8 Asians

Barack Obama’s bow-at-the-waist to Emperor Akihito has garnered some pretty harsh responses in the US. Namely, it is anti-Obama critics jumping on the President’s gesture with the ferocity of a jock at my high school who’s just been implicated as being gay.

That the President of the World’s Super Power akin to something along the lines of God of Earth, the United States of America should feel the need to bend over for a small Asian man (repeatedly, as Obama also bowed in an equally as controversial greeting to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah at a G20 meeting recently) is thought of as repulsive, weak and definitively, unamerican by his critics.

Never mind that in Japanese tradition, the Emperor is a direct descendant of a divine being (the sun goddess, and thus probably even more powerful than any ‘god of earth’) and in American tradition, the president is just some chap who is popular.

Are the Obama critics really so afraid of being respectful of Asian traditions that they care about the angle of the President’s back? Is the WW2 anti-Japanese sentiment resurging to combine with some weirdo homophobic pride in a hybrid critique of the nation’s first non-white president?

Perhaps it would be more productive to critique the deep bowing of Obama to a symbolic ruler who represents a government that refuses to acknowledge many of its wartime atrocities and genocidal policies towards its Indigenous cultures. Or would such a critique be too close to the truth of America’s own national history?

Here’s a list of the reasons why this video is so wrong:

1. There is no one way to draw an Asian woman.
2. Upturned eyes? Small nose? Beautiful, big and full lips? Really?
3. According to eHow, people were genuinely asking how to draw Asian women.
4. She’s not even wearing a kimono.
5. I’m kidding about that last one.
6. This guy is a horrible teacher. He doesn’t even describe what he’s doing or why. There’s a small glimmer of hope in me that perhaps he doesn’t explain what he’s drawing because he’s realizing how racist it can sound. Instead of “slanty eyes”, he just calls them “beautiful”.
7. This guy is even worse at drawing. If that’s what he thinks Asian women look like, then he’s never met one of us before.
8. Unless that was his point: there really is no way to teach someone how to draw Asian women.
9. Then why did he agree to do this video?
10. Now I’m confused.

(Via: TheAwl)

Google helped bring attention this week to Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary by publishing Google doodles with various characters from Sesame Street. For those of us in the U.S. we saw Cookie Monster, Big Bird and other familiar muppets integrated with the iconic Google logo. But in other international markets, Google came up with special doodles that featured local Sesame Street characters, like the one shown here for India featuring Boombah and Chamki – India’s stars on Gali Gali Sim Sim (India’s Sesame Street). Boombah is a vegetarian cat who loves to dance. Chamki is an wondering schoolgirl who loves to learn and knows karate.

It turns out there are local Muppet characters developed for almost every international location that Sesame Street has a broadcast. In addition to the Indian characters, there’s the ones for the Chinese market, Hu Hu Zhu and Xiao Mei Zi, the Bangladeshi market, Shiku and Tuktuki, the Filipino market, Kiko Matsing and Pong Pagong, the Japanese market, Meg, Teena and Mojabo, among others.

With my upcoming trip to Taiwan with my daughter, and this new found discovery of local Sesame Street productions, I’m going to keep an eye out for an airing of Sesame Street in Chinese, so she can watch and I can see her reaction, especially since Elmo has always been one of her favorite Sesame Street characters. Maybe she’ll find a local Asian one to adore as well.

For those of us who were not adopted, we can only begin to imagine what it would be like to be raised in a culture completely different from the one we were born into, but this may give us some insight: a new study by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute finds that among first-generation adopted South Koreans, 78% of respondents considered themselves white or wanted to be white when they were children. The study was based on the responses of 179 SK adoptees with two white parents.

South Koreans make up the largest group of transracial adoptees in the U.S., and they comprise an estimated 10% of the total South Korean population here. The first generations of adoptive parents were told to assimilate the children into American culture without regard for the children’s native culture; as a result, older South Korean adoptees tended to have the mindset of being white or wanting to be white.

Nowadays, adoptive parents are encouraged to maintain ties to their adopted children’s native background. They send their kids to “culture camps” to learn more about where they came from. They take the kids on a family trip to their native country. They enroll them in classes to learn their native language. The adoption mindset definitely shifted in the right direction by encouraging kids to learn more about where they came from — instead of avoiding it.

We love it when Asians behave badly. It gives us something to gossip about and also, it makes us feel pretty badass. It’s true. It’s like a slap in the face to that annoying stereotype about being submissive model minorities. You want high SAT scores? How about a dumb lawsuit?

Of course, this doesn’t mean we condone any sort of bad behavior. No, you shouldn’t lie about getting job offers and you shouldn’t try to steal money from cute boys. Actually, what am I even saying? These people make us look bad. Maybe I shouldn’t write about this.

So I’ll just say that I’ve been enjoying the case of 19 year old Rachel Lee and her burglary “bling ring”. If you’ve ever needed proof that paparazzi sites like TMZ are bad for society, then here you go: thanks to the proliferation of Hollywood gossip blogs like TMZ (and probably Google Maps), Lee and her friends were able to track down and rob the homes of Paris Hilton, Rachel Bilson, Lindsay Lohan, Audrina Patridge and other famous people who probably deserved it.

(I mean, let’s be real. They didn’t even have to break in: these people never locked their doors. Plus, like Paris Hilton ever wears the same outfit twice? Rachel probably put good use to those diamond watches.)

Conclusion: Rachel needs a book deal so she can tell us what exactly is inside Lindsay Lohan’s house. Cocaine? Discarded hair extensions? What’s left of her career?

Rachel. You’re Asian. You should be smart enough to get yourself out of this mess. Make us look good!

