The Fighting 44s

28 Responses

#1

Ike

5:22 pm | Jul 20, 2007

“Emily-Sue has brown eyes, and she disappointed her mother when she was born.”

^^ broke my heart, and I don’t even like babies

#2

badwill

6:11 pm | Jul 20, 2007

An Indonesian lady married to a trashy white man once told me that if I marry a white girl, we would have beautiful baby like her little girl. She then showed me the picture of her little girl.

#3

Vahz

6:57 pm | Jul 20, 2007

Such a sad story.

#4

ampha

1:29 am | Jul 21, 2007

The last three posts have been really good. These are quintessential blog posts and I’m glad they got their own space, instead of being lost in a comment storm on a site like Reappropriate or even in the discussion boards here.

Great writing Dialectic.

#5

Scowl

1:30 am | Jul 21, 2007

Wow, when you address something, you really go all out. That’s like, more than all the features you put out last year!

Very skillfully written.

#6

vsoy

2:29 am | Jul 21, 2007

I’m hoping for brown eyes myself. I think I might freak out a little with blue ones because I’m not accustomed to seeing babies with blue eyes. But whatever it ends up with, it has.

I am really impressed by the tightrope you walked. You don’t want to say bad things about your cousin because you love her, but you didn’t water down what was troubling about her wish for blue eyes. Did she respond to your comment about brown eyes?

#7

Dialectic

2:49 am | Jul 21, 2007

Thanks, guys.

I haven’t told my cousin about this piece, nor will I. We did talk briefly about the importance of of her daughter being comfortable with her Chineseness, and the risks of isolation, and I think that’s good enough.

#8

cheesenips

8:04 am | Jul 21, 2007

Dialectic, you’re a careful, sensitive fellow.
Your drama major cousin had forgotten high school biology,
but you were kind enough not to
pedanticlly explain to her
how her dominant brown eye genes
would prevail over any gweilo’s recessive blue eye genes.

One,
Jane Elliot told me blue eyes are better than brown eyes:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Two,
I understand that your website requires ad revenue to sustain itself,
and that Google AdSense matches ads to your site’s content,
but do you really want to have that “Asians Meet Non-Asians - Asian Women and Men, this is your place to meet your non-asian match!”
advertisement above this post?

#9

Dialectic

4:20 pm | Jul 21, 2007

Hi cheesenips, welcome aboard.

It’s actually possible to have blue eyes come out of a brown-dominant pairing, because as I understand it, there could be a lot of weird genetic factors at play, but it’s super unlikely.

I know of a person who was born to two “fully” Taiwanese parents, and this dude was born looking white, with blonde hair, blue eyes, the whole works. The poor guy, when he moved to Canada, was placed in a regular class, and not ESL, simply because of the way he looked, even though he’d grown up his whole life in Taiwan and was Chinese (or perhaps Taiwanese, I don’t remember) “on the inside.” The University of British Columbia doctors’ best guess is that at some point, both sides of the family had intermingled with the Dutch, who colonized a while ago, and somehow these recessive genes flared up in a one in a million chance.

Oh and I totally admit I lied to my cousin, ’cause blue eyes are CLEARLY of a higher quality. They’re like pools of crystal clear water on a sunny Caribbean day. *sigh*

Lopan and I are aware of the web ad problem. We’ve actually blocked a TON of known WM/AF links, but the thing is, you can’t block by subject matter, and we can’t block everything. Additionally, ads match the subject matter of the site, and despite how EVERYONE seems to say IR is a dead horse and no one wants to read about it anymore, my latest pieces have given us a 500% jump in ad clicks, and we’ve gotten a bunch more traffic. People like drama and controversy, so don’t blame the media for everything, ’cause they’re just giving us what we want!

