Texas Rep. Betty Brown: She Didnt Insult "Asians"--She Insulted CHINESE-Americans

Here is the text, cited from Thinkprogress, below.

The problem with her subsequent apology is that it is directed at Asian Amnericans, when her racist comment was directed at CHINESE AMERICANS IN PARTICULAR.

This is an important distinction. Because the discourse of racism directed specifically Chinese either born here in the U.S. or foreign born becomes erased, elided, invisible, by the discourse of "Asian Americans" and the supposed collective group that forms.

Sorry, but Asian Americans are not a discrete group. But Asians encompasses South Asia (such as India), Southeast Asian (Thailand, Vietnam, for example) and East Asia (China, Japan and Korea). So "Asians" is not a cohesive group.

Imagine how insulted Northern Europeans would be to be confused with someone from, say, Italy, and you'll understand.

Who says racism is latent in America?

"“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told [Organization of Chinese Americans representative Ramey] Ko: 'Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?'

Exoticizing the "Native Chinese"

Westerners always think that these kinds of photos are not just "artsy" but that they are somehow "illuminating" of the culture. Especially if those people are "of color" as compared to your basic Euro-American, who is often thought of as setting the standard and definition against whom those of color must be defined.

After taking this photo, I realize that it doesn't say anything except that I observe my own people in cliched terms. Because I was born in the West, so try as I might, I still see people through that privileging lens, though I myself am oppressed by institutionalized racism and bigotry.

The Discourse of "Skin Whitening in Asia"

A story on the PRI radio show, The World, made much of the idea that this trend of skin whitening is not so much one of a long history as it is one of the cultural colonialism of the West.

I would suggest that that arrogance is itself evidence of the West's Cultural Colonialism.

How? Because historically, light skin was not "white" skin that supposedly mimicked Western Europeans or Euro-Americans.

It signified wealth. How? Because wealthy people did not labor in the marketplaces or in the fields. In other words, they had enough money, and servants, to do all of that for them. They themselves could engage in the more heady activities of politics, social policy, and the like.

Another cultural specificity that Euro-Americans just don't get? Fat babies. They don't get them. Pride in a fat baby? Don't call her fat, they say! That will give her a complex.

Beyond the practical stupidity of that statement--no, babies don't have that Euro-American obsession with being skinny, that's for adults--fat babies meant something very specific. That you had enough food to feed your baby. That your baby would then be healthy. And that because of that, you in turn must be if not wealthy, at least comfortable.

So before Euro-Americans go patting themselves on the back, again, for setting the "trend" for what constitutes desirable all over the world, maybe they should step back for a moment and consider the culture of which they speak.

Pro-Tibet Rhetoric by Euro-Americans Often Is Racist

It is interesting that many Chinese-Americans will not join in the Pro-Tibet rallies. Why not, you wonder? Are they all so awful, have they all been so indoctrinated that they simply cannot contemplate that Tibetans civil, not human, let's call it something that Americans can relate to in their own past, civil rights, are being violated?

The short answer: no. Chinese-Americans, or rather, American-Chinese, get it. Of course they are offended. They think it's wrong. So why don't they join in the debate?

Because pro-Tibet rallies that critique Chinese people are often shorthand for racism against Chinese.

How, you ask?

Let's begin with some basics. Ever notice a white person criticizing Tibet? Think about this. Do they have a lot of American-Chinese friends? No? Number one, then.

Number two, why not? Because they assume that all Chinese people must be bad, because their government, and let's face it, white people always say it's your government since they immediately forget that lots of Chinese people have been here for generations. They're still not American, hence the term American-Chinese, rather than Chinese-American. So, alright. They don't have any faith that these people have any critical thinking skills and can critique the Chinese government. Even though per capita, there are more Chinese people born here and abroad who have professional jobs than Euro-Americans, per capita.

Third, let's see. When was the last time a Chinese person born anywhere suffered from racism, I mean of the institutionalized kind that makes them feel if they are violated even verbally, they can't say anything, they just have to swallow it because otherwise people will just say, "Oh, you're being too sensitive." Yesterday? Okay, so yesterday that just happened. Sanctioned by the community, who doesn't want to hear that you're just too sensitive. You're just being too "touchy." That's right. Institutionalized racism.

Soo, that person next to you complaining about all those civil rights violations occurring across the world? Does she or he care about how the civil rights of that Chinese person standing next to them are constantly being violated, flouted, or otherwise ignored?