Ever since the Internet has been available to Asian Americans, we’ve heard random shit about Asian American men: They’re effeminate. They’re child abusers. They’re wife beaters. They’re undesirable to women (or men, for that matter). They’re drunkards. They’re socially inept nerds who prefer playing WoW or D&D than having actual conversations in real life, where the sun shines.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that we have yet another stereotype to be aware (or proud?) of: We’re cheaters!

Normally, this wouldn’t even register on my radar — ooh, straight Asian guys are having sex. yay — but then realizing how the stereotypes of Asian men have been since at least the 1960s, when apparently Asian men couldn’t have sex with anyone except themselves, it’s good to know that American women (read: middle-class white women) are finally acknowledging this basic fact: Straight Asian men are getting it on. WITH WOMEN. WHITE WOMEN. AND THEY CHEAT.

Of course, when you read the article, it’s painted with incredibly broad brushstrokes (“Asian” culture? Gag.), but it does point, however awkwardly, that straight male privilege is the same in nearly all parts of the globe.  Men are expected to be the breadwinners, work excessive hours to maintain their jobs and their families, and are lucky to see their wives/partners/etc. more than once a week, while having to deal with their stress by excessive drinking, womanizing, etc., because the workplace culture demands it.  And of course, if the writer is assuming this by dating ten or even twenty Asian men, that’s still not enough to make any generalizations.

At least it’s better than the assumption that Asian men are all docile little pussycats that would be the nearly-white men that these white women can take home to meet their (incredibly racist but overly polite to mention it) mothers.

So, to the original writer of that post: Asian men are still men. And some Asian men are douchebags and assholes who will cheat on your complacent white ass (like a certain Asian American man who’s been WAY overexposed who’s known for having eight kids.) And some Asian men are the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. You’ve just been unlucky to meet a whole slew of douchebags.

For those of us growing up in the U.S. with immigrant parents in the seventies and eighties, there was no getting around the fact that the term F.O.B. (Fresh Off the Boat – pronounced letter “F”, letter “O”, letter “B”) was meant to be derogatory, when applied to ourselves, or to our parents. I had no idea, the term has changed in recent times to “fob” (rhymes with rob) and used affectionately as “fobby”. Jeff Yang tackles this topic in a recent article for SFGate. Specifically he writes about two websites, that have gotten a lot of attention in Asian circles, mymomisafob.com and mydadisafob.com. I’ve actually seen the first site, and read through many funny entries.

Yang calls our attention to these sites, not only because they are funny, but because there’s something endearing about them for those of us that have immigrant parents. We love our parents and all their funny quips and sayings. As I said earlier, for those of us of certain age, we’d never actually call them F.O.B., so Yang wanted to know why Teresa Wu and Serena Wu (not related, but creators of the two respective sites), included the “fob” in the title of their websites. It turns out they used the term as “fob”, not “F.O.B.” and referred to their parents as “fobby” in the most endearing way possible. Yang gets some help from another Yang, Gene Yang, to get the explanation for this cultural shift:

[Gene] Yang, who now resides in Fremont, notes that Mission San Jose, the high school Teresa and Serena attended, has one of the most Asian student populations in the nation. “It’s like 80 percent Asian,” he says. “The average SAT scores there are through the roof, and they have no football team, but an absolutely killer badminton team.”

It makes sense that kids growing up in an environment where being Asian is the norm would have a different view of being an immigrant than one where they’re in the minority. “If everyone has immigrant parents, it’s easy to go, ‘Oh, my parents are such fobs’ and feel affectionate toward them, even proud of them,” he says.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around calling my own parents “fobby”, but they definitely had their share of “fobby” moments. When my parents bought their first new car ever in 1973, they bought vinyl seat covers to go over the vinyl factory seats. They finally took the seat covers off 13 years later to sell the car. By then the rest of the car was rusted out from too many New York winters, but the seats still looked brand new. I was able to convince my parents in later life that should enjoy the velour in their new car in 1997, rather than wrap the car seats with seat covers, so the next owner could enjoy the seats. I’m curious if anyone else actually uses “fob” and “fobby” endearingly, or do you also think of “F.O.B.” as a derogatory term?

So I got this email, and saw the tweet:

Being Asian can prevent you from ascending the corporate ladder. Our seminar, presented with EMC Asian Circle, can tell you what to do about it.

You’ve done all the right things, top marks from perhaps a top school and top job performance. Why haven’t you reached the top as an executive? Learn from a renowned Asian exec who has been there and done that.

Business Professor David Lum will explore the fundamental reasons for why Asians/Asian-Americans have such difficulty in reaching those coveted positions. In addition to exploring the root causes, this seminar will also give clear and practical guidance on what you can do to prepare your career now for the long-term.

I read that and thought, “Wow.”

And that was the end of it. Total jaw drop. I’m not even sure what to say to this considering some facts, but more to that in a second. Let’s backtrack a little bit: I belong to a chapter of NAAAP, the National Association of Asian American Professionals. And obviously with any business organization, there is favoritism and so on, but seriously? We’re going to play the “we don’t get promoted because we’re Asian” card?

While I don’t know where this business professor came from, he apparently used to work for the same corporation as myself, and I never saw any inkling of Asians not being able to get promoted. Perhaps we didn’t work in the same division, but I never saw it within my corporate culture at least. And in my circle of friends and family, there are people that are in middle management all the way to senior management of their respective corporations; I never heard any complaints about promotions being blocked because of being Asian.

Maybe it’s just me, but this type of promotional email doesn’t exactly make me want to hear this speaker ever. Call me crazy, but I just can’t help but shake my head with this one.