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SMNTY Classics: Asian-American Identity · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha.
0:07
Speaker 2: That's welcome to stuff I never told you production by
0:09
Speaker 2: her Radio, and today we are bringing back a classic
0:21
Speaker 2: episode that I did without Samantha. It was pre Samantha's
0:26
Speaker 2: time with friend of the show Sanombashi, and it was
0:31
Speaker 2: a huge ask at this point when Sonom came on.
0:35
Speaker 2: That was when Sminty was looking for a new host
0:39
Speaker 2: to accompany me, and it was honestly one of the
0:43
Speaker 2: most stressful work periods of my life because I was
0:48
Speaker 2: trying to keep everything moving and bringing in all these different.
0:52
Speaker 1: People and this was a huge ask. I don't think
0:57
Speaker 1: it was my idea.
0:59
Speaker 2: I think Sonom and I talked about it, but the
1:02
Speaker 2: idea of covering Asian American identity and history in the
1:07
Speaker 2: United States is a huge topic and that is what
1:11
Speaker 2: we landed on, and a lot of what we talk
1:14
Speaker 2: about in this episode we have talked about in episodes
1:20
Speaker 2: that you and I have done together, Samantha, and some
1:25
Speaker 2: of it has evolved, Like I remember talking about music specifically,
1:29
Speaker 2: and you and I have talked about music specifically, so
1:34
Speaker 2: that there are things that certainly have changed since we
1:37
Speaker 2: recorded this. I will say for me personally, I was
1:41
Speaker 2: still finding my footing at this time because it was
1:45
Speaker 2: a very chaotic. It's a chaotic space to be in
1:47
Speaker 2: when you don't know who's going to be hosting with you.
1:53
Speaker 3: Great, you think great, you really carry the show and
1:57
Speaker 3: is survival.
2:00
Speaker 1: She really close a touch and go? You did great?
2:03
Speaker 1: Thank you.
2:04
Speaker 2: It was it was a panicky time for me, That's
2:06
Speaker 2: what I'll say. But I had wonderful people like Sonem
2:10
Speaker 2: who came in and who brought these these topics that
2:14
Speaker 2: were so complex and did such a great job. So
2:18
Speaker 2: please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and
2:27
Speaker 2: you're listening to stuff I've never told you. For this episode,
2:42
Speaker 2: we are joined by Sonom Vashi. Thank you so much
2:46
Speaker 2: for joining us.
2:46
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
2:48
Speaker 2: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and
2:50
Speaker 2: what you do totally.
2:51
Speaker 3: I am a freelance journalist in Atlanta, and I write
2:55
Speaker 3: about all kinds of things here, like crime or housing
2:59
Speaker 3: sometimes right, which is what I'm here to talk about today,
3:01
Speaker 3: because I'm Asian American. My parents were immigrants from India,
3:05
Speaker 3: and I thought it'd be a great idea for the
3:08
Speaker 3: show to talk about.
3:10
Speaker 2: Yes, and I very much agreed when we first You're
3:13
Speaker 2: a bit of a name around town.
3:14
Speaker 1: At least for me.
3:15
Speaker 2: I'm always looking for a cool ladies in Atlanta I
3:17
Speaker 2: can hook up with, not in that way, talked too,
3:23
Speaker 2: and I had heard from a bunch of friends that
3:25
Speaker 2: you were someone that I should talk to. And then
3:27
Speaker 2: when I reached out to you, you had all of
3:29
Speaker 2: these ideas and I was like, everyone, everyone, everyone, I
3:31
Speaker 2: want to talk about all of those things, but this,
3:34
Speaker 2: I think this is a great one. I think it's
3:36
Speaker 2: something that is missing from our massive archive. And I'm
3:40
Speaker 2: so happy that have you here today to talk about it.
3:43
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
3:45
Speaker 2: And so we're going to be looking into questions of
3:49
Speaker 2: Asian American identity, what that means and how it's changed.
3:54
Speaker 2: And this means we're going to be talking about some history,
3:56
Speaker 2: some stereotypes, media representation in politics. It's kind of a
4:01
Speaker 2: lot to cover, but we're gonna cover it.
4:05
Speaker 1: We're gonna do it before we dive in. Though.
4:08
Speaker 2: Here's a number for you for you listeners to show
4:11
Speaker 2: where we are. There are nineteen point five million Asian
4:15
Speaker 2: Americans in the United States, and that is six percent
4:18
Speaker 2: of the population and it's.
4:20
Speaker 3: Also the fastest growing minority group in the country for now.
4:24
Speaker 3: Recent movies and shows like Crazy Rich Asians and Fresh
4:27
Speaker 3: off the Boat have given Asian Americans a lot more
4:29
Speaker 3: visibility in mainstream culture in the last few years too.
4:33
Speaker 3: And like many racial groups, they're extremely diverse and have
4:36
Speaker 3: different histories. You know, for example, what a lot of
4:39
Speaker 3: people think about when they think of Asian Americans as
4:41
Speaker 3: people who recently immigrated to the United States, maybe only
4:43
Speaker 3: in the last few decades, but other Asian American groups
4:46
Speaker 3: have been here for centuries.
4:48
Speaker 2: Yes, And that is a good segue to talk about
4:52
Speaker 2: some history. So I, as listeners of the show probably know,
4:57
Speaker 2: I'm a huge and of talking about history. I love history,
5:01
Speaker 2: and I think it's important to better understand the factors
5:04
Speaker 2: that play in this conversation around Asian American identity, and
5:08
Speaker 2: history does play a significant role in shaping our ideas
5:12
Speaker 2: around identity. And when we're talking about Asian immigration to
5:16
Speaker 2: the United States, the history is typically broken down into
5:20
Speaker 2: two main waves, which when you first start explaining this
5:23
Speaker 2: to me, I was like, I thought we were talking
5:25
Speaker 2: about the first and second wave of feminism, But there
5:29
Speaker 2: are two main waves of Asian American Asian immigration to
5:32
Speaker 2: the United States.
5:33
Speaker 3: Lots of way, it's just a lot of ocean imagery.
5:35
Speaker 2: I do like ocean imagery calms me down when I'm
5:38
Speaker 2: trying to sleep at night.
5:39
Speaker 1: I have a white noise machine. Ocean waves. Wow wow. Indeed,
5:47
Speaker 1: so the history is obviously going to be very condensed.
5:51
Speaker 2: But here we go. Here's some basics. If we look
5:54
Speaker 2: at the first wave, some of the first Asians to
5:57
Speaker 2: come to America were Filipino sailors toward the end of
6:00
Speaker 2: the fifteen hundreds, and half died on the journey. Of
6:05
Speaker 2: those that survived, most did not want to make the
6:08
Speaker 2: return trip over the Pacific. I wouldn't either, so they stayed.
6:14
Speaker 2: If we jump ahead, more Asian immigrants arrived in the
6:17
Speaker 2: seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds, and many instances fleeing from
6:20
Speaker 2: poor situations as a result of colonialism. But often what
6:25
Speaker 2: they escaped to was indentured servitude on tobacco and sugar
6:29
Speaker 2: plantations in the British West Indies, Hawaii, and the southern
6:32
Speaker 2: United States. They were tricked and lied to to make
6:36
Speaker 2: these dangerous journeys and then take on these difficult, often
6:39
Speaker 2: dangerous jobs for five years before they gained freedom. These
6:44
Speaker 2: indentured laborers, called coolies, were mostly men, but some women
6:48
Speaker 2: were hired, mostly as a way to keep the men
6:50
Speaker 2: from outright revolting because there were no women. After these
6:54
Speaker 2: five years were up, many stayed either out of shame
6:58
Speaker 2: at their earnings or because they had married a local
7:01
Speaker 2: who could not or would not make the journey back.
7:04
Speaker 2: And speaking of difficult jobs, if we look at the
7:07
Speaker 2: gold Rush in California, a lot of Asian immigrants, particularly
7:10
Speaker 2: Chinese immigrants, found employment working on the construction of railroads
7:14
Speaker 2: in that state. As more and more arrived, they were
7:17
Speaker 2: harshly discriminated against, called swine rats or beast and sidebar
7:24
Speaker 2: that I found super interesting, but there's no time to
7:26
Speaker 2: include it in this episode.