And does that person care about how Latinos, so often just "Mexicans" as if it's a dirty word, are being exploited? How their labor is exploited but the government won't legalize them. So they can be exploited and then deported conveniently, to whatever country they come from, when we're done exploiting their labor? Does that person crying "Foul" about Tibet care about them?

Do you see those people demonstrating in the streets? In San Francisco? In Los Angeles? Anywhere? About the poor black man caught smoking pot forty-five years ago in the South and is still in jail? Along with hundreds of his now compadres? Or protesting the government, yes, the federal government, initially introduced drugs to South and East L.A. to keep the black people down who were finally feeling their civil rights? Do you see them protesting that, and all the ills that have resulted from it? Do you see it?

I heard from someone that after all, there isn't a ranking of these kinds of social ills. The one is as bad as the other.

No. They aren't. If it's happening in your own backyard, that's worse. Because you have to take care of your own house before you go pointing the finger at how someone else's is corrupt. Something American's are soo good at doing: pointing the finger elsewhere. Can't think about how we still oppress people here.

It's so much easier to point the finger at China and Tibet. It's not an issue of condoning heinous civil rights violations abroad. It's about doing something about the heinous, continued civil rights violations here, in the U.S., of the poor, disadvantaged or just plain colored people.

If you're so worried about civil rights violations, shut up. And do something. Here. In your community. With your government. Protest that. Or are you too racist or bigoted to care about the poor people in the South? The disadvantaged colored people in the cities? And the exploited migrant women and men picking all your vegetables?

French Man Refuses to Return China's Imperial Bronzes

It should have been deemed an illegal auctioning of two Chinese imperial bronzes looted from the Imperial Palace when the French and the English sacked it during the Opium "War." That "war, by the way, was really a shameless attempt again by the Brits and French to colonize China because, after all, they were so used to colonizing everyone else in the world. Christie's response? They couldn't deny the right to auction the pieces, owned by the partner of the late Yves Saint Laurent.

One wonders. If this were the Italian government, protesting that the Getty had yet again acquired more statues illegally, of course both Christie's and this French man, would have acquiesced, stopped the auction and returned the pieces.

But it's China. Hey, they are just so easy to scapegoat. Again and again. So this French man said that he would return the illegally obtained bronzes if China "improved its human rights record."

That's shorthand for, you know, I'm really irresponsible, I'd rather have the money, and since everyone else points to China's human rights, I will too. It's convenient, rather than actually confronting the central issue: these were looted bronzes, illegally obtained during a war that was, frankly, a colonialist attempt by the French to subjugate the Chinese by inducing rampant drug addiction. When that didn't work, hey, why not just invade them? It's our right, after all, isn't it? We're from the West, we're French. We can do anything.

Why doesn't Mr. Pierre Berge confronting real history and examining what his country did to acquire these pieces in the first place?

The issue is not what China does do, the issue here is what other countries also do but don't take responsibility for because they avoid the issue by pointing the finger at China. That's the issue Westerners often don't grasp.

See the entire article here.

Being Western Isn't Enough of a Credential Anymore

The days when being a Westerner, especially one form Western Europe (read: Britain) or from the U.S., in order to be instantly credible, experienced and desirable, are over. In what context? In the East Asia context.

Americans and Western Europeans who travel to India still experience some cache, as do those same people who also travel to other countries in South Asia. They've been colonized enough to be "used to" Westerners who treat a trip to India, for example, as a spiritual pilgrimage. Usually these same people don't subscribe to a "conventional religion" but they sure don't mind using an entire country to activate their "spirituality."

But more and more, partly because much of East Asia was not colonized by these same Western countries, Americans, Brits, French, they aren't instantaneously viewed as more capable, more skilled, more intelligent, or otherwise more informed, than the indigenous peoples. Travel to any of the major cities in China, for example, and one will find more sophistication in the young people than anything Americans might offer. More ambition, better gadgets, and for those born in the city, better educated.

It must be so disappointing for travelers who assume that just because they are less than stellar in their own country, either sexually or professionally, they can still establish their cultural hegemony over there. Well, they can no longer.

Being Euro-American just isn't enough of a credential anymore. Wherever one goes in East Asia, one will find that not only can they do things just as well, they can often do it better, with better technology. It can be done more quicker, and their adoption of newer, more sustainable and efficient technologies is far more rapid and agile than the slow process made in Euro-American countries. Except perhaps those in North-western Europe, where many of these technologies originate.

Nevertheless, the idea of the BRIC economy is more than merely the latest wave of strong, developing economies. It is of cultures that are rapidly gaining on those of the West, building upon both their developments and their mistakes. Americans in particular should take note and stop being so arrogant.

