The Cultural Implications of Being Asian

The 1940s and 1950s

Though the specific situation of Asian Americans varied, their cultural choices tended to be largely the same as those of the Chinese, basically identifying themselves with the United States unreservedly. In the 1960s and 1970s, the situation was reversed, that is, the majority of Asians, by examining their own social status and identity attributes in the United States, and then advocating the abandonment of the pursuit of the mainstream American culture, to establish the true status of Asian American culture in American society. This transformation is a landmark significance, which reflects the deep awakening of the Pan-Asian community consciousness in the United States, and is a fruitful spiritual achievement of all Asian Americans in a specific historical period. This article will focus on analyzing the internal and external factors that led to the formation of Pan-Asian consciousness, and discussing the cultural meaning of the term "Asian American". The formation of Pan-Asian ethnic consciousness has a profound social and historical background.

In the 1960s and 1970s

there was a major reorganization of international political power, with a large number of newly independent countries separating from the imperialist colonial system and forming the "Third World". This new combination not only combats the arrogance of imperialism and colonialism, but also makes racial equality an internationally recognized norm, thus starting a new revolution in world history. This new phenomenon in the international arena greatly encouraged the American intellectuals with the tradition of criticizing reality, and they launched the powerful "New Left Movement", "Counter-Traditional Culture Movement" and the Black Civil Rights Movement in the country, which pointed directly at the internal and external policies and social problems of the United States. social problems. The two major themes that attracted much attention were the demand for racial equality and the opposition to the Vietnam War. These movements formed a strong social trend that gave the existing system of the United States an unprecedented impact.

In the midst of intense social upheaval, the research philosophy of American academics also changed. Minorities, a social group once neglected or "marginalized," became an important part of historical research, and "the fields of black history, Asian history, Native American history, Hispanic history, women's history, and gay and lesbian history have flourished." As a result, the position of minorities in American history was emphasized as never before. During this period, the U.S. government enacted and implemented the new (Immigration Act (1965), which abolished the old ethnic origin system and introduced the principle of preference under quota conditions. With the implementation of the Act, the number of Asian immigrants has surged, resulting in the continuous expansion of the Asian American team; the quality of immigrants has improved considerably, resulting in the obvious strengthening of the socio-economic status of Asians; there has been a marked increase in the number of women among immigrants, resulting in a more balanced gender ratio among Asians. This is undoubtedly a favorable time for Asian Americans to oppose racial discrimination and fight for equal rights in society. Against this backdrop, as Asian Americans, who were once "silenced" by mainstream society, have joined the movement to question the fundamental values of American society, culture, and culture in a positive and unique way, albeit at a slower pace.

Anti-Vietnam War Movement

The U.S. invasion of Vietnam caused widespread anger among people of all races across the United States. Many Asians believed that the nature of the war was one of racial discrimination and racial aggression by the United States against Asians. And, "Throughout the history of racists' yo-yoing around the world, the current white colonial predatory war and bloodshed of Asian people will not stop soon; it will drag on endlessly." In light of the atrocities committed by the U.S. military in Vietnam, a growing number of Asian American college and high school students are shocked to realize that "the enemy that U.S. soldiers are aiming at and shooting at are Asians who have the same faces as they do." So when they took to the streets, they did not chant slogans like white protesters, such as "We want peace" or "Bring back the troops," but rather, from their own point of view, "Stop the slaughter of our Asian brothers and sisters," "Stop the slaughter of our Asian brothers and sisters," "Stop the slaughter of our Asian brothers and sisters," "Stop the slaughter of our Asian brothers and sisters," and "Stop the slaughter of our Asian brothers and sisters. Instead, from their own perspective, they participated in the anti-war march by holding up placards such as "Stop the massacre of Asian brothers and sisters" and "No to race war" and chanting the same slogans in unison. Obviously, they associated the war with their own racial oppression and came to believe that no matter what they did, the fact that mainstream society regarded Asians as Asians and outsiders would not change. Such a new understanding is conducive to the formation of a pan-Asian sense of community.

Black Civil Rights Movement

The reason why Asian Americans were actively involved in the black civil rights movement is that they actually felt that their identity, status and black people have a lot of **** the same. This movement, "brought us racial pride and racial self-esteem; at the same time realized: "There is an important link between political struggle and a whole new identity, ...... a new understanding of what it means to be an Asian American r "; and that "there is a close connection between Third World countries striving to gain economic, political, and cultural independence and American minorities striving for autonomy, and that the national liberation struggles of Third World peoples go hand in hand with the struggles of minorities within the U.S. for equal rights." In addition, the Black Panther Party's tenets about black self-defense and the re-establishment of equality had a great impact on Asian students. Thus, the civil rights movement's contribution to pan-Asian ethnic consciousness cannot be ignored.