7:28
Speaker 1: During this time, laundry.
7:30
Speaker 2: Was very expensive in San Francisco, so much so that
7:34
Speaker 2: it was cheaper to send your clothes to Honolulu to
7:37
Speaker 2: get them washed.
7:37
Speaker 1: That blows my mind.
7:39
Speaker 2: Chinese immigrants saw an opportunity and they went for it,
7:42
Speaker 2: and this was an industry that they were allowed to
7:46
Speaker 2: have success in, not so for other industries. As a
7:50
Speaker 2: result of the influx of Chinese immigrants and fears of
7:53
Speaker 2: that the cheap labor force that they provided two less
7:57
Speaker 2: than scrupulous employers, fears that this labor force was undercutting
8:01
Speaker 2: the wage of white Americans. The Supreme Court passed the
8:05
Speaker 2: Chinese Exclusion Act in eighteen eighty two, which prohibited low
8:08
Speaker 2: skilled and family immigration from that country. This law wasn't
8:13
Speaker 2: repealed until nineteen forty three and is, in the words
8:15
Speaker 2: of Jiangfan, the only federal law ever to exclude a
8:20
Speaker 2: group of people by nationality. Some of this might sound
8:24
Speaker 2: disturbingly familiar. As part of this law, the government deployed
8:29
Speaker 2: quote Chinese catchers to the Mexican US border, and the
8:32
Speaker 2: Secretary of Labor said of the issue, not even a
8:35
Speaker 2: Chinese wall.
8:36
Speaker 1: Would stop immigrants from China.
8:38
Speaker 2: That is so wild it is it's disturbingly familiar. In
8:45
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy one, the largest mass lunching in American history
8:48
Speaker 2: took place in Los Angeles, when a mob of five
8:50
Speaker 2: hundred murdered seventeen Chinese men, and a couple of years later,
8:55
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety five, Kaiser Wilhelm awoke from a bad
8:59
Speaker 2: dream and then obviously requested a painting be done depicting
9:02
Speaker 2: the archangel Michael terrorized by a vicious mob of Easterners,
9:07
Speaker 2: perfectly exemplifying the Yellow peril as it was called. And
9:13
Speaker 2: we've spoken before about how in Western society Asian men
9:18
Speaker 2: and Eastern culture at large was and often is portrayed
9:22
Speaker 2: as effeminate aka weaker. Take this quote from the president
9:27
Speaker 2: of the American Federation of Labor at the time. From
9:29
Speaker 2: the fact that Chinese people lived in America meet versus Rice,
9:34
Speaker 2: American manhood versus Asiatic hoolism, you can see the sentiment
9:40
Speaker 2: swell in times of perceived economic threat by an Asian
9:43
Speaker 2: country or countries, like during the eighties with Japan's technological prowess.
9:47
Speaker 1: If you watch pretty much.
9:48
Speaker 2: Any eighties romantic comedy, you'll know what I'm talking about.
9:54
Speaker 2: And I also side note on the other show that
9:57
Speaker 2: I do, which is all about food and drink Saver,
10:00
Speaker 2: we did an episode on tea and I ran across
10:03
Speaker 2: an idea that I didn't more into, but I would
10:06
Speaker 2: love to. But the work I was reading the author
10:10
Speaker 2: suggested that the reason tea is feminized as more of
10:15
Speaker 2: something that lady like tea time is because it came
10:19
Speaker 2: from the East, as opposed to coffee, which was more like.
10:23
Speaker 3: Man gender drinks. You can't not gender anything in the
10:29
Speaker 3: entire history of the world. We have to gender everything.
10:32
Speaker 1: It's true.
10:33
Speaker 2: I want to do a whole mini series whiskey beer.
10:37
Speaker 2: Lighter drinks are for women, Darker drinks are for men.
10:40
Speaker 1: Wine. Future research required.
10:47
Speaker 2: Chinese immigrants were the largest group of Asian immigrants at
10:50
Speaker 2: the time, and thus perceived as the most threatening. But
10:54
Speaker 2: this was not the only group of Asian immigrants arriving
10:57
Speaker 2: to the United States, and not, of course, unfortunately, the
11:01
Speaker 2: only one to be negatively stereotyped. The United States Immigration
11:05
Speaker 2: Commission deemed Indians as the quote least desirable race of
11:09
Speaker 2: immigrants in nineteen eleven, after the editor of Washington's Bellingham
11:14
Speaker 2: Reveal called Hindu's quote repulsive in appearance and discussing in
11:17
Speaker 2: their manners, the town mobbed together to quote drive out
11:22
Speaker 2: the Hindus over the course of a night in nineteen
11:24
Speaker 2: oh seven, and they were successful. Around this time, we
11:29
Speaker 2: start seeing some laws and policy relevant to this conversation
11:33
Speaker 2: popping up across the country. There was the California Alien
11:37
Speaker 2: Land Law of nineteen thirteen, which was designed to prevent
11:40
Speaker 2: Asians from competing with white businesses and farms.
11:44
Speaker 3: And there's my favorite slash most terrifying Supreme Court ruling
11:50
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty three that define what race it is basically,
11:53
Speaker 3: and limited who could become a naturalized citizen, which is
11:56
Speaker 3: where an Indian seekh man named Buggetsingh Pinned, who had
11:59
Speaker 3: served in the US Army during World War One, wanted
12:02
Speaker 3: to become a citizen. So he tried and failed, and
12:05
Speaker 3: his case reached the Supreme Court, which had decided in
12:08
Speaker 3: another case that being white met being Caucasian. So mister
12:11
Speaker 3: Tind argued that he too was Caucasian because he was Aryan,
12:14
Speaker 3: because Arians had conquered India and then fifteen hundreds, and
12:18
Speaker 3: since he belonged to a high cast in India. But
12:20
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court decided that, given the common understanding of
12:24
Speaker 3: race in the United States, couldn't be white because there
12:27
Speaker 3: had been too much quote unquote racial mixing between different
12:30
Speaker 3: people in India. So what that meant was that South
12:33
Speaker 3: Asians could become naturalized citizens for a few decades after that.
12:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think I mentioned to you earlier because
12:45
Speaker 2: my brain is strange sometimes, but I was somehow I've
12:50
Speaker 2: become an expert on spam. Don't ask me how what
12:53
Speaker 2: this has happened. And one of the reasons that spam
12:59
Speaker 2: is so popular in Hawaii and other parts of South Asia.
13:05
Speaker 2: Is because of World War Two, but also laws like
13:08
Speaker 2: this where there was a law put in place that
13:13
Speaker 2: Japanese fishermen couldn't Basically it didn't say this, but it
13:18
Speaker 2: was to limit the competition with American fishermen that they
13:21
Speaker 2: couldn't they could only fish within like a mile radius
13:24
Speaker 2: or something. And that is why that spam is so
13:28
Speaker 2: popular in Hawaii, for instance, spam asuvie. And also it
13:33
Speaker 2: is an interesting culmination of different ingredients because there was
13:39
Speaker 2: all this spam from World War two that was on
13:43
Speaker 2: the island and all of these immigrants who were there
13:47
Speaker 2: as well, and the cuisine kind of adopted spam in
13:51
Speaker 2: a way that is very delicious. And when a lot
13:53
Speaker 2: of people I know, including me for a long time,
13:56
Speaker 2: just loot of spams like this growth like it comes
13:59
Speaker 2: out in the shape.
14:01
Speaker 3: You even have like a solid liquid.
14:03
Speaker 2: Exactly, You've got a lot of questions about what's going on,
14:07
Speaker 2: what should I do with it? But it has really
14:09
Speaker 2: been adopted in the cuisine there, and I would put
14:12
Speaker 2: forth that it is pretty good.
14:16
Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to go look up some spam
14:17
Speaker 3: recipes after this.