The Rafael Vinoly "Grant"

The premise of Rafael Vinoly’s research grant is to foster deeper understanding, one presumes, in the arenas of architecture, urbanism and material culture.

However, this premise seems to be a sham. This year’s competition explored the built environment of developing nations. The purpose was to understand and address problems inherent in countries like China, India, and presumably those in Africa. But China was the first area they specified as being interested in understanding.

So I submitted a proposal. It was a critique on the fact that Westerners, Americans and Europeans alike, assume that western designs in China, including the Nest, the Egg, CCTV Tower and the Cube, are representative of both the problems and the inadequate solutions for a unique Chinese urbanization.

The problem is that Chinese modernization supposedly victimizes the individual. It tears down “traditional” architecture like hutongs, which no one ever acknowledges are a uniquely Beijing typology.

Well, Beijing is not a stand-in for all of China. But it has become that.

As for Beijing “fatigue,” a phenomenon in which architects think they have fully explored Beijing, the problem is they haven’t explored it at all. What they have explored is themselves: Western architecture in Beijing. The editor in charge of Beijing at Architectural Record, for example, never actually explores Beijing. Instead, he helps people exoticize elements of Beijing that Westerners find interesting. Not coincidentally, these elements are the Western designs in Beijing named above.

But as for documenting the rest of Beijing, what Beijingers really experience, no, that’s not interesting. That does not reinforce assumptions westerners have about Beijing: that it dehumanizes people with its monument, that it is an out-of-control city developing with not regard for the people, and that Beijinger’s really miss their traditional architecture, which supposedly represents the pinnacle of Chinese architecture.

First, there are innumerable neighborhoods in Beijing of a human scale. No one ever bothers documenting those. And since Western architects can’t never speak the language when they go over there, how would they know what Beijingers feel about their city, anyway? Imagine if some Chinese person came over to the U.S. to study NY architecture, assuming it represented all of the U.S., and didn’t speak the language? Americans are so narrow-minded and gringoistic that they would immediately protest, “How can you study us without speaking American?” Yes, and the same goes for architectural tourists traveling in China who lament what’s going on without understanding the first thing about China. Like William Menking. The arrogance of his assumptions about China is mind-boggling: he knows nothing about it, doesn't speak the language, doesn't hold a degree in it, and has never visited there. But he sure is certain that the U.S. is superior, it doesn't trample people's human rights. Evidently, he has been out to lunch during this entire administration, doesn't understand how our prison system is racist, and knows absolutely nothing about institutionalized racism, sexism and classicism. But since he knows nothing of these problems in the U.S., it's alright to engage in architecture here.

Modernization is not defined by Western progress. It just isn’t. Other countries must necessarily define and determine their own trajectory towards a modernization that is uniquely their own. The West does not equal Modernization with a capital “M” but just typifies a modernization, one of many.

And the argument that “traditional” architecture represents the pinnacle of Chinese architectural innovation and that it should be saved? Well, as long as these people have access to other housing, do white Americans traveling as architectural tourists to Beijing know for a fact that they lament losing their housing? Have most of these hutongs actually been seen by superior Americans, or is that just a projected lament about our own inability to preserve our own monuments? Yes. That’s what these people do best: project.

Indeed, what is never specified is what elements of “traditional” architecture the hutongs represent that are so great. Never once is that specified. Instead, hutongs are used as an indictment of how the “Chinese government” is insensitive to the “people” and victimizes them. Of course, then when Americans begin talking about those “people” they begin talking about the ethnic minority, in a dizzying display of a lack of logic. These writers and architects don’t really care about the Han Chinese except as a symbol to indict the government. But as for actually understanding what these people want and need? No. That task is reserved for the ethnic minorities, the Tibetans and Uighurs are current favorite darlings of Westerners, but again, the discourse is “Isn’t the Chinese government awful?” The goal is never to truly understand but to reinforce the superiority of Americans and Western Europeans.

Finally, Rafael Vinoly grant doesn’t seem interested in people actually qualified to determine what is needed by Chinese people in order to propose architectural proposals that are not just projections. After all, in order to determine what is needed, one needs to speak the language. Have studied the history and culture so as not to exoticize. And have, finally, training in architecture. But one needs all those things. Speaking the language or living in China do not necessarily qualify one because again, one needs training in how to approach the problem.

In other words, one needs to know how to critically think. Something most architects lack. Critical thinking skills. They are too often seduced by surface. Which inevitably, always, culturally colonializes the Other.

