Resistance Is Futile...

But is assimilation the solution?

I suppose I go through a version of this every year, but I've been thinking a lot of my ethnic identity lately. This recent bout of Asian guilt has been brought on by a paper I'm writing for one of my grad classes. In brief, the title of the paper is "Asian-American: The Invisible Minority in Hollywood Film and Television." In it, I basically argue that the Asian-American doesn't exist in American media for 2 reasons: The one that I talk about longer (but actually comes second in the paper) is that Asian is equated with foreign, hence not-American; the other is the concept of the model minority and assimilation--the only way to be American is to be not-Asian (I suppose it follows from the first one). So my research for this paper has had me looking at portrayals of Asians in film and TV and reading a lot of articles about minorities and assimilation and ethnic identity, and, as you can probably guess, it's caused me to confront some of my own demons regarding my heritage.

As I mentioned, I've been reading a lot of articles for my research, and they span the spectrum on views regarding what it means to be Asian and American. I've read people who argue that we should work to uphold the "model minority" stereotype, and I've read others who believe even adding "American" to your description makes you lose your Asian identity. I'd like to think where I stand personally is a healthy place in the middle, where I do my best to embody both at the same time. But these articles make you paranoid...Or I might be predisposed to such paranoia due to my double-duty of guilt. (Asian and Catholic, geez...) I read about all these trends about children being subconsciously conditioned from an early age to believe that white is better, and arguments that Asian women who date white men are giving into the stereotypes in a desperate effort to assimilate completely, and differing definitions on the meaning of "cultural pride," and I just get confused.



I'm the first to admit that I'm perhaps not the most in touch with my roots. I'm a lot better than I used to be, but I still have a long way to go. I'll consider myself informed when I can stop looking up cultural customs on Wikipedia or Google. Sadly, I am not kidding. I can cook a lot more ethnic food now--I've been actively seeking a Filipino grocery and THANKFULLY just found one--learning a little more history when I can, asking more questions, and in general just showing more pride. The next step I'd like to take is to relearn the language I apparently spoke when I was a child before I went to school and decided to speak only English like all the other kids. But I digress. The point is I'm better than I was; I joke about being a self-hating Asian now, but for awhile I actually really was. I resented being different, that I wasn't ever going to wake up one day with blond-hair and blue eyes, that we ate weird foods, that my parents were from another country, that a language besides English was spoken in my house, and that no one I went to school with looked like me.

Like I said, I'm not like that anymore. But then comes the question, Am I too far gone?

I want to get married and have a family someday. (Okay, silly overreacting people, don't take this to mean anything, it's merely a statement of fact, do not read too far into it, I'm not getting married or having kids anytime soon.) And given my history, the odds are on the side of my future husband not being Chinese or Filipino. Will we do the knot thing at the ceremony? (I used to be ashamed that I found out about that on Wikipedia, but then I realized I've never actually been to a Filipino wedding, and I felt better.) How do I let my children know they have half of me? How do I show them where that half came from? Filipino names for adult relatives are easy enough to apply to my side of the relatives, but what about older siblings? Ethnic holidays? Is it hypocritical (Is that the word I'm looking for?) to insist on celebrating them when I A) am not entirely sure what they're about? or B) don't speak the language of the ceremony? What about the Chinese part I know next to nothing about besides food? Do I run the risk of being a stranger in my own house? And because of that stupid comment I read about culture being carried on through the husband, I've been wondering about my last name. I've never been opposed to the idea of a wife taking her husband's last name, and I always figured I'd do that. But I have visions of me going into a doctor's office or something, and the receptionist calling out, "Mrs. (White Name)," then taking one look at me and going, "Oh, I didn't expect you to be Asian!"

That's not offensive in and of itself; it's actually not offensive in the least bit. If the last name is all they have to go on, it's only natural to assume appearance matches the last name. So it doesn't offend me. But it makes me a little...Sad. I have two things that represent my culture to the world: My looks and my last name. My facial features and skin color aren't going to change anytime soon. I know that my last name doesn't change my blood, my family, my heritage. "What's in a name," right? But your name is everything! It's how you're represented to the world, it's your symbol, your mark. There has to be a reason why so many cultures have naming ceremonies of some sort. There's that short story by Ursula K. Le Guin--"The Rule of Names"--where knowing a person's true name gives you power over them. An extreme example, but the point is that your name matters. I don't know if it's too much cultural pride, not enough cultural pride, too much personal pride, too much listening to the ideas of other people whom I don't actually even know, or just a whole lot of worrying over something rather inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. On that issue, anyway, I'm going to take the wimp's way out and not decide anything until the situation actually arises.

As usual, I've raised a lot of questions, pointed out a lot of issues, and actually solved nothing. But I'm okay with that because these aren't exactly issues you should be able to resolve over the course of a blog post. We'll see how much of this will recur when I go through this next year.

~The Original Fong~
**You wish you could pull off being me**

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