14:18
Speaker 1: Oh you should if I can convert one person. I
14:22
Speaker 1: don't know why. I don't know how this has happened.
14:25
Speaker 3: We'll open the trendy spam restaurant. It'll be great.
14:27
Speaker 1: Oh, don't even joke about it.
14:30
Speaker 2: I would do it. I would do it in I Heartpete.
14:33
Speaker 2: All right, But going back to depressing laws. A year later,
14:37
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty four, an American policy was passed with
14:41
Speaker 2: the goal of quote preserving the idea of American homoganity
14:45
Speaker 2: that pretty much disallowed non whites from immigrating to the
14:48
Speaker 2: United States.
14:49
Speaker 1: All immigration from Asia.
14:51
Speaker 2: Was outlawed with the creation of the Asiatic Bard Zone.
14:55
Speaker 2: And this was of course swiftly followed by the internment
14:58
Speaker 2: of Japanese Americans during and after World War Two.
15:02
Speaker 3: And about one hundred and twenty thousand Japanese Americans were
15:05
Speaker 3: interned during that time, which is a really substantial number
15:08
Speaker 3: even for now.
15:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this was followed by the second wave of
15:14
Speaker 2: Asian immigration to the United States.
15:17
Speaker 1: The Cold War.
15:19
Speaker 2: We have to talk about the Cold War in this
15:21
Speaker 2: conversation shifted American focus and fears elsewhere, especially for Asian
15:26
Speaker 2: nations not viewed as threats. The Civil rights movement led
15:31
Speaker 2: to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing nineteen sixty five's Immigration
15:34
Speaker 2: and Nationality Act, which got rid of racial quotas and
15:37
Speaker 2: made room for skills and family based immigration. However, we
15:41
Speaker 2: should keep in mind this wasn't done with Asians in mind,
15:45
Speaker 2: but rather vocal and annoyed Northern Europeans. This act, of course,
15:52
Speaker 2: impacted the type of immigrants that came to the United
15:55
Speaker 2: States and made way for some stereotypes that were going
15:58
Speaker 2: to get into later. Whatever the case, Asians immigrated to
16:02
Speaker 2: the United States all the same, resulting in the second
16:04
Speaker 2: wave of Asian immigrants, and in the mind of Erica Lee,
16:07
Speaker 2: author of the Making of Asian America, a history creating
16:11
Speaker 2: two often discordant Asian Americas. After the events at Tenaman Square,
16:17
Speaker 2: the US enacted the Chinese Student Protection Act in nineteen
16:19
Speaker 2: ninety two, and that meant that fifty five thousand Green
16:22
Speaker 2: cards were given to Chinese immigrants, which also contributed to
16:27
Speaker 2: this whole second wave. And that more or less brings
16:32
Speaker 2: us to today, to these discordant Asian Americas and to
16:36
Speaker 2: questions around identity and stereotypes. But first it brings us
16:42
Speaker 2: to a quick break forward from our sponsor, and we're back.
16:55
Speaker 2: Thank you sponsor. So another piece of this conversation is stereotypes,
17:02
Speaker 2: where they come from, how they shape how we view
17:04
Speaker 2: people and ourselves and our identity, and how they impact
17:08
Speaker 2: everything on a societal level. And I know we've talked
17:11
Speaker 2: about it before, but policies get made, laws get enacted
17:15
Speaker 2: based on representation, what we see in the media, and stereotypes.
17:20
Speaker 1: So let's get into it.
17:22
Speaker 2: One of the first ones that we wanted to talk
17:24
Speaker 2: about was the model minority.
17:26
Speaker 3: I think that's like the most pervasive one for sure,
17:30
Speaker 3: in a variety of different ways. You know, it's not
17:32
Speaker 3: just like this is like a term that was coined
17:35
Speaker 3: that means that Asians often pointed to as being the
17:39
Speaker 3: group that's seemingly high performing academically and socioeconomically. And so
17:43
Speaker 3: you hear, you know, the smart Asian, the doctor or
17:46
Speaker 3: engineer Asian, these sorts of things that sound like really
17:50
Speaker 3: good and positive stereotypes, but it's often used to deny
17:54
Speaker 3: the existence of structural racism among not only Asian Americans
17:57
Speaker 3: but also other non white people. And it's it's really
18:00
Speaker 3: harmful for that reason. I think, you know, most often
18:03
Speaker 3: it's easy to imply either explicitly or implicitly that black
18:07
Speaker 3: and Hispanic people are not working hard, because if you
18:10
Speaker 3: know Asian Americans can do so well, then clearly other
18:13
Speaker 3: groups are not working that hard. But you know, add
18:18
Speaker 3: that to the tiger mom stereotype that Asian parents are
18:20
Speaker 3: stricter than other parents or make their kids work harder,
18:23
Speaker 3: and you get this myth of Asian exceptionalism. And that's
18:26
Speaker 3: not supported by the disaggregated data that you look at.
18:29
Speaker 3: So you know, if you control for education, that Asian
18:32
Speaker 3: wage gap advantage disappears. Asian Americans are the most economically
18:36
Speaker 3: divided racial group in the country, so you know, Asians
18:40
Speaker 3: overall rank as the highest running group, but if you
18:43
Speaker 3: break that out by ethnicity, it shows a wide range
18:45
Speaker 3: of incomes, and for example, Chinese Americans have a very
18:49
Speaker 3: high income overall, but the top earners are really shrouding
18:53
Speaker 3: the fact that there is a high rate of poverty
18:55
Speaker 3: among Chinese Americans. And you know, depending on the different ethnicity,
19:00
Speaker 3: it can depend on the reasons different immigrant groups came
19:02
Speaker 3: to the United States in the first place. Now this
19:04
Speaker 3: is true for every racial group. You can disaggregate Hispanics,
19:08
Speaker 3: black people, white people and show differences based on ethnicity,
19:11
Speaker 3: but it's just so staggering among Asians. So, you know,
19:14
Speaker 3: seventy five percent of Anian Americans, many who came under
19:17
Speaker 3: the H and B visa program as highly schooled workers,
19:20
Speaker 3: have a college degree. But that's only true for a
19:23
Speaker 3: third of Vietnamese Americans, many who came as refugees from
19:26
Speaker 3: the Vietnam War, and more than one in three Bermese
19:28
Speaker 3: Americans and Boutanese Americans are in poverty. And even those
19:32
Speaker 3: who are successful, particularly those who came as highly schooled workers,
19:36
Speaker 3: face stomach racism. I think you were talking about the
19:39
Speaker 3: bamboo ceiling, right.
19:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I found that term when I was reading
19:43
Speaker 2: about Fortune and there are five hundred talk companies, only
19:46
Speaker 2: three percent of those are run by Asians.
19:49
Speaker 3: And it's really interesting that you see this discrimination even
19:53
Speaker 3: at the highest level, because there's also evidence of discrimination
19:56
Speaker 3: and hiring practices. So researchers at Ryerson University in the
20:00
Speaker 3: University of Toronto found that job applicants with Chinese, Indian,
20:03
Speaker 3: or Pakistani sounding names were twenty eight percent less likely
20:07
Speaker 3: to get called back for an interview, and that's something
20:09
Speaker 3: that also affects other non minorities too.
20:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, is this this model minority thing. Is that
20:16
Speaker 2: something that you experienced personally, Oh, totally.
20:19
Speaker 3: I mean I think there's definitely like a sense that
20:21
Speaker 3: if you're doing well in school in you're Asian, it's
20:24
Speaker 3: just like because you're Asian, And I mean I think
20:27
Speaker 3: there's a lot of different things going on there. Maybe
20:28
Speaker 3: you know, there's a stereotype, for example, of Indian Americans particularly,
20:34
Speaker 3: but Asian Americans generally doing really well in spelling bees.
20:37
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever watched the National Spelling Bee,
20:39
Speaker 3: but there's always just like a very cute Asian kid
20:42
Speaker 3: who wins miss of the time, and like I definitely
20:46
Speaker 3: was also in the spelling Bee. So like some stereotypes
20:48
Speaker 3: may be true, but clearly like that's not what happened.