Campus movements

In the 1960s, Asian students at the University of California, Berkeley campus and San Francisco State University also campaigned for their equal rights on campus. The matter stemmed from the fact that the university administration ignored the legitimate demands of Asian students regarding the reform of history class settings, thus leading to a mass strike by Asian students. In the higher education institutions in the United States, a Euro-American centered education system is generally practiced, with no consideration for the needs of the minority communities, which is also a typical form of racial discrimination. Under this system, many Asian students know very little about the history of their own ethnicity, and even as Chinese, they do not even know the facts of how they were forced to live in Chinatown. For this reason, students often held presentations on their own, such as the Yellow Identity Conference held at the Berkeley campus, which talked about the history of Chinese and Japanese identities, U.S. policy toward Asia, and the social structure and customs of Chinatown. A student who attended one of these presentations later recalled, "Throughout the presentation, I nodded my head frequently, agreeing with the speaker's words. For a moment I suddenly realized that what I was experiencing was racism. It was at that meeting that I found an accurate expression for the feelings that had been pent up in my heart for so long. So, Asian students are eagerly awaiting a reform of the history program. After being snubbed by the school administration, students began to question the true purpose of schooling, with one asking pointedly, "What does a degree from Berkeley really mean to Asians My uncle had an engineering degree from Berkeley in the 1930s, but he ended up just being the owner of a grocery store in Chinatown.

When demands for a "Third World College" were shelved, Asian students became enraged and joined the radical Third World Liberation Front in a tit-for-tat struggle against the university's administration. fall 1968 The San Francisco State Strike was the culmination of the Asian student movement on campus. After more than five months of strikes, in the spring of 1969, San Francisco State created the nation's first department of Asian American studies; soon after, the University of California, Berkeley, established a minority studies program; and by the early 1970s, a number of universities in California, as well as some on the East Coast, were offering courses in Asian history, society, and culture.

The Asian studies movement, centered on the campus movement, was one of the most important symbols of the formation of pan-Asian ethnic consciousness, and its impact on American society and the Asian group cannot be underestimated. First of all, it changed the attitudes of education and academia toward Asians, so that Asian studies and minority studies began to take their place in the American university education system. The new discipline of Asian Studies became a decent, respected field and served to enhance, innovate, and prosper the study of race in America. Second, the Asian Studies movement changed the climate of public opinion so that Asians went from being silenced and erased to being heard and emerged in the mainstream in the late 1960s. Though still on the margins of society, the interracial coalition empowered them, public opinion could no longer ignore their existence, and there was a relative improvement in the understanding and attention given to Asian-Americans by governmental decision-making authorities. Once again, it was the cradle of the first generation of Asian American scholars and writers of Asian American culture, history, and literature in the truest sense of the word. 1960, the radical Asian intellectual elite at the University of California, Berkeley, founded the Asian American Political Alliance, a group that links all parts of the United States. The Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), founded by the radical Asian intellectual elite at the University of California, Berkeley, and linked to various parts of the United States, was a fairly active mass organization. At that time, the concept of "Asian Americans" was formally put forward as a political organization for the first time in the history of the United States, and its significance is obvious.

First of all, recognizing themselves as "Asian Americans" rather than "pure Americans" shows that Asians are no longer following the value standards of white Americans in their concept of cultural identity.

First of all, recognizing themselves as "Asian Americans" rather than "pure Americans" shows that Asians are no longer following the value standards of white Americans in their concept of cultural identity.

The "integration theory" put forward by Rose Lee in the 1950s, under the conditions of the time, was indeed very tempting to the majority of Asians, and caused them to pursue and practice their own American dream as if they were obsessed. (1) However, as Mary Uyematsu, a member of the Coalition, pointed out: In the process of Americanization, Asians have tried their best to transform themselves physically and psychologically into Americans. ...... They have given up their language, customs, history, cultural values, etc. to adapt to white culture. However, after all these efforts, they found that they were not accepted by the mainstream society and their discriminated status remained the same. Their response to the "scornful glances of the white man" is a "near-desperate inferiority complex and perpetual disorientation". Coalition founder Yuji Ichioka puts it more succinctly: although Asians dress up as whites, mimic their actions, talk like them, and try to be like them in almost every way, "this is a self-defeating dream that exacerbates their own identity crisis."