Besides, with the stance we’re taking, going out with white guys and gals is FINE and indeed ENCOURAGED for the sake of diversity and moving up that social ladder, as long as we’re not always going on about Asian pride and beauty and awesomeness

#10

Heli

1:54 am | Jul 22, 2007

“…. we wouldn’t elevate whites, denigrate ourselves, or worry about whether we’re sexually and personally worthy of others to nearly the same extent that we do now….”

First of all I read a lot of Dialetic’s articles and have tremendous respect for him but I really don’t agree on this particular point.

Why would I ever allow myself to denigrate or worry about my sexual attractiveness because of these perceived dating trends?

There are possibly a million things in this world everyday that would wreck havoc on my self-esteem if I allow them to. Whatever happened to taking control of my own self esteem instead of letting other’s dictate mine?

Sure you might be short, overweight or simply not that good looking, but
think about the handicaped, the blind, the soldier who got his face burnt out of his head in Iraq. If they allow the difficulties they encounter in their daily lives to get to them, they would never even get out of bed in the morning!

I am not questioning statistics. Sure more Asian girls date white guys, but that does not mean you can allow that fact to shake your confidence. Life is a marathon, if you allow a tiny thing like that to stop you from running, what happens if you get cancer, lose a leg or get paralyzed from the head down?

I know I am going to get flamed for this but I think a lot of the issues in IR discussions is about people projecting their own insecurities on trends which they could blame on their own personal failures.

#11

evil_FUX

3:22 am | Jul 22, 2007

Dude, people get upset for different reasons and at varying degrees. It’s perfectly alright, and it’s good that you don’t get as easily shaken up; not to mention trying to put some perspective. Yet for others it’s not as easy as it is for YOU.

#12

Scowl

3:34 am | Jul 22, 2007

Heli, I think you’re missing the point and talking about something else entirely.

When D says…

“If heterosexual white male patriarchy and what it did in the world were not so powerful, I think it would be fair to say that Asian-American women and men would be “out-dating” or “out-marrying” at similar rates, and that we wouldn’t elevate whites, denigrate ourselves, or worry about whether we’re sexually and personally worthy of others to nearly the same extent that we do now,”

…he is talking about the specific phenomenon of racial self-hate that exists in the AA community.

It’s not about, “oh, my life sucks because I’m fat, my life sucks because Asian women don’t want Asian men, etc.” It’s about the internalized racism that results from living in a white supremacist society.

If you’ll notice, he lists self-hate/internalized racism alongside the IR disparity as results of the history of white supremacy, rather than as a direct consequence of IR.

It’s not that Asian guys are having their confidence shaken by seeing Asian girls date out. It’s the fact that Asian American men AND women are growing up in a society that teaches them to hate being Asian.

#13

Dialectic

5:07 am | Jul 22, 2007

Hi Heli,

Welcome, and thanks for posting, I appreciate it!

Scowl’s post basically explains your concern. Forget even IR; I’m not talking about an obsession with IR ruining lives and self-esteem. As a matter of fact, we all know that a very small portion of the community is explicitly concerned with IR. The rest, particularly Asian males, probably have some inkling, at least in my experience, but really, it has no significant impact on their minds and lives.

I’m talking about self-esteem issues that arise in all minority groups. Because values in hetero white male society have until recently been largely hetero white male defined, any community that deviates from those values is going to have problems with their self-identities. It can be about images of beauty, confidence, how to express yourself, how you fit in, all that sort of thing. It’s been heavily explored, for example, in the black community: obvious examples are how white standards of beauty consider black norms ugly, how black kids perform worse in tests surrounded by white people in a white environment; how blacks are made to feel dumb and criminal.

In the Asian community, there are all sorts of self-esteem issues, of which the IR disparity is one manifestation. We know that the suicide rate broken down in females by race has Asian women at the highest. We know that there are a great deal of Asian women out there who want to look white. We know that there are a lot of Asian males out there who feel invisible and dismissed. We know that there is a schism in what constitutes “successful” behavior between the white and Asian populations. Asian males and females have to act one way with their families and in their communities (humble, worried about the collective good, well-behaved) and another in white society (proud, loudly confident, socially brash).