20:52
Speaker 3: You know, my dad was an immigrant under this like
20:54
Speaker 3: HMNB visa program, and so that's a very different than
20:57
Speaker 3: being an immigrant under different types of circumstances. And I
21:00
Speaker 3: think success and is definitely driven by a lot of
21:05
Speaker 3: these different histories.
21:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been speaking a lot to two friends of
21:12
Speaker 2: mine because I recently did an episode around first first
21:16
Speaker 2: generation immigrants and just hearing this pressure that they felt
21:21
Speaker 2: to represent their country and their religion. I kind of
21:25
Speaker 2: pushed them to do things, and they felt that they
21:30
Speaker 2: had to perform at a level that was really high,
21:35
Speaker 2: and that their parents would push them to do that
21:38
Speaker 2: as well, because it was like, we're representing our whole
21:43
Speaker 2: country totally, totally.
21:44
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, there's this really great piece that
21:47
Speaker 3: was published recently in BuzzFeed about immigrant debt and this
21:51
Speaker 3: idea that like, you, like so many people who are
21:55
Speaker 3: first generation Americans feel indebted to the sacrifices that their
21:59
Speaker 3: parents made coming to this country in the first place,
22:01
Speaker 3: and you know, offending everything, coming without you know, money
22:05
Speaker 3: or knowing anyone and just making this really difficult journey,
22:10
Speaker 3: and then like that their kids are just like, okay, well,
22:12
Speaker 3: like how do I honor a sacrifice even though I
22:15
Speaker 3: don't want to, you know, do the job that my
22:17
Speaker 3: parents want me to do, or like do you know,
22:20
Speaker 3: go into academia or go into being a doctor or whatever,
22:23
Speaker 3: like I want to be like a journalist, bum like myself,
22:26
Speaker 3: or you know, I think there's this like definite pressure
22:30
Speaker 3: that comes with wanting to acknowledge and and honor your parents. Uh,
22:34
Speaker 3: and you know, being the only one in a classroom
22:37
Speaker 3: or workplace that looks like you. I think definitely contributes
22:40
Speaker 3: to that.
22:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you mind if I ask how your parents
22:46
Speaker 2: look that you're going to be journal there's.
22:48
Speaker 3: Still the soul dealing with it, like several years after
22:51
Speaker 3: the fact, but I think they've we've we've reached a
22:55
Speaker 3: a h what's what's the word deton esecially because in freelance,
23:01
Speaker 3: they they just think like that. For a while, they
23:03
Speaker 3: thought I was unemployed and I was like, no, no, no,
23:05
Speaker 3: I'm just like very employed and just like by a
23:07
Speaker 3: lot of different people, and they're like, you don't go
23:10
Speaker 3: into an office, what are you doing every day?
23:14
Speaker 1: I think it's a big ski.
23:17
Speaker 3: I don't know what they think I'm doing for money,
23:19
Speaker 3: but they they've definitely approached it with suspicion.
23:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I my parents still tell people like, I'm
23:29
Speaker 2: basically I'm not sure what she does.
23:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So I'm very honoring to hear that.
23:36
Speaker 1: Something else we have to talk about.
23:39
Speaker 2: Is exoticizing, our fetishizing of Asian women, because I would
23:44
Speaker 2: wager that when I say fetish, two things come to mind.
23:49
Speaker 2: One is foot fetish and the other is Asian fetish.
23:53
Speaker 2: Asian woman fetish.
23:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is a huge part of being Asian American
23:59
Speaker 3: and women or women presenting in this country. And I
24:04
Speaker 3: think there is you know, particularly with Asian women with
24:08
Speaker 3: East and Southeast Asian heritage. I think our fetishizers being
24:13
Speaker 3: you know, submissive, it's extremely sexual, or other stereotypes that
24:17
Speaker 3: are really damaging. And again, like being fetishized might so
24:22
Speaker 3: much a good thing, but I think for most women,
24:24
Speaker 3: like we know it's not and you know it can
24:29
Speaker 3: single how Asian and and other non white women are
24:32
Speaker 3: otherised and stereotyped and are just seen as this like
24:35
Speaker 3: object or thing or non human entity.
24:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's really dehumanizing. I have I have a
24:46
Speaker 1: friend who is online dating and she is Asian, and
24:51
Speaker 1: she tells me that she has a couple of.
24:55
Speaker 2: Rules, and one is if someone asked her where are
24:58
Speaker 2: you from? But where really where are you from, She's
25:00
Speaker 2: immediately like nope, goodbye.
25:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. And another is that it's not really a rule,
25:05
Speaker 1: but she just is.
25:06
Speaker 2: Very nervous about people, particularly white men, who it seems
25:14
Speaker 2: that they've just dated Asian women.
25:16
Speaker 1: Oh totally.
25:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a huge red flag. I mean, particularly with
25:19
Speaker 3: white men too. I would say, like when I've dated
25:21
Speaker 3: white men in the past, it's been like, have you
25:23
Speaker 3: only dated Asian women? Because that's a huge problem, But
25:25
Speaker 3: also am I the only like non white person you've
25:28
Speaker 3: ever dated, because it's also a problem. I don't want
25:30
Speaker 3: to be either the two things you have had like
25:32
Speaker 3: one like past that like okay, let's this makes me
25:36
Speaker 3: feel better, Like I'm not like the first one, but
25:40
Speaker 3: I'm also not like the eighth one.
25:43
Speaker 2: Exactly. You get a balance. You gotta find that balance, right.
25:46
Speaker 2: I love hearing people's personal dating rules, and I I
25:52
Speaker 2: would love to do a whole episode that's just like
25:55
Speaker 2: tell me your dating rules and why.
25:57
Speaker 3: That'd be great, I.
25:57
Speaker 1: Think be fascinating.
26:00
Speaker 2: But this whole fetishizing of Asian women is colloquially called
26:04
Speaker 2: yellow fever and also rice queens, when queer men fetishize
26:09
Speaker 2: Asian men, and we see this everywhere in our culture.
26:13
Speaker 2: It was even a bit in one of comedian Amy
26:16
Speaker 2: Schumer's stand up routines.
26:17
Speaker 1: She said, quote, I can't compete with.
26:19
Speaker 2: An Asian chick because, punchline, they have small vaginas. That's
26:25
Speaker 2: how omnipresent this fetish is in our culture.
26:27
Speaker 1: It is a joke.
26:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's hammered home in all types of media.
26:32
Speaker 3: I mean, if you ever watched anime or manga, which
26:35
Speaker 3: like most women in there are even hyper sexualized, and
26:38
Speaker 3: that's often that's from an Asian country Japan. You know,
26:41
Speaker 3: there are a lot of things contributing to this and
26:43
Speaker 3: it has real world effects. A study conducted by the
26:47
Speaker 3: dating app Are You Interested? Found that Asian women were
26:49
Speaker 3: the most desirable group, not just among white men, but
26:52
Speaker 3: all men except for Asian men. Interesting, yeah, I think
26:56
Speaker 3: the city found that like almost every group preferred different races,
27:00
Speaker 3: but for some reason, Asian women were the most desirable.
27:04
Speaker 3: But the study I think you found was less than rigorous.
27:06
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, And they were also findings from Okay Cupid.
27:11
Speaker 2: A sociologist sociologist named Kevin Lewis, and he found that
27:15
Speaker 2: all groups preferred to strike up a conversation with someone
27:18
Speaker 2: of their own race, all except Asian women again preferred
27:22
Speaker 2: messaging white men. A Psychology Today article looking at this
27:27
Speaker 2: phenomenon found that a lot of non Asian men held
27:29
Speaker 2: a belief about Asian women that they are submissive, particularly
27:33
Speaker 2: when it comes to sex. As one respondent put it, quote,
27:38
Speaker 2: wemen want a princess in public and a whore in
27:41
Speaker 2: the bedroom, simple as that.
27:43
Speaker 3: They're just not asking a lot, right, they just want
27:46
Speaker 3: princess public.
