‘ Pop culture constantly pounds the message that academic achievement is not cool. No wonder there is an achievement gap. Nowadays, Blacks are moving beyond this rigid dichotomy. When Blacks see Asian-American militancy and mindless identity politics that is unaware of its own blind-spot, they say “been there, done that”. We are like copy-cats imitating 90′s style gangsta rap while they have moved on to something else. Been there, done that.

Identity politics is also very dogmatic. It creates the confused mentality that if you dare to critique the internal flaws of your ethnic community, that you are a race-traitor. ‘

….you nailed it on the head. Exactly. Progression is not rallying and blaming, it’s creative individuality. Which takes hard work , initiative and individual soul-searching. Good luck in your quest for knowledge, my friend. I have my own ways too.

Everyone here has made a valid point in some way, shape or form. I like Kobukson’s investment portfolio analogy of diversifying your dating pool, however I don’t think that doing so just to spite Asian women or reduce their value is healthy or constructive for oneself and the community as a whole. I understand everyone gets fed up with being shit on, but I say use that energy to spark an inner flame to improve your inner game which seems like what Kobukson is trying to imply. Albeit, bombastically at times. Haha.

Now to Anna123′s point, I also concur with her in that Asian culture is being exploited for its beauty: the women, the sushi (yes…you know the average white person wouldn’t DARE to touch sushi with a 10-foot poll back in the early 80-90s), etc. etc. I believe they call that cultural appropriation in the academic world. I don’t see anything wrong with embracing of this Asian culture, but what gets under my skin is when white America tries to take ownership of it acting as if it were their thing to begin with. Remember “The Fast and the Furious”? When Asian friends and I saw the preview for the flick we said to ourselves, “How are you going to make a movie with rice rockets and not have any rice eaters as the main leads?”

This is where I think pride should be used as a tool to coagulate the community into a unit where we can defend what we believe is rightfully ours to participate in. Just like the Jews, the power of a community comes in numbers not individuals. But we shouldn’t forget that it is a balancing act. We cannot be too extreme promoting merely one side of the spectrum.

And yes, there was Malcom and Martin but let’s not forget the one African-American who is always overlooked in these racial discrimination discussion – Booker T. Washington. Asians have followed his philosophy, more so out of cultural coincidence than his personal influence upon us. We’ve got the “shut up and work hard” mentality down, but had the kids at Philadelphia High Schools, the Racebending team and activists such as Frank Chin had stuck with this modus operandi of being the “quiet and submissive Asian” would we have made the same kind of progress?

Hardly. I used to laugh and feel embarrassed seeing kids yelling out and tagging, “Asian Pride” back in high school. Looks like I lacked the wisdom to see how it could unify and assist us in fighting racial abuse and help us make some goddamn progress.

So I say the same can be applied to even the dating world. Sure I can go out and flirt with whites, blacks and latinas, but when the rubber meets the road will they actually embrace my Asian side and will I be open minded enough to embrace theirs? For the most part I doubt it. I know I’ve done my fair of work in improving my Game and bitching about the IR disparity too much – yes, that includes hating on Asian women dating White guys – but now I think its time to crystalize all approaches in order to come to a healthy middle ground.

Me, personally, I am against extremism or any fundamentalist thought. Yet, I think for our concerns, there’s need to be a militant element in our community. I won’t always agree with the reactionaries, yet they are often the ones to spearhead and take charge of things that need to be addressed. I think at times, the AA community has been too plodding in responding to blatant racism. There are times to be calm and rationale, and there are times to be a fist up someone’s ass—to make them squirm.

Still, this subject is still the same old tired bullshit. As stated previously, this study is veering on the edge of racist conclusions, hiding behind academia, yet not being critiqued by peer review. Just who were these social economists who conducted this study? Again, just whose standards of beauty and attractiveness are we going by? Sure, there is something to be said for balance between two partners when it comes to height differential. But as it was stated before, the laws of attraction contain many, many variables.

This study doesn’t get to the root cause of anything.

I think can hear uRB4N banging his head on the keyboard.

I am not denying White privilege exists. I am not denying that institutional racism exists. I am not saying it is not important to reveal injustices. Also, I am not saying that activism, combating the above, is not crucial. These are all very important.