That’s what I’m talking about, not how IR is some big handicapping awesome issue. It’s just one of the results of living in a hetero white male dominated world.

#14

Heli

1:43 pm | Jul 22, 2007

“We know that there are a great deal of Asian women out there who want to look white. We know that there are a lot of Asian males out there who feel invisible and dismissed. We know that there is a schism in what constitutes “successful” behavior between the white and Asian populations. Asian males and females have to act one way with their families and in their communities (humble, worried about the collective good, well-behaved) and another in white society (proud, loudly confident, socially brash).”

I think if you are talking about Asians in America this is a price of immigrating here. After all, white people are the majority in this country and for a minority group like us to emigrate from our home countries to here, changes to and clashes with our native mentality and our traditional culture are inevitable. That is what we sacrifice for coming to a country with a predominantly Western culture. In exchange we get reasonably good health care, increased opportunities for work and a higher standard of living than we would have had in our home country.

The Chinese have a saying called “ru xiang sui su”, which basically means if in Rome do as the Romans do. I think identity issues always emerge when people of different cultures have to live side by side. The cultural identity of the dominant group will always prevail in the end.

One example would be the Manchus in the Qing dynasty. When the Manchus first invaded China, they were a culture very distinct from Chinese, but as they started ruling China, they started to adopt Chinese customs and Chinese traditions, even though they were the emperors!

I think the same applies to us. We are here in America, our cultural heritage is a collateral on our immigration. In order for us to be successful here in America we actually have to force ourselves to integrate into the native Western culture. Otherwise Asian Americans will always remain at the fringe of society, isolated by our distinct cultures as opposed to moving up in the social ladder and becoming leaders and managers of people.

I understand the desire to put all of this in a racist context but let’s try to resist that. We can call America a white supremacist society and feel oppressed by it, and it is probably true to a certain extent. We can view Western civilization as hostile to our own culture, which is also true to a certain extent ( simply look at how Harry Potter, a literature of distinct Western origin, is becoming the number literature for the whole world, even in Asian countries ).

But really what does all that thought do except make us feel helpless as opposed to empowering? How are Asians Americans ever going to start becoming leaders and deal makers with all that negativity in mind?

Hope that clarifies things….

#15

Dialectic

4:11 pm | Jul 22, 2007

Heli, I appreciate your thoughts and the spirit in which you give them; I think you’re missing my point.

I support integration. I understand what happens when one immigrates, and the results of living among a majority that is not you, and the little and big biases that come out. I am also very aware of the risk of a culture of victimization which can emerge in minority groups; you see this in advocate groups everywhere.

You speak as though one has a choice, Heli. You speak as though the problem is awareness and obsession with these issues. I’m not talking about that at all. That is, in anything, a “meta-problem,” a problem with a problem.

We’re saying something very simple here: you try to integrate with a majority population, one which has colonized every area on Earth, you’re going to have problems. And if you don’t deal with these problems, they’ll get worse, and you’ll find yourself in a bad place.

I agree with the general spirit of the notion of being positive, not focusing on the bad, and going out and getting what you want. That’s beside the point here.

#16

Dimeron

9:58 am | Jul 23, 2007

Heli, the problem is that regardless how well Asians integrate, or how “white wash” they become, we are still different. You can’t change your skin colour, or your facial structure.

It goes beyond culture and into the realms of genetics, there are many Asians who have adopted perfectly fine into the western culture, but will always be treated differently simply because we look different from the typical white men and women. You can change your habits and life style, but you can’t change your genetics.

Perhaps this is why Jenny and others like her marries white men, the desire to fit in and be part of the power structure can be very strong, and sometimes we carry our wishes into our children.

#17

Heli

12:30 am | Jul 26, 2007

To Dialetic:

Again I definitely agree that there are problems when a minority integrates with a majority population. However, I am skeptical as to how much of these problems are relevant to us Asians. In other words, how many of these problems are actually holding us back from being successful?