27:48
Speaker 1: And the great words of Usher a freaking is sheees.
27:53
Speaker 3: Lady in the streets for the bed.
27:54
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's not even Usher, it's somebody else, but
27:57
Speaker 2: it's an Usher song.
27:59
Speaker 1: I don't know much about culture.
28:00
Speaker 3: I want to say it's Little John's first, so that
28:02
Speaker 3: I could be If I'm wrong on that, it'll be
28:04
Speaker 3: very embarrassing.
28:06
Speaker 1: We'll flag that to come back for correction.
28:11
Speaker 2: And there are centuries of history and culture that have
28:15
Speaker 2: gone into the construction of the stereotype, starting with the
28:18
Speaker 2: opening of trade between Asia and Europe. So art depicting
28:24
Speaker 2: gisha's made its way to Europe that would then be
28:27
Speaker 2: highly sexualized for the Western male. And I was reading
28:33
Speaker 2: an essay about this, and I think it is worth
28:35
Speaker 2: bringing up. Just remember that the Western mail at this
28:38
Speaker 2: time was living in a very repressive sexually culture. You
28:44
Speaker 2: know women as well, like they all, everyone was.
28:50
Speaker 1: Not allowed to.
28:51
Speaker 2: Openly express sexual desire. It was very frowned upon. You
28:57
Speaker 2: would go to hell, like it was writing, like we
29:00
Speaker 2: laugh about it now, but yeah, women didn't show their ankles.
29:04
Speaker 2: So this new this art is coming in that isn't
29:07
Speaker 2: so covering up and hot, shying away from the human body.
29:14
Speaker 2: And then if we move away, I'll move forward a
29:18
Speaker 2: little bit to eighteen eighty seven, French author Pierre Loti
29:21
Speaker 2: pens Madame quisanthem and it really can't be understated the
29:26
Speaker 2: impact this had on shaping how Westerners viewed Asian women,
29:31
Speaker 2: and specifically Japanese women. In Loti's lifetime, it was reprinted
29:36
Speaker 2: over two hundred times and translated into every European language.
29:40
Speaker 2: It follows a naval officer who takes a temporary wife
29:45
Speaker 2: while stationed in Japan, one that is doll like and
29:48
Speaker 2: a lot of the words that are used to describe
29:51
Speaker 2: this character are small, dainty words that I would associate
29:56
Speaker 2: with being submissive. And if this story sounds familiar, it
30:01
Speaker 2: could be because it is generally accepted to have inspired
30:04
Speaker 2: the opera Madama Butterfly, first performed in nineteen oh four,
30:09
Speaker 2: very similar story. It follows an American officer who takes
30:12
Speaker 2: a temporary wife all in Japan, but then leaves her
30:14
Speaker 2: behind to marry a white American woman at the end
30:17
Speaker 2: of his service, but not before his temporary Japanese wife
30:21
Speaker 2: sacrifices her religion, her family, her son, and then takes
30:26
Speaker 2: her own life all for this man who left her.
30:31
Speaker 2: And if you haven't seen Madama Butterfly, but that story
30:34
Speaker 2: still sounds familiar, perhaps you saw the reworked version that
30:38
Speaker 2: takes place in Vietnam, Miss Saigon, which since its premiere
30:43
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine has been performed all over the
30:46
Speaker 2: world and still turns a prophet. Now there is this
30:50
Speaker 2: kind of compliment to the Madama Butterfly stereotype archetype, and
30:56
Speaker 2: that is the Dragon Lady, which kind of emerged, you know,
31:00
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, two thousands, I would say it became popularized.
31:03
Speaker 2: But this is kind of the sexy assassin who can
31:07
Speaker 2: do martial arts but essentially still is very one dimensional,
31:13
Speaker 2: very uh stereotyped character.
31:16
Speaker 3: We're talking like kill Bill style, Yes, maybe Charlie's Angels,
31:20
Speaker 3: Lucy Luce.
31:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, Rush Hour too.
31:24
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Oh man, I can't believe.
31:27
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you knew it.
31:28
Speaker 3: Oh. I've seen the movie maybe one hundred times. The
31:33
Speaker 3: first one I've seen like maybe fifty, but like the
31:34
Speaker 3: second one one hundred.
31:35
Speaker 1: Do you really want to?
31:37
Speaker 3: Oh?
31:37
Speaker 2: Man?
31:38
Speaker 3: A classic?
31:39
Speaker 2: We're dustined to be friends the US's The US armies
31:44
Speaker 2: presidence throughout Asia during and after World War two and
31:47
Speaker 2: the Korean War and the Vietnam War cemented this sexualized
31:51
Speaker 2: perception of Asian women. So called juicy bars and brothels
31:55
Speaker 2: established themselves around military camps with an exclusive US soldier clientele.
32:02
Speaker 2: For a lot of these men that this was their
32:04
Speaker 2: first exposure to Asian women and it was through sex workers.
32:08
Speaker 2: And the aftermath of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, a
32:11
Speaker 2: lot of Asian women and children were airlifted out and
32:13
Speaker 2: brought to the United States, giving rise to a savior
32:17
Speaker 2: narrative and it started appearing in our media.
32:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, and many Asian American men, you know, kind of
32:24
Speaker 3: we talked about earlier with Tea, and they've had the
32:28
Speaker 3: opposite experience. They're often desexualized, not seen as masculine, and
32:31
Speaker 3: they're going back to this feminate history and it's an
32:34
Speaker 3: awful dehumanizing stereotype that's still perpetuated. I have, you know,
32:39
Speaker 3: plenty of straight male friends who are Asian American who
32:42
Speaker 3: have said that, like they're dating, particularly women the interracial sphere,
32:47
Speaker 3: like without outside of Asian women have had a stereotype
32:50
Speaker 3: lopped against them or even with Asian women sometimes, and
32:53
Speaker 3: like it's just been really disheartening for a lot of them.
32:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure.
32:58
Speaker 2: And it doesn't help that in our media we see
33:03
Speaker 2: these these representations everywhere there, these stereotypes are reinforced and
33:09
Speaker 2: perhaps even solidified and through like the Tiger Mom, Model Minority, Madama, Butterfly,
33:16
Speaker 2: Dragon Lady.
33:17
Speaker 1: And that's what.
33:18
Speaker 2: Little representation there is anyway, because there isn't much. Asian
33:23
Speaker 2: Americans make up only one percent of Hollywood's leading roles.
33:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, and examples that were there were usually like Tokens
33:30
Speaker 3: or about you know, very very good but like kind
33:33
Speaker 3: of sometimes stereotypical stories about the Vietnam War, or of
33:37
Speaker 3: course George T. K Asulu in Star Trek. But in
33:41
Speaker 3: recent years the good things that Asian American visibility has increased.
33:44
Speaker 3: I think recently, you know, living like Sandra Oh became
33:47
Speaker 3: the first Asian American to when the lead actress Golden Globe.
33:51
Speaker 3: Plus there's the mega hit from last year, Crazy Rich Asians,
33:54
Speaker 3: and it's become so popular both as a rom com
33:59
Speaker 3: and as just the first movie to have an all
34:01
Speaker 3: Asian cast in almost twenty twenty three years, and it
34:05
Speaker 3: definitely represented just a small slice of Asian America, obviously
34:09
Speaker 3: the crazy rich kind with generational wealth and economic privilege.
34:13
Speaker 3: Very few brown or doctor skinned faces in that movie too.
34:16
Speaker 3: But it opened the door for more movies about the
34:18
Speaker 3: Asian American experience. And you know it's important to create
34:22
Speaker 3: as author and Pulter Prize winner Via tan When has
34:26
Speaker 3: written about narrative plenitude, the idea that we need more
34:30
Speaker 3: stories about Asian Americans and about other marginalized groups so
34:34
Speaker 3: that one story doesn't carry the burden of representing every experience.
34:38
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is a big pet fave of mine
34:42
Speaker 2: because every time a story comes out that is all
34:46
Speaker 2: mostly Asian cast, and everyone's.
