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This entry was not prompted by this 8asian.com article.

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Hello BlAAAg,

I’m Belle, former (current?) co-Event Adviser of AAA, throwing random entries onto BlAAAG, currently at University of Hong Kong (following in the footsteps of our former Event Adviser, Annie). I may be making snarky remarks as an Asian American expat in Hong Kong, but first, this entire time has been really confusing, and I’m having the identity crisis that never really hit me during puberty.

On face value (prima facie!), Hong Kong seems to have two groups of people: expats and locals. Expats may be seen as ranging from non-Chinese people who were born in Hong Kong to migrant domestic workers and i-bankers to international students at university for the semester. Locals are generally seen (not defined) as Chinese people in Hong Kong; I make this “not defined” caveat because now knowing more about Hong Kong, it is very clear that HK identity is as muddled as the American identity. How do those non-Chinese who grew up in Hong Kong see their own identities? Are Mainlanders who migrate/immigrate to HK Hongkongers? If not, can they claim the identity? How long must they live in HK before becoming Hongkongers? Are Mainlanders whose parents’ permanent residency in HK grants them HK permanent residency make them Hongkongers? What I am having the hardest time grasping is where do I fit into all of this: What about HK-Chinese-Americans/British/Canadians/etc.?

I’m technically an expat. I’ve been an American all my life. I’ve never been to China or Hong Kong before studying here (it is my first time out of the U.S. and it slightly disappoints me that I can’t use my “never been there, can’t go back” line anymore). My English is far superior to my Cantonese, and my written Chinese and Pǔtōnghuà skills are basically non-existent. Honestly, with the minimal language training I’ve had, the only reason why I’m surviving in Hong Kong is the English language the Brits left behind. But no matter how American I may be (whatever “American” means), hardly anyone will believe I’m not an HKer at first glance. Sure, the second I open my mouth and my terribly accented (I’ve been told) Cantonese comes out, the cashier may know I’m a foreigner, but without that badge, they don’t believe my expat-ness. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not proud of my terrible Cantonese - I wish I spoke the language flawlessly, but my Cantonese has turned into a symbol of my foreigner identity here.

I feel that I am walking in the gray space between the expat world and local world. Let me explain. I believe that on an individual level, someone like me, Asian on the outside and (Asian-)American on the inside, would have no problem traveling in the expat world and local world: I can enjoy Soho (expat capital) as much as Shatin or Wan Chai. But what gray space I am speaking of is how society views me, how other people view me and accept me into their world. It seems like I will never be able to fully assimilate into the expat world, as I have an Asian face, but I would never be accepted into the local culture either because I have a foreign concept of the world with a language deficiency to boot. The constant microaggressions come from both sides: the looks that ask: why is this Chinese girl pretending she fits in with us or pretending she’s an expat, how come she can’t speak Chinese even though she is Chinese, how come she can speak Cantonese even though she’s American, why does she choose to speak English? With these preconceived notions, it seems that I can’t exactly fit into one or the other groups. If I am not welcome in either group, I am not sure where I am supposed to fit in.

I’m not sure what conclusions I wanted to draw from this reflection. After all, my exploration or aimlessly wandering in this gray space is nothing compared to the everyday and institutional discrimination non-Chinese people face, especially the discrimination endured by Filipina, Thai, Indonesian domestic workers. I do not know if other East Asian Americans are facing the same microaggressions or have the same thoughts. I guess what I’m wondering is where am I supposed to fit in? Must I prove to everyone in that group (if it’s not the gray area) every time of why I identify with them? But why should I have to? How do I avoid the hostility (from both sides)? Or maybe, do I have the best of both worlds: the mobility to move around, the privilege of acting as an in between, etc.?

P.S. Fun Facts

Fun Fact 1: In the 1800s, free-state California used Hong Kong as an example of why Chinese immigration should be limited. During that time, Hong Kong Chinese still employed muitsais (young girls bought by wealthy families to first, serve the family, and then usually, becoming a concubine to a son of the family). California implored that if the British could not stop Chinese people from owning slaves, how will California limit slavery when the Chinese immigrate with their muitsais?

Fun Fact 2: Some American universities (but not Columbia) warn their students not to participate in or observe Hong Kong protests, due to possible future ramifications. Never mind the fact Hong Kong Basic Law (mini-constitution) grants the right to protest Hong Kong affairs, and most protests in Hong Kong are state-sanctioned (all protests must have a permit from the government in order to proceed).

Fun Fact 3: Hong Kong, along with Mainland, participated in an Anti-American boycott in the 1905 to protest the unfair treatment of a Chinese immigrant in Massachusetts. After immigration officials raided a home of many immigrants, they arrested a man who was living in the U.S. legally without allowing him to show them his proper paperwork. He was later deported due to this incident. The man’s suicide in front of the American consulate in Shanghai sparked the protest.