For instance:

1. Are Asians pulled over by the police because they are driving Mercedes?
2. Are Asians shot at by the police because they pulled out a black wallet?
3. Are Asians viewed as violent and crime prone?

I would say no to the best of my knowledge. Most Americans I know view Asians as family-oriented, peaceful and hardworking. Personally I see these as positive stereotypes, because they actually make it easier for me to move in this society.

True, there are problems that are holding Asians back in certain fields. For instance there are not many roles for Asian males outside of martial arts, so it is hard for an Asian male actor to make it big.

But in many other fields, we truly don’t have much to complain about in terms of advancement. Am I saying the glass ceiling does not exist? Of course not, but then again, many Asian Americans have been governors, news anchors, entrepreneurs and CEO, so it is not unbreakable either.

But when we let the little irritations like IR take control of our mentality, we set ourselves back.

To Dimeron:

Okay I guess I have not been very clear. My views on integration are very practical. You talk to white people and learn their culture because you want to network and do business with them. If being “white-washed” will give me an edge in making a deal or managing a bunch of Americans, I am all for it. Why should I worry if I am not recognized as truly American? The question we should ask ourselves is not how we can be truly American, but what is the level of integration required to make something of ourselves.

Personally I think we have many good examples of Asian Americans who have made something of themselves in this country. Ditch the “Uncle Tom” mentality, look around, and LEARN from these guys. LEARN the way they swim in this white society.

#18

Kuroyama

6:05 am | Aug 05, 2007

Heli

Speaking as a Black American Male who comes from a middle class background with a solid educational background, I would argue that your attitude is less one of Asian intergration, and more one of Asian submission.

Im not suggesting that you wear your “Asian-ness” on your sleeve, but I would suggest that you understand this one thing. It doesnt matter what schools youve gone to, how well you pronounce your English, what model Benz you drive, or where you choose to live. Most people of non-color will look at you and presume you to:

1) Know martial arts, or someone who does.
2) Know a second language.
3) Not be of American birth regardless of how many generations ago your family may have moved here.

My suggestion to you would be to understand the dominant culture, but remember to bring your own identity to the table.

#19

PHOENIX88

12:40 am | Nov 18, 2007

Kuroyama wrote
“Speaking as a Black American Male who comes from a middle class background with a solid educational background, I would argue that your attitude is less one of Asian intergration, and more one of Asian submission.

Im not suggesting that you wear your “Asian-ness” on your sleeve, but I would suggest that you understand this one thing. It doesnt matter what schools youve gone to, how well you pronounce your English, what model Benz you drive, or where you choose to live. Most people of non-color will look at you and presume you to:

1) Know martial arts, or someone who does.
2) Know a second language.
3) Not be of American birth regardless of how many generations ago your family may have moved here.

My suggestion to you would be to understand the dominant culture, but remember to bring your own identity to the table”

I totally agree!

#20

Xian

12:00 am | Nov 19, 2007

Yeah, I think it’s interesting but quite dangerous to play the “we don’t have as bad as _______ minority group” game.

Racial oppression does not originate in some inherent, organic differences in phenotypes. It comes from a culture of hate that permeates ethnic majority culture. That is the underlying cause of these various manifestations. The manifestations vary in detail and magnitude in different societal contexts and depending on the groups they take, but that’s not the point.

To say, “We don’t get shot by the police as often” is really no different from the “You should count your blessings–you would have been lynched for saying that a century ago…” rationalization that aversive racists often use.

By failing to compare to the ethnically privileged group, it exhibits a core belief in a system of inequality. “Less unequal” that this group or that era is still “unequal” and that’s the only comparison that should matter.

I don’t want to be treated better than awful. I want to have every equal opportunity and I want the same for everyone on the planet.

