okay, white girl here rolls up her sleeves and dives into the conversation...
let me contribute yet another entirely different perspective...i live in a city that is 30% asian american, and i've always gone to schools that are at least 20% asian. so i kind of feel the same way you do, bryan...i have a hard time thinking "asian" when i think minority.

i don't think this is really a productive or relevant argument, but i think you'd be hard pressed to find a minority group today that is more subject to socially acceptable ridicule than arab-americans. just wanted to get my vote out of the way on that part of the discussion.

i was going to make the same point john did about history...asians are hardly a new immigrant group to america, especially here on the west coast. i think the "model minority" theory holds a little more water. however, it seems to me that jokes and stereotypes against asian-americans are qualitatively different than those against other minority groups. i don't think the "chink" or "other white meat" jokes that adam mentions are actually socially acceptable. (nearly everyone here knows about the shaq comments, and was considerably outraged...then again, we do have a large and active asian-american community in san francisco, and everyone hates the lakers anyway.) instead, the most widespread asian stereotypes, especially in movies and on tv, are either the "martial arts expert" or academic superstar (read nerd) type. these are pretty insidious and should be railed against, but in my mind they're considerably different than your skin tone being identified as a marker of low intelligence or violent tendencies. these kinds of stereotypes are not going to keep someone from being offered a job or (as in john's example) buying a house. then again, my conception of anti-asian discrimination is, i'm sure, skewed because of where i live.

along those lines, though, bay area colleges are facing a growing problem of violence between asian-american fraternities. there's been a lot of speculation that these frats have been adopting gangsta ways (to quote nate dogg) in an attempt to reject stereotypes of the emasculated asian-american male. (the contrast between the asexual male and hypersexual female asian stereotypes is pretty interesting...especially since sexual promiscuity is often associated with low intelligence and racial inferiority. i'm sure someone could expound on this more coherently than i...) i have a couple of friends who have been doing some really interesting stuff around traditional asian stereotypes...a guy i know who has advertised prominently his status as a "metrosexual," and drawn out the costuming/grooming to exaggerated degrees, kind of playing off the intersection of sexuality and race...a couple of friends who, on chinese new year, constructed a lion puppet out of cafeteria trash and improvised a parade around the school...the kind of things that make people just uncomfortable enough to classify them as performance art. anyway, that's the news from the lick-wilmerding asia club, over here.

i think anti-semitism is somewhat different...i hear (and make, honestly) about as many jewish jokes as, say, irish jokes. jews have been assimilated, just like poles and germans and russians, into a majority that once only included a small fraction of what we now consider "white." anti-semitism also has the added layer of religious tension, which changes things substantially. for context, damn near everyone at my school is half-jewish (including most of the asians (seriously.)) also, i live in an incredibly tolerant, enlightened place (not to, you know, be obnoxious or anything.) although i have seen a lot lately of that disturbing breed of white boy who uses the n-word casually...where do they hide these people? where did they grow up? what the hell?

posted by Kelsey   [4:09 PM]

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