Tags: firstworldproblems, firstworldguilt

I've been reflecting on my time here at Columbia, thinking about the existence of Asian American ideas and activism on this campus, and the effectiveness of the Columbia University Asian American Alliance as a whole. Do we base effectiveness on awareness, education, community service, activism, how many people show up to our events, getting a large membership? It's always easy to say an organization doesn't do enough, but it's also so easy to say that an organization can only do so much with the resources it has. Many AAA members are doing wonderful things, including picketing at Saigon Grill against sweatshop labor and exploitation, creating Asian American sexuality workshops, and creating teach-ins on Asian American Studies.

But the fact is that people just don't know about Asian American issues.

Last weekend (February 18th to 20th), I attended the 2011 ECAASU at UMass-Amherst, and while I met some wonderful new friends, the underlying messages that I took away from those two days were conflicting. As many of you might have heard, ECAASU has been taking large sponsorships from the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, CIA, and TSA. While, understandably, a conference as large as this needs this level of funding to function, the way in which the conference was ultimately carried out bothered me.

Grassroots organizations that were born out of oppression have been historically known to disregard military sponsorship in the name of ideology (citation needed but I do not have). And the history of ECAASU, as relayed by the poignant speech made by Professor Vijay Prashad, is embedded in minority empowerment and suck it to the big man attitude (citation also needed that I do not have). An organization such as this should not be accepting money from an oppressive institution such as that of the American military that ignite wars around the world. But, perhaps, as argued by many, it is time we allow military involvement, for inclusion of the brave men and women who fought so that we can have this discussion in the first place. Inclusion, as stated by the ECAASU national board, is what ECAASU strives to achieve.

Inclusion is a valid point, and I am far from wanting to exclude the participation of the Asian American brothers and sisters who serve in the military to protect the freedom and democracy that we take for granted. However, the argument here is not about the individual military personnels, but the ideological conflicts between the oppressive military and a grassroots campaign born because we were just so fed up with oppression.

I agree that the military establishes our place in our current global society. Without the military, we as Americans would not be enjoying the privileges that we so take for granted. I do not want to antagonize the brave men and women who risk their lives daily so that I can be blogging right now. I understand why such a large chunk (perhaps way too large of a chunk) of our national budget should go to the military. (Though, if I might add, the military really needs to stop throwing money away at dictators and political conflicts we have no right to partake in.) The military is as far from perfect as our society is from equality, but as things are today, I appreciate our leverage, I appreciate that we can have these conversations and discussions and accusations against our military.

However, there is a right time and right place for everything. A weekend that was suppose to be about Asian American  empowerment, fight against oppression, and the progression of the AA movement, became a recruitement camp for the Navy and Coast Guard. A ceremony that was suppose to teach young Asian Americans about how they can become leaders in their own right, how they can help to mobilize the movement, became about how as a Coast Guard, you will have amazing stories to tell your grandchildren. Perhaps that was not the intended result the ECAASU planning board had wanted, but that does not change how that weekend played out.

I want to conclude by thanking our men and women in uniform for their dedication and sacrifice. They are our heroes, no matter how we look at it. As the older sister of a teenager brother who wanted to join the Marines because he believed it was a great way of paying for college, I want to save the discussion of the relationship between the military and American minorities for a later time. For now, I am glad we are now having serious discussions about corporate/military sponsorships.

Thank you all for stopping by! Wishing you all a great new RABBIT year!

Hey all! This is former co-editor David back from the dead.

This week, I started the Microaggressions tumblr with former Blaaager Vivian. We originally wanted to collect the little incidents and anecdotes in our lives that make our Asian American and intersected experiences marginalized. Then we had the idea to put it up on tumblr and collect submissions.

An email and a Twitter account later, this was born. We've had shoutouts on Jezebel and Racialicious. And now, our very own Asian American Alliance blog.

Please send it to your friends and loved ones! Submit posts you have encountered yourself!

Not that you should ever read Bwog comments, since they are as informative and placating as SFGate comments, but here is one on the Town Hall on Barnard's recognition of sororities:

Anonymous

Two arguments:

1)
Clearly, IGC shouldn’t get money or be allowed to distribute money for members of sororities who are Barnard students and do not pay the appropriate fees.

If this means that sororities stop allowing Barnard students, so be it.
If this means Barnard starts charging students more for the fund, so be it.

2)
As a male CC student, I would only be okay with my money funding Barnard girls if I had received my quota of drunk Barnard-sorority sister sex. But I haven’t. So see above.

