I went surfing with some of my friends on Monday, and got thrown around a lot, as it was pretty choppy and cold. I'm very much a beginner, but like it so far. So anyways, an interesting thing that happened was after I wiped out pretty bad once, and then was repeatedly hit by a couple ensuing waves. There I was, struggling to stay a float, swallowing tons of seawater while barely gripping onto the surfboard and thrashing around like a fish, when I saw these two relatively attractive girls walk right by me. I thought they were pretty cute, and then I realized that they walked right by me. I then immediately stopped thrashing and just stood up.

[ esca | 12:34 PM | ]

 

Asian-American Culture in the United States of America.

According to the 2000 census, America is 80% white, 12% black, 3% asian, 4% other. Hispanic is not treated as a race in the census for some reason, I suspect due to some of the practical implications of the unofficial and uncounted number of hispanic individuals in america. Most of my friends who are Asians though, grew up in California or some big city, and probably are used to growing up with more Asians in their environment than the census would imply. But still, 3%(and that’s actually rounding up) seems like such a small number.

I sometimes wished I went to a large public school, say a Michigan, or a UC Berkeley or UCLA, or any school with a large asian population. Of course everything is relative, any one school appears "asian" to any of the comparatively "non-asian" schools. I'm not sure which school is the "unofficial" asian school of america, perhaps UCI or Berkeley. I attended Dartmouth College, illustrious history laden school, but also overwhelmingly non-asian.

The racial situation at Dartmouth was a whopping 80% white, with only about 14-5% asian, and the remainder settling for rest. To describe the racial conditions, my roommate and I made up this tongue-in-cheek rule called the rule of 2.5. Basically, and most of the people at my school were pretty well-adjusted, but if my roommate and I(who incidentally was taiwanese as well) were walking around campus or at parties, people would freely talk to us and race was never an issue. If we had a third asian friend, we were starting to push it, and if we had a fourth, we were clearly a "gang" and that pretty much closed the book on any spontaneous non-asian interaction. Of course not all the time, but often enough that to create the 2.5 rule, where basically for any social group of < 10 ppl, if there are more than 2.5 asians in the group, then the remainder of the group could only be asian. Thus 2.5 asians is the maxium sustainable threshold for asian for a small mixed-race social groups.

Of course all of us asians usually interacted with non-asians in different groups as well, and that it just turned out that most of us would have two different type of social circles. The "asian" circle, and the "non-asian" circle, where the circles would mix like oil and water. Its interesting to note that at least for my classmates, where a disproportionate number of which became consultants, investment bankers, and corporate executives, that social-networking and the ability to interact with people in a way that makes them feel comfortable, is often as crucial for success if not more, than technical ability. Isn't that interesting as food for thought?

Anyone who attempts to put together social gatherings, especially for professional reasons(which I mean other than just for your friends), will probably acknowledge that all the petty things that we've been taught to think of as not really *mattering* in life (number of attractive people, number of girls, number of people, racial breakdown, monetary background) makes a difference.

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Just to switch gears, at Dartmouth, of that asian block, koreans contributed for the overwhelming majority, at 11% of the student populace. I blame this make-up for the korean-ification of my identity during my college formative years. For those of you who know me, you can probably can sense some of these vestiges. >_^

I think to this day, I probably know more from an "academic" and "direct cultural" perspective of modern korean culture, than say modern taiwanese culture. This comes mostly from never living in taiwan, and growing up with taiwanese friends that were not very proactive about our culture(sorry Jon, Frank, Evan, Jimmy and the many shades of white you guys are). I know what my parents have told me of taiwan when they were younger, but asia has changed vastly over the last half century.

One of the things I've always thought about, is even if I wanted to go back to a country like Taiwan, would I be able to? Would I fit in, or would the traces of being raised in America unequivocally set me apart from the natives? Just like we can spot "fobs" a mile away from subtle differences in manner and dress as well as speech, I'm sure the distinction works both ways. Here in america, "asian-americans" are neither "asians" nor "americans," at best mostly but not completely anything.

Like a grounded ostrich with wings that can't fly, the asians raised in america have but pieces of their heritage, speak vestiges of their parent's language, read even more poorly, have rough understandings of their customs and heritage, and bow their heads mostly because that's what we see in movies with our non-asians buddies about the sensationalized-past and culture.

Of course some of this intentional, a clear rejection of culture, and other times just a phase and just as a desire to fit in with our peers, as such is common for teenage kids to stop listening to parents to try their own thing.

In either case, we shouldn't blame ourselves. After all, how can one be "chinese" or "japanese" or "vietnamese" when it's a country that we've never been to, or lived in? On top of that, its not uncommon for asians to have mixed-asian parents, or even to have a non-asian parent altogether. I have a chinese co-worker who married a non-asian and has two mixed kids. She used to live in shanghai until she was about 11 and moved to this country. Her children are very cute from the pictures, but she relates to me the difficulties of trying to get her eight year old daughter to learn more about chinese things. She refuses to go to chinese school to learn language, and just wants to be like the rest of her american classmates. Of course, there's nothing really wrong with this, but on the other hand, one could see this as the "washing" away of centuries of culture after just a single generation in another country.

Where does this all lead? Who knows, better and bigger things? The supposed super-race that is a mix of all other races? What about the melding of cultures? Take a little bit of every dish of food and put into a single stew. I wonder how that will taste.

I think I've been through it both ends, of desperately not wanting to be chinese, and wishing I was more. Wanting to be the same as everyone else, and wanting to be special. I don't know if this is just a phase in my life, or perhaps I've reached a higher plateau of understanding. But to be neither asian, nor american, but "asian-american."

[ esca | 7:26 PM | ]