I have also gone through my own “militant phase” and while I have learned a lot from it, I have also witnessed how blind militancy can be self-destructive and can be a kind of ideological fundamentalism. Identity politics is a tool towards a goal, it is not the end-all and be-all for one’s cognitive worldview or a lifestyle. I am merely wondering if some of us has allowed identity politics to consume far too much of one’s worldview in a manner that is unhealthy and unbalanced. It is worthwhile to consider that.

At any case, Leon, I can sense that you have your strong convictions and I have mine. We may be at different places in our lives also and we have to account for that. Let’s just agree to disagree and keep things civil. I am not an arrogant person, just merely one who is sharing a different perspective. I am not here to argue with you for the sake of arguing, or to “win an argument” or to “convert” you or anything and I hope you are not either. I’m just throwing some ideas out there. We can’t all have exactly the same thoughts or ideas because after all we are not some monolithic Asian-American bloc, right? But at the same time, we all believe in and struggle for a healthy and vibrant Asian-American identity, culture, and community.

Finally, ideologies should serve people. People should not serve ideologies.

It is a common tactic often deployed by whites to downplay their roles as oppressors and shift the burden of blame on the oppressed. And they cover up their racism under layers of sophistry, pointless theories, and what-if scenarios. ie. What if blacks rule the world? They would be the slave masters and the whites would be the slaves. Similar to your asking, what if we remove whites from the equation? Our oppression is all in our heads! This is illogical and not to mention a complete denial of history and reality. In doing so, you chose to ignore certain inconvenient, but glaring truths such as: whites in this country have a history of oppressing minorities; every institution is run by a white majority; the media is run by whites, the education system is run by whites, practically every fortune 500 company is run by the old-boy-network which is predominantly white. In fact, I believe there was a recent study released showing how job seekers with “ethnic” names get less calls than those with Anglo-Saxon names, despite having the same qualifications. Where is the self-victimization in that? What you’re doing is similar to whites accusing minorities of playing the “race card” whenever they wish to address issues of racism- shift the blame on the victim.

White hegemony by its very nature is self-perpetuating and does so by constant suppression of minority cultures. It is impossible to ignore the role it plays in the lives of the Asian American community and our continual development. It is impossible, and illogical to shift the greater burden on the minority community. Sure, we should have plenty of self-reflection and desire for improvement (and we do, by the way), but it makes far more sense that those who are in the positions of power carry the greater responsibility for change. And since it is a fact that those in power would never give it up willingly without a struggle, it is often up to the minority to bring their grievances to light and force such a change.

Again, your arrogance is astounding. You constantly deny that entire communities of minorities have real and valid fears. And I don’t know where you have been living all this time, but perhaps you should catch up on the news of increased suspicion toward all Asian Americans during the weeks after the Virginia Tech Massacre that even lead to the suspension of certain Asian students in different schools. These were documented and talked about on the Fighting 44s. Undue suspicions toward entire communities, unfair prosecution of individuals, negative stereotyping are all forms of reprisals. This is the same type of suspicion that every Muslim must live with in this country due to the action of certain individuals half a world away that has nothing to do with them. But of course, you would probably blame them or their culture as the architect of these suspicions. Never mind that the only people that are ever exempt for this treatment is whites.

You chose to play with theories, I deal with reality. White privilege is real, the history is real, the pains and struggles of every minority is real. It is not “ass-backward” to react according to reality. It is time for you to come down from your high horse and learn a little empathy for the people that you love to criticize.

Leon, I think you are talking oranges while I was talking apples. I was discussing identity-making not identity politics. It was in response to Mojo’s question regarding his lack of knowledge of Mandarin or Cantonese (“Chinese” is not a language, btw, anymore than “American” is a language) and whether that makes him less Asian or more American or what. Our generation is perpetually caught in this state of confusion. But in order to have an identity, and slice through the confusion, we must understand the very nature of identity itself. And we must revisit our Asian roots and trace how we got to where we are now. And that is what I was doing. Sometimes I feel that our generation, ignorant of Asian roots, heritage, and culture, only exposed to Western stereotypes, embody the worst excesses of both Asia and the West instead of the best.

Identity politics is not Asian-centric, BTW. Identity politics (in America) is White-centric. Identity politics is the exercise of grievance-making versus White hegemony. By definition, it positions White hegemony as a central reference point around which our minority-status grievance-making revolves around. Grievance-making is not identity-making. Grievance is not an identity. If you remove White hegemony from the picture, go some place where there’s no White people, then what?