Anonymous
Sad, Sad, Sad Asian

September has failed to pass the Dream Act in Congress. The Dream Act is legislation that would have enabled children who were brought to the United States by their illegal parents to gain a path to citizenship if they entered college or the military after high school. Many of these children have grown up accustomed to calling the U.S their home. It just doesn't make any sense to deport 'Americans' out to a country foreign to them, losing valuable contributing citizens of our society. As an immigrant myself, I am disappointed at the turn out of this long awaited legislation.

Why is there such a bitter anti-immigrant sentiment amongst our legislative sectors? Have we forgotten that even the Forefathers that carved the backbones of the American Constitution were descendants of immigrants? Have we forgotten that outside of the rightful Native Americans that are wrongfully quarantined in reservations we are all descendants of immigrants? Immigrants work backbreaking hours day in and day out, tending to crop fields, cleaning your toilets, working in unruly conditions for meager wages, at jobs Americans find dirty and degrading. How are they taking YOUR jobs.

Has America gone insane?

Judge Blocks Parts of Arizona's Immigration Law (NY Times)
The big news of the day. Any celebrating is of course, a bit premature - what is horrible about SB 1070 is not just its content but that it merely formalizes a lot of practices and anti-immigrant, anti-Latino/a sentiment that has been ongoing and will continue for quite some time.

Afghan War Diary, 2004 - 2010 (WikiLeaks)
An overwhelming amount of classified information relating to the current war in Afghanistan. The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel all have their own features analyzing the leak. If you are generally terribly pessimistic about US military operations there won't be a whole lot to surprise you but it's still a fascinating read. Just as fascinating is WikiLeaks as an organization itself - the New Yorker has an excellent profile on its founder Julian Assange. This is also a good companion to the domestically focused Top Secret America feature over at the Washington Post from last week.

Essence Hires White Fashion Director, Leaves Loyal Readers Asking Why (Clutch Magazine)
I don't have much to add, other than that it's depressing that I should even have to say that the idea of a "post-racial" America is ridiculous, but here we are again.

Court's Leniency Ruling Is Too Late for Deportees (NY Times)
Given AAA's involvement with the Qing Wu case (big what up to Annie and Belle!) this article sounds pretty familiar. This quote struck me in particular though - "the Obama administration...is on track to deport a record 400,000 people this fiscal year."

There's been a lot of things to get angry, upset, and disturbed by recently (actually, always), but I figured I'd ease into blogging with a slightly more accessible topic.

APA media representation increasingly seems to be the defining cause for mainstream, neoliberal APA youth activism; a development that I'm not exactly thrilled by. Yes, yes, the whitewashing of The Last Airbender is frustrating, but when the battle lines are drawn this narrowly it becomes easy to slip into highly problematic positive/negative, good/bad image binaries that tend to exclude just as much as they include. It causes victories to be as narrowly defined as the kid in Up and the latest role John Cho is cast in. There's a lot more to be said about this, but I'll save that for a more lengthy, theoretical post later on.

Despite all of my serious misgivings with media representation politics, I still can't help but smile at this quote from a recent post by Atlantic blogger and Vassar professor Hua Hsu on basketball player Jeremy Lin and the upcoming reality show K-Town:

As someone who grew up seeing very few Asian Americans on television, I still find myself mystified, even thrilled, whenever I come across one, even if my views on media representation have softened. There's something irrationally and inexplicably bemusing about these moments.

I was at the bank today when a woman barged through the doors wailing. Be it that I live in a Chinese bubble, everyone in the bank, the tellers, managers, customers, were all Chinese [American]. The woman had apparently withdrawn 2300 dollars in cash from Chase bank and wanted to transfer it to another bank. She left the vicinity and returned thereafter because the teller at the other bank claimed that the bills in her hands were counterfeit. The woman was frantic and threatening the teller at Chase that she'd call the police. The teller, oblivious to the woman in front of her, continued with her work and pointed her towards the manager. The customers on the line, including myself, were shaken. How can a big brand name bank give out fake bills? The woman approached the bank manager, and was ignored. The manager continued with her phone call and did not move from her seat even after she had hung up, completely ignoring the woman waiting in front of her desk. The woman began to scream, yelling injustices in two Chinese dialects. Go ahead, call the cops, the manager said, not once raising her voice.