34:48
Speaker 1: Like, will it make money? Because that's going to determine
34:51
Speaker 1: if we make anymore. Right and yet, I mean movies
34:55
Speaker 1: that are bad, that have a usually white male.
34:59
Speaker 2: Lead but don't make any money, they don't get the
35:02
Speaker 2: same pressure like they're just gonna be made. There's not
35:06
Speaker 2: so much writing on them. Why can't we have bad
35:09
Speaker 2: movies for everybody?
35:10
Speaker 3: Right?
35:11
Speaker 1: Right, good movies for everybody too, But bad.
35:13
Speaker 3: Movies like no, absolutely, I mean, I mean platitude doesn't
35:17
Speaker 3: mean that they're all like amazing pulz Rice winners for sure, exactly. Yeah.
35:23
Speaker 3: And you know, speaking of probably like bad examples, probably
35:28
Speaker 3: one of the other you know, well known Asian American
35:30
Speaker 3: characters that we would go and risk that mentioning is
35:32
Speaker 3: a poo, the lovable convenience store clerk on The Simpsons,
35:36
Speaker 3: who was recently removed from the show after comedian Hary
35:40
Speaker 3: Condoboulu made a documentary call the Problem with a Poo
35:43
Speaker 3: And the problem is that a poo's stereotypically thick Indian accent,
35:48
Speaker 3: which I will not do. I thought about it is
35:52
Speaker 3: voiced by non South Asian Hanka's area At, one of
35:55
Speaker 3: the show's creators, who also voices a lot of other characters,
35:58
Speaker 3: and who Condebolu says, this is a quote from kind
36:01
Speaker 3: of Bell sounds like a white guy doing an impression
36:04
Speaker 3: of a white guy making fun of my father. It's
36:08
Speaker 3: really accurate. And you know, some South Asians aren't offended
36:12
Speaker 3: by a poo, but it's not hard to see the
36:14
Speaker 3: soft racism, which is you know, just been described, particularly
36:18
Speaker 3: while by New Yorker writer Juasu, who says that even
36:21
Speaker 3: though the Simpsons might not have wanted to offend with
36:24
Speaker 3: a poo, it's still collapsing an entire ethnic group, and
36:26
Speaker 3: two exaggerated characteristics like a silly accent or some missive
36:30
Speaker 3: slogan like think you come again, And that's I think
36:33
Speaker 3: in and of itself is particularly problematic.
36:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember when all of this was kind of happening.
36:42
Speaker 1: It was a pretty big deal.
36:44
Speaker 2: I haven't seen the show since Sense of Who left,
36:47
Speaker 2: so I'd be interested to check out what's going on
36:52
Speaker 2: there now.
36:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't believe it's still in the air. I
36:56
Speaker 1: don't mean that negatively. I know it's like, wow, it's been.
36:59
Speaker 3: Like a million years, the longest run show ever. I mean,
37:02
Speaker 3: I love the sibstence. It's getting me wrong. And you know,
37:04
Speaker 3: I think I remember like seeing a poo as a
37:06
Speaker 3: kid and being like, well, yeah, like you know, poo
37:08
Speaker 3: is like a touchdown that you can refer to, like yeah, yeah,
37:11
Speaker 3: like you know, you you talk to like kids and
37:13
Speaker 3: they'd be like, like, where's India and you'd be like,
37:16
Speaker 3: like a poo, you know, like just like a pooh
37:19
Speaker 3: like your reference point. But the double edged sword in
37:25
Speaker 3: some cases it is.
37:26
Speaker 2: Yeah again, maybe it would be it'd be nice to
37:29
Speaker 2: have more representation that you could point to instead of just.
37:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can dream.
37:39
Speaker 2: Something else that you you brought to my attention is
37:42
Speaker 2: kind of within this world of hip hop that there
37:46
Speaker 2: is kind of an interesting exchange between Asian American or
37:52
Speaker 2: just Asian and hip hop.
37:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh totally. I mean it's there's a few different
37:58
Speaker 3: groups that I've been coming out. I think there's like
38:00
Speaker 3: the rap label eighty eight rising, a lot lots of
38:04
Speaker 3: people who are who are Asian American are Asian who
38:06
Speaker 3: are who are forming hip hop groups or other acts.
38:10
Speaker 3: And K pop has been borrowing a lot from uh,
38:12
Speaker 3: from hip hop as well, just in terms of like
38:15
Speaker 3: meats that the like a lot of different parts of
38:19
Speaker 3: the act. And and it is this like really interesting
38:22
Speaker 3: exchange that you were saying, because you know, I think
38:25
Speaker 3: that hip hop has obviously drawn from a lot of
38:28
Speaker 3: different sources, but it's so firmly rooted in the black community,
38:31
Speaker 3: and so there are so like so many important complex
38:35
Speaker 3: questions about some of these numer groups which have sometimes
38:38
Speaker 3: been accused of appropriating Black culture or sometimes even ignoring
38:41
Speaker 3: some of the anti black racist comments from their fans.
38:45
Speaker 3: And and you know, Asian Americans have certainly benefited from
38:47
Speaker 3: the work of black and brown activists and the civil
38:50
Speaker 3: rights movements of those activists in this country. And there's
38:54
Speaker 3: still a lot of work that the Asian American community
38:56
Speaker 3: at large has to do when it comes to interracial interactions.
39:00
Speaker 3: Particularly you know, anti blackness is really prominent in many
39:03
Speaker 3: different Asian American communities, and there's you know, even this
39:07
Speaker 3: issue of colorism and racism within the Asian American community.
39:11
Speaker 3: I mean you could just if you go inside a
39:13
Speaker 3: i mean almost any Asian American store, whether it's Filipino,
39:16
Speaker 3: whether it's Indian, whether it's Chinese, and you go to
39:19
Speaker 3: the like skincare aisle, you will see like skin lightning creams.
39:23
Speaker 3: The one in the Indian store is called fair and Lovely.
39:27
Speaker 3: Trusts me, there's nothing fair and lovely about it. Like
39:29
Speaker 3: it is literally like a bleaching cream, and people use
39:31
Speaker 3: it because they want their skin to appear lighter, because
39:34
Speaker 3: being dark skinned, especially for women of course, is just
39:37
Speaker 3: seen as this really bad thing. You seem as less attractive.
39:41
Speaker 3: And you know, we could talk for like a million
39:43
Speaker 3: years about where that comes from and why. But like,
39:47
Speaker 3: you know, the odd distinctions between white Asians and brown Asians,
39:50
Speaker 3: even within the Asian American community. But like this is
39:53
Speaker 3: just something that like exists in our home countries, but
39:56
Speaker 3: it is also something that exists in the Asian American experience.
40:00
Speaker 3: It's still that I think needs to be talked about
40:02
Speaker 3: a little bit more.
40:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as as is clear, I am not too
40:10
Speaker 2: big in tipop culture, but we did talk about when
40:13
Speaker 2: we're preparing for this, like John Lee from Nick Camnage
40:17
Speaker 2: and Katie Perry when she did that kind of gasha.
40:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, so lots of like weird Definitely stereotypical things that
40:32
Speaker 3: you see in pop culture are kind of like sometimes
40:35
Speaker 3: given a past, sometimes not like that. I definitely deserve
40:40
Speaker 3: to also be talked about when it comes to like
40:42
Speaker 3: anti Asian or stereotypical bias.
40:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, there's a lot to go into there,
40:49
Speaker 2: and we still have some more in this episode. But
40:54
Speaker 2: first we have a quick break forward from our sponsor
41:07
Speaker 2: and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So taking all of this,
41:12
Speaker 2: all of these history, these stereotypes, it plays into the
41:16
Speaker 2: question of the Asian American identity. Nowadays, some folks are
41:21
Speaker 2: rejecting the label Asian American in favor of something more specific,
41:25
Speaker 2: But this label was introduced. When it was introduced, it
41:28
Speaker 2: was meant to foster unity. It was coined by historian
41:32
Speaker 2: and activists ugi Igioka in nineteen sixty eight. He was
41:36
Speaker 2: partly inspired by the success of the Black Panther movement,
41:39
Speaker 2: and he hoped it would help to combat direct discrimination
41:44
Speaker 2: that had been aimed at Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans.
