmoe by Chinese-cu government agents."

Fortunately, a certain individual is in my kill file, so I haven't
seen the word "Chinese-cu" used as an insult in quite a while...
--
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Brian Yamauchi			Case Western Reserve University
yamauchi@alpha.ces.cwru.edu	Department of Computer Engineering and Science
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american