After such a reflection, the majority of Asians have come to the profound realization that the consciousness and culture of the white man is unattainable for them, and that they must give up this unrealistic American identity and instead establish a new direction more suited to their own characteristics. This shift in understanding was the key to the formation of the Pan-Asian community consciousness. Secondly, the complete rejection of "Oriental" and other disparaging terms shows an unprecedented increase in the awareness of racial equality among Asians.

Since the Asians first landed on the North American continent, there has been the "Oriental" "elegant name". Later generations, and more and more discriminatory implications. This title, almost so that Asians live in full of prejudice and restrictions in the "cage", they are based in the United States and the development of huge obstacles. 1965, although the number of Asian immigrants continue to increase, the quality of the improvement, the economy has improved, but the mainstream society of its exclusion and discrimination has not decreased at all. According to the survey results in 1970: once praised as a "model minority" of Chinese, there are coincidental percent of college graduates work in restaurants, gift stores or grocery stores, and many other college graduates can not find a job, and become a typical "incompletely employed" (underemployed). Many other college graduates cannot find a job, making them typically "underemployed"; only 13.39% of males with an undergraduate degree earn $10,000, compared to 27.7% of white males with the same degree. As for Chinese women, incomplete employment is a common phenomenon; even if they can be employed, most of them are engaged in clerical work, such as accountants, cashiers, secretaries, typists, archivists, etc. According to statistics, more than half of Chinese women are employed. According to statistics, more than 40 percent of Chinese-American female secretaries have a college degree, while most white women in this occupation tend to have only a high school education. In California, 36 percent of Chinese-American female employees work as clerks or typists.

Under these circumstances, Asians in general resent the "Oriental" label. But for a long time, there has been no solution but to tolerate it. "Asian Americans" as a new concept, emphasizing "Asians are also Americans" this mainstream society also have to recognize the idea, and then negate the "Oriental" and a series of other It also rejected a series of derogatory terms such as "Oriental". This struggle over the issue of designation is essentially a defense of or opposition to existing racial discrimination, reflecting a new awakening of the consciousness of racial equality among Asians in general. Once again, the recognition of the different races of Asians as a whole, and the perception of a "Native American Third World," is a transcendence of mono-ethnic consciousness.

For a long time, Asian communities have lacked the necessary connections with each other, and the fight against discrimination has always been a one-man war. Since the end of the Indianapolis era, this situation has fundamentally changed. Throughout the Coalition's discourse, regardless of the particular ethnicity of the author, the basic position has been the same: they all see themselves as members of the Asian community and discuss issues from that point of view.

The collection of essays published in 1970 (Roots: An Asian American Reader), written by the Coalition's central figures, Franklin Wardo, Mary Uyematsu, Ken Hannah, and John Wardo, is an important part of the Coalition's work, as it is the first of its kind in the United States. Uyematsu, Ken Hannada, Peggy Lee, and Maria Cheng, all of whom were of Japanese, Indian, and Chinese descent. The book expresses the same sentiment: "With hard labor and taxes, we have enriched the pockets of wealthy Americans, only to be rewarded with a life without equal rights and with restrictions and discrimination. Like the colonized people, this life is considered reasonable, uncontroversial and immutable. The problem is clear: there are many parallels between America's treatment of Asians and its treatment of Asians within its borders."; DH (P24) "Many of the same problems that plague the Third World plague the Third World on American soil." [III (P225) It can be argued that the same experiences, social status, and the *** same quest for equal rights for Asians have catapulted the Pan-Asian ethnic consciousness into the arena of Asian American history. The title "Asian American" unites all Asian Americans across ethnic lines, labels their identities and attributes as "unique," and enables them to recognize and define themselves from a new perspective, and to explore what it really means to be an Asian American. The book is a great example of how to define yourself and what it means to be an Asian American.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of outstanding Asian writers began to emerge, and their works all explored issues of racial and cultural identity that were closely related to them. Chinese-American writer Frank Chin is one of the most representative of these writers. Through the filter of history and culture, he accurately summarizes the cultural connotation of "Asian Americans": "Asian Americans are not a single ethnic group, but are composed of several ethnic groups such as Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos. The Chinese and Japanese have been geographically, socio-culturally, and historically separated from China and Japan for seven and four generations respectively. They have evolved a very unique culture and sensibility in the United States, which is different from the characteristics of both China and Japan, as well as the characteristics of white Americans. Even the languages of the various Asian ethnic groups, which are still spoken by the Asian community in the United States, have been adapted and developed into a unique language that expresses their new experiential experience."

The title "Asian American" brings together all U.S.-born people of Asian descent under this politically charged designation, uniting the dispersed Asian American community with an unprecedentedly broad collective consciousness of the Asian community. It is like a badge of honor, a fine trophy hanging on the chest of all American-born Asians.