41:48
Speaker 2: When Japanese Americans were in prison dufter World War Two,
41:51
Speaker 2: some Chinese Americans carried signs or were buttons to signify
41:54
Speaker 2: that they were not Japanese American, but Chinese American. This
41:58
Speaker 2: unification under one label might offer protection.
42:02
Speaker 1: That was the thought.
42:03
Speaker 2: Asian American was also a way to ditch derogatory terms
42:06
Speaker 2: given by society in a way to self define. And
42:10
Speaker 2: then we come to the murder of a Chinese American,
42:13
Speaker 2: Vincent Chin in nineteen eighty two, and this murder increased
42:17
Speaker 2: the feeling that there needed to be a coalition. Chin
42:21
Speaker 2: was beaten to death by white auto workers unhappy with
42:23
Speaker 2: competition from Japanese auto companies.
42:27
Speaker 3: Yeah and his killers were sentenced to probation and fined
42:31
Speaker 3: two thousand dollars. And when that happened, protesters Martian cities
42:35
Speaker 3: across the country, giving rise to this new Pian Asian
42:39
Speaker 3: identity and unity that was forged by the realization that
42:42
Speaker 3: of Chin, who was the son of Chinese immigrants, could
42:45
Speaker 3: be killed because of Japanese auto imports. Maybe being Asian
42:50
Speaker 3: American and being able to be mistaken for other groups
42:54
Speaker 3: by white people and other Americans had consequences, and that
43:00
Speaker 3: kind of misconception shapes the racial experiences of so many
43:03
Speaker 3: Asian Americans. I mean, if you look at the experiences
43:06
Speaker 3: of Sick Americans who follow a South Asian religion that's
43:09
Speaker 3: distinct from Hinduism and Islam, there is a long history
43:13
Speaker 3: of hate crimes against Stick Americans the United States, often
43:16
Speaker 3: because white racists are mistaking them from Muslims or otherwise
43:20
Speaker 3: demonizing their faith. But this idea that Asian American is
43:24
Speaker 3: such a huge over a large category. It is that
43:28
Speaker 3: way sometimes because if I'm able to be mistaken for
43:32
Speaker 3: someone else, that means that I already have a vested
43:35
Speaker 3: interest in how the other group gets treated. And I
43:38
Speaker 3: think that's how this kind of unity gets formed.
43:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was meant to be that way. But
43:48
Speaker 1: if we look at.
43:50
Speaker 2: South Asians, Asian Americans has frequently left out people from
43:55
Speaker 2: South Asia, or at least in the minds of people
43:59
Speaker 2: who might use that term. So that comes to the
44:02
Speaker 2: question of who gets the label of Asian American. As
44:06
Speaker 2: the author of this Washington Post piece, Sonya Raw points out,
44:10
Speaker 2: when describing actors John Cho or Constance Wu, the media
44:14
Speaker 2: typically uses Asian Americans, whereas actors like Mindy Kaling or
44:18
Speaker 2: Azizan Sorry are described differently.
44:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the term Asian American also includes Pacific Islanders
44:24
Speaker 3: sometimes or native Hawaiians, and many Central Asians like people
44:27
Speaker 3: from Kazakhstan or Afghanistan, and Southwest Asians like people from
44:31
Speaker 3: parts of the Middle East. So it for this huge
44:34
Speaker 3: group of people with so many different histories and languages
44:37
Speaker 3: and cultures that you know, don't have representation in so
44:41
Speaker 3: many places. And you see many people refer to themselves
44:44
Speaker 3: by their ethnicity rather than by Asian Americans. So I
44:47
Speaker 3: will call myself Anian American most of the time, not
44:49
Speaker 3: Asian American, because I mean, what does that even mean?
44:52
Speaker 1: Sometimes right exactly.
44:56
Speaker 2: And another another piece of this conversation and kind of
44:59
Speaker 2: this fragmentation of the Asian American identity is affirmative action,
45:05
Speaker 2: which has been in the news a lot lately, and
45:07
Speaker 2: August twenty eighteen, the Department of Justice came out on
45:11
Speaker 2: the side of a group of Asian students that were
45:13
Speaker 2: suing Harvard for racial discrimination during the admissions process. So
45:18
Speaker 2: Harvard University for our international listeners. From the student's legal filing,
45:24
Speaker 2: the process quote significantly disadvantages Asian American applicants compared to
45:28
Speaker 2: applicants of other racial groups. Worth pointing out the person
45:33
Speaker 2: who leads the organization suing Harvard, Edward Blum, has multiple
45:37
Speaker 2: similar lawsuits against other schools, but on behalf of white
45:41
Speaker 2: students and just a really quick aside, really really really quick.
45:46
Speaker 2: The term affirmative action first appeared in terms of a
45:49
Speaker 2: US policy in nineteen thirty five with the National Labor
45:53
Speaker 2: Relations Act. This act primarily allowed workers to unionize freely
45:58
Speaker 2: and without fear. If an employer was found in non
46:01
Speaker 2: compliance firing an employee o reunionizing, the employee would be
46:05
Speaker 2: rehired and or be otherwise compensated via affirmative action. President
46:10
Speaker 2: FDR's Secretary of the Interior extended it, establishing a fixed
46:14
Speaker 2: percentage of African American employees for the Public Works Administration.
46:19
Speaker 2: A lot of local institutions refused to obey JFK's executive
46:24
Speaker 2: ordered ten nine to five demanded government contractors quote take
46:28
Speaker 2: affirmative action to achieve non discrimination. Affirmative action was meant
46:34
Speaker 2: to acknowledge how the inequalities and injustices of the past
46:37
Speaker 2: still existed and continued to impact the prospects of African Americans.
46:42
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty seven, it was also used as an
46:45
Speaker 2: argument to ban discrimination on the basis of sex. In
46:49
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, the Supreme Court here's the first case
46:51
Speaker 2: of reverse discrimination made by a white man who believed
46:55
Speaker 2: he would have gotten into his university of choice if
46:58
Speaker 2: he had been a minority.
47:00
Speaker 1: The case.
47:01
Speaker 2: In the nineties, Californians past California Civil Rights Initiative are
47:05
Speaker 2: Prop two nine. This initiative did away with affirmative action
47:09
Speaker 2: in the realm of education. It passed in nineteen ninety six,
47:13
Speaker 2: and between nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety eight, admissions
47:16
Speaker 2: to Berkeley and UCLA dropped by fifty nine percent for
47:20
Speaker 2: African Americans. Several other states follow suit, but two more
47:24
Speaker 2: cases brought to the Supreme.
47:25
Speaker 1: Court have lost. Okay back to Harvard.
47:31
Speaker 2: This was the culmination of a couple of grievances this lawsuit.
47:35
Speaker 2: Harvard's own internal research division found that if the only
47:39
Speaker 2: factor considered was academic performance, forty three percent of the
47:42
Speaker 2: admitted class would be Asian. Now, if you introduce other
47:46
Speaker 2: consideration like athletics, legacies, extracurriculars, the number goes down to
47:52
Speaker 2: twenty six percent. When you add in demographics, the number
47:55
Speaker 2: drops to eighteen percent.
47:57
Speaker 3: And we should add that this particular lawsuit, which was
48:00
Speaker 3: filed by a Chinese American, has in particularly gotten a
48:02
Speaker 3: lot of support from Chinese American advocates and media and
48:08
Speaker 3: just across the country for many people who feel similarly
48:12
Speaker 3: to the plaintiff.
48:14
Speaker 2: Related have been a handful of lawsuits that have aligned
48:18
Speaker 2: white people and a specific group of Asian Americans. Two
48:22
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen lawsuits against Google alleged that the white male
48:26
Speaker 2: plaintiffs were being illegally discriminated against due to hiring quotas
48:29
Speaker 2: that favor females and non favored minorities. Both lawsuits included
48:34
Speaker 2: Caucasian and Asian males as those being discriminated against.
48:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's definitely a reality of proxipanity to whiteness
48:42
Speaker 3: that's going on here. That many Asians have benefitted from,
48:45
Speaker 3: and it's something that many other non white people, particularly
48:49
Speaker 3: those who identify as black, can't benefit from.
48:52
Speaker 2: And this isn't the first time a minority has been
48:55
Speaker 2: grouped together with the majority, in this case white people.
48:59
Speaker 2: Sociologists all this whitening. The term comes to us partly
49:03
Speaker 2: courtesy of a Portuguese phrase out of Brazil quote money whitens.
49:09
Speaker 2: Previous groups that were once considered as non white include
49:12
Speaker 2: the Irish and the Italians. And this involves a certain
49:17
Speaker 2: level of a rasure and cultural assimilation.
49:20
Speaker 3: And this affirmative action issue has really, you know, I
49:24
Speaker 3: think split the Asian American community of this country in
49:26
Speaker 3: so many different ways. And it's really important to note
49:29
Speaker 3: that a majority of Asian Americans support affirmative action. It
49:34
Speaker 3: has benefitted so many of Asian Americans' lives. The research
49:38
Speaker 3: group AAPI Data the stands for Asian American Pacific Islander Data,
49:43
Speaker 3: which is one of the few that to segregate data
49:45
Speaker 3: based on ethnicity. They found that a majority of most
49:48
Speaker 3: Asian ethnic groups support affirmative action, from eighty four percent
49:52
Speaker 3: support among Indian Americans the sixty four percent support among
49:56
Speaker 3: Chinese Americans and you know, there's lot of differences within
50:01
Speaker 3: those groups. So you know, less than half of Vietnamese Americans,
50:05
Speaker 3: by contrasts, support affirmative action, and that's tied to the
50:09
Speaker 3: fact that many American Vietnamese Americans lean Republican, which is
50:13
Speaker 3: also influenced by a history with communism and the Vietnam War.
50:17
Speaker 3: That's not unlike that of many Cuban Americans. So you know,
50:22
Speaker 3: again really important to remember that Asian Americans aren't a
50:24
Speaker 3: monolith both economically and politically.
50:28
Speaker 2: And the GOP has come out on the side of
50:32
Speaker 2: Asian Americans in the effort while Asian Americans like Chinese Americans,
50:37
Speaker 2: particularly in this case of this Harvard lawsuit, in the
50:40
Speaker 2: effort to end affirmative action for as you can imagine,
50:44
Speaker 2: the GOP has a different entirely political reasons, using the
50:47
Speaker 2: concerns of Asian Americans to help white Americans. The Republican
50:51
Speaker 2: Party is courting Asian Americans, and.
50:55
Speaker 3: You know, Asian Americans largely vote Democratic, with some notable
50:58
Speaker 3: exceptions which include Vietna Mes and Filipinos.
51:02
Speaker 2: And several articles I read have advised the Democratic Party
51:05
Speaker 2: to sound the alarm over this, to really pay attention
51:08
Speaker 2: to this issue.
51:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, many Asian Americans in different parts
51:12
Speaker 3: of the country have been politically apathetic in some places,
51:16
Speaker 3: you know, a lower than average turnout rates than compared
51:19
Speaker 3: with other minority groups. And the continuing evolution of Asian
51:24
Speaker 3: American political identity is definitely something to watch out for,
51:28
Speaker 3: I think as time goes on, and you know, I
51:31
Speaker 3: think the most important thing to remember out of all
51:34
Speaker 3: of this that we've talked about over the last hour
51:38
Speaker 3: or so is that Asian American identities extremely complicated and
51:42
Speaker 3: something that is still under construction, especially as our population
51:47
Speaker 3: grows and we become more visible in mainstream society and
51:50
Speaker 3: as things like affirmative action really take you know, have
51:55
Speaker 3: us take stock of what it is that we believe
51:57
Speaker 3: and what our histories are in this country. And there's
51:59
Speaker 3: not one prevailing narrative that explains what being Asian American is.
52:05
Speaker 2: Absolutely and as I was discussing with you when we
52:10
Speaker 2: were planning this, and as I kind of alluded to
52:12
Speaker 2: at the top, we don't learn about this stuff in
52:16
Speaker 2: the United States. A lot of this history was new
52:20
Speaker 2: to me and we just don't have this background, and
52:24
Speaker 2: it is so important when understanding where people come from
52:29
Speaker 2: and where they're going, and when we're talking about these
52:32
Speaker 2: two discordant Asian Americas, to me, it sounds like it
52:36
Speaker 2: is one the first wave has all this history, and
52:41
Speaker 2: then the second wave kind of doesn't get taught that
52:44
Speaker 2: when they're already in the United States, so they had
52:46
Speaker 2: a different experience, and to know all that stuff is
52:51
Speaker 2: good for all of us. I'm a big proponent, if
52:54
Speaker 2: you didn't know, I'm a big proponent of education and
52:58
Speaker 2: listening to other people and learning from other people's experiences.
53:02
Speaker 1: So this has been really valuable for me as well.
53:05
Speaker 3: Me too.
53:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so glad. I'm so glad that we got
53:09
Speaker 2: to do this and that you came on. Do you
53:11
Speaker 2: have any recommended reading from from Asian women or Asian
53:17
Speaker 2: people Asian American people.
53:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. I you know, one of the books that
53:21
Speaker 3: we mentioned earlier, I think is something that we turned
53:24
Speaker 3: to when we were reading this episode, The Making of
53:26
Speaker 3: Asian America, which is booked by Erica Lee. It came
53:28
Speaker 3: out a couple of years ago. It is very long
53:31
Speaker 3: and very detailed, but I think it does give a
53:34
Speaker 3: great overview of how Asian Americans came to this country,
53:39
Speaker 3: why we're here all that stuff, and you know, of course,
53:42
Speaker 3: like pop culture, we would be remiss if we didn't
53:44
Speaker 3: like throw shout outs to I think some of the
53:47
Speaker 3: famous Asian Americans out there. You know, from a Pirna Nonchala,
53:51
Speaker 3: who's like a hilarious comedian you should totally follow her
53:54
Speaker 3: on Twitter, to Asofmanvi, to Constance Woo, the actress in
54:00
Speaker 3: Crazy Witch Asians and Fresh off the Boat. And you
54:04
Speaker 3: know Hiro Murai who directed Atlanta the TV show, and
54:09
Speaker 3: who's just like a really wonderful artist and does a
54:13
Speaker 3: lot of music videos. Asian Americans all over the creative spheres.
54:18
Speaker 3: Watch out, yeah, nineteen.
54:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, watch out and support support their work. And speaking
54:27
Speaker 2: of where could the good listeners find you?
54:31
Speaker 3: You will find me online in the digital nightmare we
54:34
Speaker 3: call the Internet. Yes, you can find my work at
54:37
Speaker 3: Sonanbashi dot com or I write around Atlanta. If you
54:43
Speaker 3: live around here, please hit me up to say hey,
54:46
Speaker 3: and I may say hey back for sure.
54:50
Speaker 1: Oh a steady maybe I like that.
54:53
Speaker 3: Definite, definite. I'll hit you back in like three to
54:56
Speaker 3: five days.
54:57
Speaker 1: Perfect. I love it.
54:59
Speaker 2: Thank you so much much for joining us. I hope
55:01
Speaker 2: that you'll come back. This was such a delight having you.
55:04
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
55:05
Speaker 2: I totally will and for you listeners. If you would
55:08
Speaker 2: like to reach out to us, you can. Our email
55:10
Speaker 2: is mom Stuff atstuffworks dot com. You can find us
55:13
Speaker 2: on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts and on Instagram at
55:16
Speaker 2: stuff We've.
55:16
Speaker 1: Never Told You.
55:17
Speaker 2: Thanks as always to our producer Andrew Howard, and thanks
55:21
Speaker 2: to you for listening.