Posterity and Asian Americans

[pic from randplaty, attributed to dasasaki.  randplaty looks like a church blog (and you know my views on that), but it also looks like he has some very interesting views on church and culture.  I actually had some similar questions, which maybe we can discuss in the future.  The religious/political web we weave...]

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now.  Thanks to everyone who is still coming here, even though I post less frequently.  If it gets annoying with the slow, disconnected entries, feel free to add me to your RSS reader.  And don’t worry, I will eventually be back full swing with the fighting dialogue.

David Brooks had an excellent article last week: The Power of Posterity.  In the Op-Ed, he waxes poetic about a hypothetical question brought up on the blog Marginal Revolution, which is: “What would happen if a freak solar event sterilized the people on the half of the earth that happened to be facing the sun?“  (The original post mentioned that the solar flare sterilizes everything–animals too–but I think Brooks’s interpretation is much more interesting.)  Brooks talks about possible ramifications, eventually coming to the conclusion that society progresses for posterity, and that “when a society doesn’t reproduce there is nothing left to contribute to.”  Even with immigration, Brooks concedes, a society is hopeless without children.  Brooks ends with the acknowledgment that our unborn children guide our actions, even though they have yet to exist.  It reminded me a bit of that American Indian saying that we don’t inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

The minute I read Brooks’s column, I immediately started thinking about Asian American society.  The irony of Brooks’s post is that he focuses heavily on what theoretically would happen with a sterilized people, when in fact there exists a real life example right before his eyes–Asian Americans. The stereotypes of emasculation ring true for us, and many of us, as the situation exists right now, might not last more than a generation or two.  If you’re an Asian American male, you’re likely to be single and childless; if you’re an Asian American female, you’re unlikely to marry anything other than a White male.  In either case, over generations, the general trend is Whiteness.

Now before anyone jumps all over me, let me put things in perspective.  I won’t love my great-grandchildren any less if they’re White.  If I have a blonde haired, blue eyed great-grandchild, I will cherish their accomplishments as much as if my grandchild were physically Asian.  That being said, we’re not talking about me; we’re talking about all of Asian American society.  And when there exists such a strong trend towards becoming and admiring and looking like the majority, there’s a problem that extends beyond just the usual complaints about eyelid surgery and suicide rates.

The fact is that as an emasculated group, we are the very sterilized group that Brooks is trying to imagine.  We are the eunuchs of society, and almost about half of what Brooks postulates is already true of us.  Because I live it, I know it.

1. Religion: Brooks says that the religious world would be shattered by sterilization.  He may be correct in the case of some religions, but if we’re talking about fundamentalist Christianity, he’s dead wrong.  When fundies face trials and tribulations, they cling even harder to their religion, and because Asian Americans have been emasculated, we’re among the hardest clingers.  I don’t have a scientific study to prove this, but I think the story can be summed up in one sentence: the less sex you’re getting, the more likely you are to be a fundamentalist thumper.

2. “Anything worth doing is the work of generations–ending racism, promoting freedom or building a nation.” I think Brooks is correct on this account.  Why do we see so few Asian Americans involved in politics?  In civil rights?  It’s because we don’t see people who look like us in the future of this country.  Seriously, if you talk to the most entrepreneurial Asian Americans, they will almost ALWAYS talk about going back to China where they are respected.  Those who set their roots here often tend to be less active, probably because they don’t see a future in the path they’ve chosen.  Most expect to be phased out.

And regarding Brooks’s comment about “hunger for immortal fame,” who among Asian people is going to hunger for fame from rice chasahs of the future?

3. “If people knew that their nation, group and family were doomed to perish…they wouldn’t concern themselves with the preservation of the environment.  They wouldn’t save or invest.”

When people are afraid, they hold onto their dollars and investments because they are afraid to move.  So I don’t think the hypothetical eunuchs would spend freely on themselves, and likewise, Asian Americans are among the most conservative spenders out there.

However, Brooks is correct when it comes to charity and building institutions for the future.  If you don’t see a future, you don’t invest in it.  Asian Americans are the least likely to vote, give money to Asian American charities, etc.

4. Immigration: This is a game theory question.  If people knew that the other half of the world was dying out, they would move here, unless there were legal restrictions preventing them from doing so.  After all, if there’s already a strong infrastructure and no one to inherit it, why wouldn’t anyone want to inherit it?

For Asian Americans, as many have noted before, immigration is currently the only way we survive as a minority group.  Cut off immigration, and within a few generations, we’d be a society of Lisa Sees writing orientalist fantasies about our grandfathers.  Which should scare every single Asian American living in the United States today–as the Chinese economy surpasses the American economy and the financial incentives of immigration become less attractive, we could be in trouble as a community.

I know there are a bunch of Kingstonians and House Asians waiting to jump on me in order to accuse me of being some kind of nativist, but the numbers are clearly in my favor here.  In one study, an Asian American male needed to make $24k more than a White male to be viewed as equally attractive.  If that’s not a disadvantage, then I don’t know what is.  We already know about the eyelid surgery.  The fact is that this trend towards Whiteness creates some very real problems in Asian American culture itself, one in which Brooks might say that there is no “disciplining power of our posterity.”

For those reading this, I want you all to date and marry whomever you want to date, for whatever reason you see fit.  Love should know no bounds.  Follow the path you need to take.  But think about posterity and the hopelessness that pervades our culture, and realize that there is an explanation that addresses why this hopelessness exists.  If you’re a lonely Asian American bachelor, don’t just take a PUA class and let your ego get to your head.  PUAs rarely marry or set a foundation for life because they don’t think about anything other than themselves.  Realize that there is a lot more out there that we have to encourage Asian Americans to do.  If you’re an Asian American female married to a White guy, love that White guy with all your heart, but continue to support your Asian American brothers and sisters in finding each other.  We need to fix this community in order to forge a bond between ourselves and a posterity that will understand us and promote resistance against racial stratification rather than acquiescence.  Live strong.

Related posts:

1. PostSecret for Asian Americans
2. California Apologizes to Chinese Americans
3. Call for Asian American Writers
4. The Post-PUA Era of the Asian American Blogosphere
5. Podcast: Interracial Relationships and the Gender Divide, Asian American Female Perspective