yellow person's burden
the minority person who explodes onto the national media scene is always a metonymic stand-in for all other members of her race/ethnicity. This works for the scholarship student as well as the hardened criminal. We never get to be ordinary, and we never get to be singular. This is bad, but is it as bad as some fates? No.
Those of you familiar with this blog know that I am no fan of identity politics demands for "better representation" or for an end to stereotypes. I have always tried to keep my focus on economic justice and to argue that culturalist arguments are distractions from more fundamental relationships of exploitation, but with the Virginia Tech shootings, I am once again reminded of how Asian Americans in the media do affect the everyday lives of Asian Americans.
Those of you familiar with this blog know that I am no fan of identity politics demands for "better representation" or for an end to stereotypes. I have always tried to keep my focus on economic justice and to argue that culturalist arguments are distractions from more fundamental relationships of exploitation, but with the Virginia Tech shootings, I am once again reminded of how Asian Americans in the media do affect the everyday lives of Asian Americans.
Labels: minority life
2 Comments:
One should be able to autonomously act, feel, and think without any repercussions. Repercussions? Yes, repercussions that arise from racist notions that what one is doing, thinking, and feeling isn’t unique to one’s self, but relates to types—stereotypes: If one (of them) does it then it stands to reason that the rest of them will do it, too. Maybe, as you say, Catherine, a concentration upon stereotypes is wasted effort in light of larger issues. A lot of the talk in this area is highly subjective. Yet, I continue to question a culture that strips away the individuality of the ‘Other?’ Like animals whose behavior lends itself to distant, cool, and orientalist analysis, many people find it hard to extricate themselves from the uncanny sense of watching themselves in the same biased way of the racist—one feels a little different, intelligent even, a little outside of the fray, yet still marginalized, though careful to remain inside of expectations. How easy it is, while doing a cat-walk upon this tight rope, to fall or get yanked down to fit the typecasts that wait just beyond the rope. One wrong move . . . and one becomes instantly human, even when the move is through someone else, instantly one is laid in their mold. And this is what is unacceptable to the ‘bias junkies’—the humanity of Asian-Americans. Asians live, love, laugh and breathe, just like everyone else. Yet, how was this missed? What strange little psychoanalytical judgments were heaped upon them? The model minority, yet what was modeled and for whom? I sense a wake-up call for racist America.
I am not sure one "should be able to act, feel and think without any repercussions." What does that imply? A hyper-individualist, atomistic world...and yet as anonymous says, there are certain areas of action, feeling and thought that touch upon the problem of the "stereotype." But what that has to do with is a culturally instantiated self-consciousness that anyone who identifies with dominant culture is remarkably free from.
That's why I don't want to speak for all Asian Americans. Asian American sorority girls are not feeling the pain right now...and I'm sure your prosperous Asian American IT engineer and the restauranteur is dismissing the Cho kid as a crazy person...so that's why I don't think this racial/ethnic solidarity thing can be used.
I'm sure there are Chinese Americans saying, "Those Koreans are crazy! Whew, I'm so glad it wasn't a Chinese kid who did that!"
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