Remember when you were a teenager hanging out in your friend's basement, and even though their parents may have been super cool, weren't you relieved when they finally went upstairs? Well, that's how we Asians feel when the last non-Asian person leaves the room. Once we have racial quorum, this is how we kick it...
First off, anyone with outstanding membership dues must settle up immediately or risk forfeiting their Asian Discount Card on the spot. This is deeply humiliating for Asians, but annual fees aren't cheap. However, a one-month grace period is automatically allotted to the first person who pays for lunch. Ever seen a couple of Asians fighting over the bill? That's because both their accounts were seriously past due.
ANGRY ASIAN MAN
Once we have that business out of the way, we'll kick things off by discussing the latest posts by our favorite blogger: Angry Asian Man AKA Phil Yu, who is our Edward R. Murrow, forever ready to callout racist BS like how yet another Hollywood movie has the audacity to exploit another Asian story and cast it with NON-Asian actors.
This topic never gets old because it never ceases to amaze. Imagine hearing they were going to cast an adaptation of Little Women with all male actors just because. WTF?!
Angry Asian Man is a blog that only Asian people are allowed to read. It's not password protected, but the site accesses your computer's webcam to assess the size of your epicanthic folds. You know, chubby eyelids? White people are only permitted to gaze at the website if their eyes remain closed. Genius, right?!
ALL WHITE PEOPLE LOOK THE SAME
Sometimes we'll confide in each other that we think white people all look the same. If we're in any setting where there is a glut of older, white, baby boomer men, like politics, business, or any place that uses electricity, they all begin to blur together, and what we see is The Man from Glad®.
OUR RACIST ENCOUNTERS THROUGHOUT THE WEEK
Eventually we'll vent about all the racist incidents we experienced in the past week. As in: "Where are you from? No, I mean where are you really from?" Implicit in these questions is the inference that even if our ancestors built the CN Railway, we will always be perpetual foreigners.
DIRTY PANTY VENDING MACHINE
As a Nihonjin who is an otaku of bukkake, (and shame on you if you know what that means) no one can outflank me in sheer perviness. At parties, I will highjack conversations into territory so taboo it would make the Marquis de Sade pull out his iPhone and pretend to write text messages.
But the moment some white guy broaches the dreaded Used-Panty-Vending Machines-in-Tokyo topic, (and they ALWAYS do), I say nothing. It's not that I don't have an opinion or a hilarious anecdote to share, but I know as an Asian joining in, this is akin to a black man doing an impression of a monkey at an all-white party.
"The Code" prohibits me as a self-respecting Azn from reinforcing negative stereotypes about fellow Asians.
Only under the snow dome of silence with fellow Asians do the gloves come off. The way we joke about all the dogs we kidnapped and ate, the car accidents we caused, or the cephalopods we deflowered, and all the other racist meconium that can't be printed here would blow your WASPY cortex.
CONCLUSION
All of which isn't to say we don't love white people. In fact, two out of three Asian women agree: white men are preferable. But that doesn't mean we don't need our space, the way Walmart employees will always need their break room.
So the next time you see a group of Asians who pause in conversation as you approach, let 'em know you're wise to their ways by throwing down a couple of twenties on the table -- cancelling all grace periods on delinquent fees -- then lean in and growl: "Your Asian Discount feels to me a lot more like a WHITE surcharge! "
Jaws will drop. Then moonwalk your way out the door LIKE A BOSS.
Follow Tetsuro Shigematsu on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tweetsuro
When people ask me "Where are you REALLY from" I just tell them I'm ethnic Chinese. I don't get why that's offensive. Think about it. If a non-Asian guy came up to you in Japan and said he was Japanese, wouldn't you be a little curious?
For Whites to wounder: "Where are you from?" of an Asian is NOT racist. It's logical, that in areas where there have not been huge numbers of Asians until recently, where most are in fact immigrants, one would wonder such a thing.
In a small town where the Asian family has been there a couple generations, I guess it would depend on the number. With only a couple of Asians in an all-White community, one still might reasonable wonder "where they are from", just because they stick out a bit, and the country was pretty much built by White Anglos.
But it's true that to not accept Asians as full Canadians just because of the race is exclusion based on race is unnacceptable and in the hearts of some, racist. Still, give it time, because it takes anyone a while to get used to change.
Where they to accept Anglo immigration to the Asian countries, I think it would take anyone time to accept the concept of a White Chinese citizen, wouldn't it? We're a lot more accepting than that.
Always better to start with the common sense assumption rather than presume that someone's racist just cause they're white (or anything else).
Not only that, a lot of academic sources and those within the anti-racist movement argue Tetsuro's point. It's not just about Tetsuro.
no sense of humour
Well, you certainly will be until you get your history straight......yes, Chinese built the CN too, they also built the PGE (along with Japanese and East Indians and natives and Mexicans) but the primary story is about the CPR.
Implicit in your statement is also the notion that older-era Chinese families are somehow more Canadian than the rest. That's banana-ism and smacks of the shark fin soup thing (which yes, I know, isn't Japanese, but don't get me started on whalemeat....I'm of Norwegian descent, so MY cousins eat cetaceans, too).
What would be more interesting is what one group of Asians says when the last of other kinds of Asians leave the room.....
And yes, I tire of seeing Chinese actors play Japanese or Thai characters, or Japanese ones playing Chinese ones....or seeing Chinatown-type areas used to play Bangkok.....(as in The Hangover Part II). But I see a lot of negative white stereotypes in Asian cinema and TV, too.....
I suggest you buy a looking glass.......houses made of glass seem to have a high reflectivity index on the inside....
with the lost 13th tribe of asia
who have assured me
i am not white ...i'm sorta pink they say
and their red is sorta brown
so if yellow is brown too
then your gonna have to work harder
to get my 20 bucks
unless i get a case of beer for it :)
if it stays on the table
then move over
i'm grabbin a chair
That's not just an Asian phenomenon. As a white guy I was asked that constantly until I learned to say Canadian over and over.
It's not like questions about that are targeted at Asians as such, or about race at all. And in the case of Asians, given that many British Columbians are well familiar with Asian peoples and their specifics, asking is in fact a polite question so you don't make assumptions that might be embarrassing/impugning, i.e. mistaking someone for Korean when they're Chinese or Japanese or Viet or Filipino.
"Euro-Canadians" (a new-era term with specific race-classification built into it) have had to develop tolerance and a thick skin...and yes, most of us now on the census form will just say "Canadian"...and I know people of Chinese and African extraction would would put that also, and that only.
For me, it means British, French, Aboriginal, and minority heritage; poppies and rememberance day; Parliament and the monarchy; and multiculturalism as tolerance and respect for individual rights to practice their culture.
For many in 2012, "Canada" means an huge country with room to be filled by people of their own group in order to "nation-build" a completely new and vast society of totally distinct communities.
I don't accept that all versions of "Canada" are equally acceptable. Some are acceptable, others are not. It's wrong for people to come to Canada from outside and seek to reshape the nation in their own image at the expense of so many already here who basically created the country. To put it bluntly. But it's true.
That's not just asian it applies to anyone who has a bit of melanin . You'll be asked oever and over again where your parents are born until you kindly tell the white skinned FBI assistant who is harrassing you with those pesky racialised questions that its a secret you'll take to the grave .