COLUMN: One race, many faces

From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '00 From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '00Last week, a column on this page argued that discrimination against Asian Americans is largely, if not entirely, a product of their own imaginations and that they can become "Americans" if they so choose. It's no secret that Asian-American students at expensive, selective universities such as Penn come overwhelmingly from wealthy suburban high schools. Most are children of immigrant professionals from countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, India or the Philippines, all lands marked by relatively advanced but uneven development. The presence of large numbers of such students at Ivy League and leading state schools has been widely reported and become known as the "model minority" phenomenon. Despite the reality of this phenomenon, it is hardly unique to Asians. Whatever their ethnic, religious or cultural background, Penn students have a strong tendency to come from the more privileged segments of society. No one would think of generalizing from Penn's student population to U.S. society as a whole. Why, then, do Americans, including those living and working at or near universities -- even Asian-American students themselves -- conclude that the skewed sample of Asian Americans found at places like Penn is in any way representative of reality beyond the ivory tower? The answer is simple and sobering. As a result of U.S. racial ideology and the political immaturity of Asians themselves, the small number of Asian Americans belonging to what I term the "model minority class" have been systematically dissociated from their less financially fortunate, less "model" co-ethnics. The latter category includes recent refugees from Southeast Asia trying to get by in public housing projects, Filipina garment workers facing threats when they attempt to unionize and Chinese growing up in psychologically stifling urban enclaves. It also includes third- and fourth-generation working-class folks with direct ties to the long and storied Asian-American past. And they comprise the large majority of the Asian-American population today. Why, then, are "model minority" Asians, myself included, not recognized for the aberration we are? The media alone isn't to blame. Turn the pages of The Philadelphia Daily News or The South Philadelphia Review and you'll find frequent, sensational coverage of the threat posed by "Asian gang violence" to the good citizens of Rocky's rowhouse neighborhood. These "other" Asians pose a threat to a carefully crafted image of Asian Americans, one that has evolved over the past two decades but has historical precursors stretching back at least to the 1920s. According to this image, Asian Americans are overachieving, successful and eminently assimilable "funny-looking white people," as I once told a Daily Pennsylvanian reporter. The urban Asians I've mentioned above, facing so many of the same tragic circumstances as their black or Latino neighbors, must be relegated to the sidelines. So too those with deep roots in the U.S., whose grandparents and even great-grandparents survived to tell of a time when racial hatred was blatant and official. These millions of "bad" (or "less good") Asians refute the widespread liberal-conservative claim that Asians are not, and have never been, a racial minority group, sharing patterns with America's Africans, Latinos and indigenous peoples. In order to prevent this obvious conclusion, the media, politicians and schools draw a picture that equates "Asian in America" with the model minority found on college campuses -- fostering ignorance of all who don't fit this illusion. The extent of this ignorance became clear to me two years ago when I attended a meeting at the Greenfield Intercultural Center. After hearing several students exchange views on the disputed "minority status" of Asian Americans, I raised my hand and asked whether anyone had ever visited South Philadelphia. No one seemed to understand. After more rehashing of "model minority stereotypes," I asked the same question, then offered an explanation. "There are a lot of Cambodians in South Philly," I said. "More than three quarters of them are on welfare, the highest rate of any ethnic group. An entire generation is growing up with no hope. Gangs, drugs, joblessness and police brutality are a way of life and death. And the last time I checked, they're also Asian Americans." I encourage everyone who believes that the well-dressed, well-behaved students between 34th and 40th streets represent an entire race of people to visit South Philly and see for themselves. Or walk just a few blocks west of Penn's campus on Walnut Street. You'll find grimy Chinese restaurants and South Asian foodstores, Asian-owned liquor stores selling malt liquor to poor black residents, Vietnamese struggling to find work and Cambodians growing up speaking the language of West Philly's streets. Then ask yourself if they're to blame for the way things are, or if the discrimination they face -- and they do face it, more, probably, than I ever will -- is just in their minds.