I was appalled and stared at the scenario before leaving the bank. I forget sometimes how different things function in Brooklyn, compared to the comfortable Upper West Side (Manhattan) services that I've grown to spoil myself with while away at school. I obviously do not know the whole story, and my portrayal of the events may or may not have been accurate, but it reminds me of how differently we treat one another because of our shared heritage, or lack thereof. In this case, it seems in my neighborhood at least, Asians treat "Americans" much more respectfully than their fellow Asians. In restaurants, banks, bookstores, and all kinds of shops, I've witness the odd tendencies and injustices that Asians commit against one another. The bank manager knew the customer could not speak English, and regardless of her incessant threats that she'll dial 911, we all know the woman would not have been able to communicate her woes to the operator. The manager was right that nothing can be done about the bills. The woman had left the bank and no one knew if she could have swapped the fifties before returning. However, the complete lack of professionalism the manager displayed makes my head drop in agony. Had this woman been an "American," would the manager have acted differently? Had this woman known English, would the manager at least have the decency to glance at the complaint. Why is it that when Asian Americans provide service to fellow Asian(s) [Americans], we observe such a discrepancy? Why do we kiss-ass whites while downplaying others?

I've always hated it when people tell me that Asian Americans lack the unity that is necessary for a movement. I resented it because a part of me knew it was true. Behind the model minority myths, and the stereotypes, we're so torn between those [Asian Americans] who believe that we can rise in American society as we are now, and others who realize that we need the political empowerment to justify our existence as just Americans. While we do boast high percentages of our population in professional careers, (e.g, doctors, lawyers, etc), I feel we are a long way from social progress in that sense. While many professionals acknowledge, embrace, and attributes parts of their success their backgrounds, many do not.

Recently, I've also become quite angry about the 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' casting issue. Many have called us racists for opposing an all white cast when the producers and the director have stated repeatedly that they only picked the best persons for the job. However, they fail to see the real issue. There are so many talented Asian American actors out there, and rarely do we see an opportunity open up for them on the big screen. Most of the scripts written in Hollywood do not call for an Asian lead, but I feel Avatar had that potential. The discussion then becomes an argument over whether the main protagonist of the series was indeed Asian. Many feel because of the ambiguity of anime, the characters can be anything. Well then, my argument still holds. Never can an ethnic minority play a white man's role, so when an ambiguous role comes along, why won't you give the Asian man a chance?

Well in the end, the movie was a flop and I'm quite tired from bickering with people on these forums. Why are we targeting a single movie? Why do we not put more Asian Americans in power in the movie industry to increase our own representation?... But as it turns out, Asian Americans hold a good number of seats in the industry.

Quoting from Hollywood and Asians: Do we really need more Asian Americans In Positions of Power?:
"We're our own worst enemies....We're taught to assimilate, to not make waves, to be followers. Maybe once we're allowed into that exclusive club, we wait to fit in so badly that we don't want to give the impression that we're favoring "our own," sometimes to the point of going in the opposite direction and making an effort to reject our community."

Maybe I'm going too far with this, but it does set up for quite a bit of discussion.

Oh, the Grand Old Party. They have provided me with so many great hours of pure entertainment. Recently, they have launched a new site titled 'America's Speaking Out' intended to 'connect' the public with congress so that the national law makers can understand what America truly wants. Obviously, the republicans have no concept of internet trolls and forum gunners. The website has been getting tens of thousands of views within hours, showing us that America is definitely speaking out. So what do Americans really want?

Dear Readers,

Hey everyone! I just wanted to say a quick shout-out about an event that's coming up: an Asian American Health Disparities Panel! Hosted by AAA, the event's happening next Friday, the 12th, at 7:30pm in the Satow Room in Lerner! As posted on the Facebook event page (linked here):

Health disparities are NEVER on the Asian American agenda, even though the average American household spends over 15% of its income on health care.

We will grow to comprise over 5% of the American population in the upcoming years and yet the Asian American voice is one of the most neglected minority voices in the United States. Health disparities are a hush-hush topic that households try to avoid, and the lack of sufficient national research studies done to support the present Asian American population is a cause for concern. Our main goal with the panel is to try to stir that sentiment, that voice!, to hope and encourage more studies done in this field.

The panelists include Ms. Alexandra Belcher, Dr. Ming-Der Chang, Dr. Shobha Krishnan, Dr. Dennis Yi-Shin Kuo, and Director Rebecca Sze.

Hey, loyal readers of the blog! I know I'm late (two weeks late now, to be precise) to call out the New Year, but just wanted to say that as a new semester approaches, we at the BLAAAG and on the Asian American Alliance surely want to wish you all a good year! We will be quite busy, and with a whole lot of resolutions for 2010 (blogging more, anyone?). We will be getting ready for ECAASU soon, holding different panels such as an Asian American Health Disparities panel, holding our second Crossroads conference for Asian American high-schoolers, and much more! And I'm back from Hong Kong, ready to start a fresh semester at Columbia, as will other contributors to the site. Keep it moving! (And soon, we'll be able to say Happy New Year once again: the Lunar New Year, that is! It falls on Valentine's Day this year.)