#21

nunyabiz

7:49 am | Feb 02, 2008

Xian, I see your point and agree that no group should be told not to complain when it is still lacking in some way. However, I think group comparisons do have a place, depending on when and why the comparison is made. It’s not as if it’s untrue that some groups have it worse than others, and one of the reasons why that could be important to mention is to see how, for example, whites often use Asians as accomplices in the oppression of other groups or how sometimes whites aren’t even needed for Asians to act as oppressors. Particularly when whites use Asians, the relative privilege to blacks that Asians have allows Asians to oppress blacks without even realizing it or sometimes do but agree with the oppression. The fact that so many Asians exalt whiteness, as discussed here, can translate to exalting whiteness to the point of not only sublimating self–as mentioned by Phoenix88–but also anything/anyone else non-white. The Asian intermediary status and continual rise in society, thus, depends a lot on other groups being treated worse.

#22

nommosdream

11:28 pm | Feb 07, 2008

Brown eyes are nature’s favorite.

#23

SamuraiJack

10:13 am | Apr 02, 2008

Heli is an apologist.

“But when we let the little irritations like IR take control of our mentality, we set ourselves back.”

Little irritation? Obviously Heli don’t know the causes of IR, and what that means as a whole.

First of all, it’s not IR, it’s the imbalance. When AFs feel that AMs are less attractive than WMs, what does that say about their mindset? It shows that we view ourselves as inferior. It seems like Heli feels that bending over for YT is acceptable and equality is an unachievable goal.

#24

elduderino

6:50 pm | Jun 18, 2008

I really lost all sympathy for you when you started attacking Asian females who date outside their race. The answer to this problem is not to attack Asian Females and get them to date whites less but for Asian men to date outside their race MORE. We live in a multicultural society. Interracial dating should be encouraged not despised. Racism against Asian men in America is definitely a problem but the answer is to attack that racism, not lash out at Asian women who date interracially.

Maybe it would help break some of these stereotypes if more Asian men did more to assimilate or at least hang out with people from other backgrounds. I went to UCLA, where Asians outnumber white people, and yet there were still two Asian-only fraternities and sororities. Seems pretty unnecessary to isolate/self-segregate yourselves like that at a school where you are the majority group. In my fraternity we had at least a dozen or so Asian guys and they dated tons of white girls (along with latina and black girls). So if you are an asian guy and you can only count the number of non-asian friends you have on one hand maybe you should try hanging out with a more multicultural group of people instead of self-segregating yourselves and complaining about negative stereotypes about yourselves. Maybe that’s easier for me to say because I grew up in the Bay Area and live in California, I dunno.

#25

Dialectic

10:24 pm | Jun 18, 2008

I’m not sure how you came to your conclusion, but we don’t attack Asian females who date “outside the race.” In fact, we’re totally fine with it, and we appreciate the existence of interracial relationships. You seem to have completely missed our point in this discussion. Please refer to my post on interracial dating for more.

Also, your post indicates that you’re not all that aware of the complex social, economic, political, etc. factors which figure into minority experiences, Asian or otherwise. You’re going to have to learn a bit more before you enter the discussion in a meaningful way.

#26

Xian

12:29 am | Jun 19, 2008

There were only two Asian only greeks at UCLA? WTF? There were like twenty white-only greeks at UIUC, so I’m not sure what type of crazy logic that dude is applying.

#27

jaehwan

11:50 am | Jun 19, 2008

elduderino, I don’t see anyone attacking anyone else. We just question the system, and, as D mentions, the political, economic, and social factors that maintain the system. If you like white girls, go ahead and knock yourself out. But just as you are free to go after white girls, people are also free to question a system that assigns different values to different races.

And as xian implies, your logic of Asian vs. white fraternities doesn’t apply because of the history of racial stratification of power. It does make a difference.

#28

analogisnumberone

6:04 pm | Jul 03, 2008

There’s a lot of racism in that women’s experience with being exclusively with white men her entire life. Unfortunately, for now, at least, she’s the proverbial house nigger that Malcom X described in his speeches. Maybe there’s hope for her yet, but not in the near future.