Asian America, The Christian Church, and Racism, part 2
No Responses | Leave a Comment »
In reference to a previous post…
Life for me has been busy the past few days, but my own inattention thankfully hasn’t prevented some good discussions about the author I mentioned previously. Some good things have been written both on Camy Tang’s blog and at Next Gener.Asian Church. I highly recommend you visit and read up, especially the comments of Al Hsu, thecuttingtruth, David Park, and other Asian American Christian bloggers.
In any case, the issue of stereotypes continues to pervade in the Asian American community for a lot of reasons, but in my opinion I believe that two major reasons are:
- Invisible, inscrutable, inhuman. The lack of a strong Asian American influence in creation of ideas in popular culture - television, movies, music, and even books. With so few voices and representation in popular culture, every single instance becomes that much more powerful because of scarcity. A single image of a white homeless person on television is instantly countered by the millions of others of images depicting white people as “normal”. A single image of a bumbling, inept Chinese delivery man is countered by… nothing else but more images of bumbling, inept, Chinese delivery men. Or karate-chopping idiots. Or fortune-cookie spouting old geezers.
Yes, it’s true that stereotypes used in satirical comedy can be used as a means to subvert the stereotype - the work of comedians like Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle is testament to this. However, in the case of stereotypes of Asian Americans, the stereotype is not subverted or dismantled - rather, it is reinforced and used to get a cheap laugh at the expense of someone’s humanity.
- Self-hate, self-loathing, racist love. Self-hate within the Asian American community itself to the point where many willingly submit (and even embrace!) the stereotypes imposed upon it by an Western, white, patriarchal culture. This is true both of men and women in the Asian American community, though the way it plays out can be drastically different.
The perpetually hot-button issue within the Asian American community itself is the issue of “sell-outs”, Asian Americans who exploit an exotic-ification and dumbing down of their own culture for their own personal gain / profit (instead of Uncle Toms… we have Auntie Amy Tans). For younger people, the issue of “sell-outs” manifests in the dating disparity between Asian American men versus Asian American females, and it’s been written about extensively.
On a personal note: isn’t odd that just about every Asian American knows of AT LEAST one Asian American person (almost always a woman, sad to say) who refuses to date anybody who is Asian? Or even more extreme… exclusively dates only white men? (usual BS excuses for this behavior include: “Asian men are all boring and unemotional”; “Asian men are all predictable and not spontaneous”; “Asian men are all short, unattractive, and unathletic”; “Dating an Asian man would be the same as dating my father or brother”.)
But back to self-hate and its products in the Asian American community.
Pioneering Asian American author, writer, and critic Frank Chin himself notes:
“With rare exceptions, all that has been published in this country by ‘Asian Americans’ writing about themselves has been white, racist propaganda.“
…
What’s an Asian American Christian to do?
It’s a statement of the obvious, but juggling one’s identity between being ethnically Asian and an American citizen is hard enough; throwing in Christian identity makes it even more complicated. How can the need for encouraging people in our community be balanced with our legitimate right to critique the things that we see that are wrong? Where is the happy medium?
I’m of the opinion that the Asian American Christian community hasn’t been critical of itself enough in addressing the challenges of our unique identities. The Asian American Christian community needs to hold itself to high standards, both in the ways that we express our ethnic identity, and the way that we live out our faith.
Too often there’s the claim that recognizing our Asian-ness is a “distraction” from focusing on our Christianity when the reality is this: There are those within the Christian community who mistake conformity with white American cultural norms (English Only… freedom versus tyranny, anyone?) with conformity to the life Jesus Christ called us to - a life of sacrifice, love, hope, and TRUTH.
God granted Asian American Christians their Asian identity for a good reason… and it’s not solely for starring in poorly written skits. The Asian American Christian community could do better to realize that and not be ashamed of being “yellow.”
(post is also mirrored here.)
Leave a Comment »
Share
Entries (RSS)