Duh. This is the very reason why the grassroots of any growing community these days cannot be represented solely by advocates that date/marry members outside their community. That would simply result in a lack of cohesion. This is the stuff that many people here have been discussing over and over, and I’m starting to feel their frustration. You are arguing the premise that these discussions are Asian-centric, so they lack objectivity and thus lack credibility. I disagree.

I say that identity politics is one-sided and lacking in objectivity because it basically says all our problems are White people’s fault. It never acknowledges that some of our problems might be due to our mistakes. This breeds a victimization complex. It also breeds a feeling of helplessness, despair, and eventually total apathy. You are basically saying that your reality (including problems) are always in other’s control and never your own (personal responsibility). Where is the hope in that? The reason why the Fighting 44′s forum eventually declined is because of the hopelessness and the internal contradictions of identity politics. Flawed identity politics is also what prevented the Black community from progress for so long and continues to do so. The educational achievement gap of inner city students is considered one of the unfinished battles of the Civil Rights Movement. The reason why it is still a battle is because for too long the blame was always focused on racism or the Man when in reality much of the source of the problems lay within the Black community and families themselves. Studious Black students were ridiculed for “trying to be White” (again, identity politics is White-centric) by their less motivated peers. Fathers are largely absent in Black urban families. Pop culture constantly pounds the message that academic achievement is not cool. No wonder there is an achievement gap. Nowadays, Blacks are moving beyond this rigid dichotomy. When Blacks see Asian-American militancy and mindless identity politics that is unaware of its own blind-spot, they say “been there, done that”. We are like copy-cats imitating 90′s style gangsta rap while they have moved on to something else. Been there, done that.

Identity politics is also very dogmatic. It creates the confused mentality that if you dare to critique the internal flaws of your ethnic community, that you are a race-traitor. It is not for nothing that Political Correctness has often been compared to totalitarianism. PC is the closest thing that a free, democratic society such as the US has that resembles totalitarian thought-control. Kishore Mahbubani, who is a Asia-centric minded intellectual who has written many books, said individuals wither when all they have are uncritical lovers and unloving critics. The same can be said of communities.

Again, in order for anybody discussing these issues and claim to understand them, that person must first and foremost claim the Asian American experience as his own, and thus become more Asian-centric. This is why, an Asian woman with a white man at her side claiming to understand the struggles of the Asian man would find us questioning her credibility. In order to discuss identity politics, first claim the identity. Otherwise, you’re just a CNN reporter: stating facts with little understanding.

OK, I want to say a few things about the IR disparity debate since you brought it up again. A few things that probably have never been said before. This, too, is identity politics at its worst not best. If you think about it, there is really no shared “identity” here other than a shared physical phenotype and this is the basis upon which the IR debate rests. Furthermore, it is White-centric. It centers around bashing White men and White hegemony. It also bashes Asian-American women and this is the severe collateral damage of the IR debate wars. I have never really seen Asian-American men make a concerted effort of persuasion to Asian-American women why they should chose us based upon positive identification with Asian-American culture rather than attacking them. I think the reason why this is so is because the common identity and culture based upon substantials other than a shared phenotype is weak. So there’s nothing but attacks and fruitless, neverending blame-games. You can attack all you want but at the end of the day you still haven’t made a case for why the choice of an Asian-American man is better than a White guy. That is an act of identity-making, not politics. That, my friends, is being Asian-American centric. We’re not going to make any progress with the IR challenge unless we learned the art of attraction not repulsion, positivity not negativity. The IR debates, in its present form, causes much more harm than good.

This lack of understanding is amplified in your typical white-minded misinterpretation of the Korean American reaction to the Virginia Tech Massacre. Note how you never once considered the effects of white institutional news reporting, its reactions, and stereotyping that effects the Asian American community. As always, it’s the minority community’s fault. Did you ever consider that the reactions are due to actual REAL fears of reprisals from the dominant white society, and less of the so-called “old world collective-mindset”?

But has there been any reprisals? No. It is one thing if there had been, in fact, reprisals and the KA community reacted the way it did. But the KA community acted as if there were reprisals when in fact there were none. This is what common-sense people call “ass-backwardness”.

Look, one of our problems as a minority is that often, the actions of an individual is held representative of the community. This is stereotyping. If someone stereotypes, then we have to oppose that. But surely, you can see how things could get really damn confusing for everybody, when a minority preemptively acts as if “act of an individual = the whole community” is true. It’s either one or the other. Consistency, people!

Leon, great points!