Joseph Ellis on Conservatism and Liberalism

In reading Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, Professor of History at Mt. Holyoke Joseph Ellis defines Conservatism and Liberalism.

On liberalism, Ellis says, "The core revolutionary principle...is individual liberty. It has radical and, in modern terms, libertarian implications, because it regards any accommodation of personal freedom to governmental discipline as dangerous. In its more extreme forms it is a recipe for anarchy, and its attitude toward any energetic expression of centralized political power can assume paranoid proportions," (2000: 14).


On conservativism, he says, "...the American Revolution [was seen by some] as an incipient national movement with deep, if latent, origins in the colonial era...The core revolutionary principle in this view is collectivistic rather than individualistic, for it sees the true spirit of '76 as the virtuous surrender of personal, state, and sectional interests to the larger purposes of American nationhood, first embodied in the Continental Army and later in the newly established federal government. It has conservative but also protosocialistic implications, because it does not regard the individual as the sovereign unit in the political equation and is more comfortable with the governmental discipline as a focusing and channeling device for national development. In its more extreme forms it relegates personal rights and liberties to the higher authority of the state, which is "us" and not "them," and it therefore has both communal and despotic implications," (2000: 14).

As soon as I read this, I thought again of the irony of the Republicans having usurped the mantle of "Conservatism" since according to this classical definition, they are actually quite liberal (!!) and I'm sure that those radical, right-wing jackanapes who think plotting to kill leaders based on their skin color is a good idea would cringe at the thought.

But another implication that I'm certain not many have thought of is that these diametrically opposed interpretations of the purpose of the American Revolution is how they apply to dominant Euro-American understandings of China. Many a Euro-Am will lament at the lack of freedom in China and the lack of understanding of "Democracy" not only the government, but regular Chinese people in China have. They immediately attribute this condition to the oppressive government: if not for the oppressive regime, Chinese people would understand "Democracy, U.S.-style" and indeed, they would validate the Euro-American value system, i.e. they would be more like "us."

No, they wouldn't. China and its value system, without falling into essentialisms or transhistoricisms, consistently subscribes to this principle: sacrifice of the individual for the greater good of the state. For stability to reign, each individual must sacrifice, and that doesn't mean literally they need to sacrifice certain things--horror to your average American. They mean that people must know their roles. And for each situation, there are appropriate roles to play. If everyone maintains those, then society will not experience upheaval. It is when people do not understand these roles that chaos ensues.

And frankly, what's happening in the U.S. culturally and politically, with skinheads plotting to kill the next president and the V.P. pick by McCain demonstrating that, once again, Americans can be unimaginably, shockingly stupid at the highest levels of government, seems to be a testament to what happens when people do not understand their place, their limitations, have no decorum, manners and basic honor. And if that isn't enough proof that America's way isn't so great, can we just once more contemplate how the U.S. singlehandedly ushered in a GLOBAL DEPRESSION by sanctioning an 8-year period of rapacious, hey-if-the-president-can-steal-an-election-why-can't-I-do-a-little-stealing-of-my-own mentality? I don't think we should be pointing fingers at how inferior "they" are or looking for validation for our way of being "free." W have been steadily losing our freedom under Bush for the last Eight Years, and for those who object to the Democrats controlling Congress and the
White House, it was the 6 Years of Republican Congress that helped Bush along.

Looking Back on the Olympics

Now that the Olympics are over, the pejorative gaze on China has reemerged in our media regarding the tainted milk.

Which leads me back to musing on those young white protesters at the Olympic games. What were they protesting? That same litany: China has no respect for human rights. And these young white people, as always, the Great White Hopes, were there to draw attention to that fact.

Exactly which population were they protesting for, however? Not the downtrodden Chinese people. No, because they are a monolith, part of the dominant “Oppressor” population. No. Instead, they were protesting for the minorities who are supposedly “othered” such as the favorite darling of Western cultural colonialists, the Tibetans. And why are they protesting on behalf of the Tibetans? Because the big, bad Chinese “people” (not the government, just all Chinese people are demonized by Americans) do not respect the sovereignty of Tibetans.

It always amuses me how Americans enjoy pointing fingers at other cultures about problems they themselves engage in. In other words, Euro-Americans like to project. Rather like Republican politicians. And they do it so well. I never see these same young white people protesting how so many Black people were oppressed and continue to be oppressed by our government’s Katrina policies. I don’t see those same people protesting the continuous oppression different American-Indian tribes suffer through government policies regarding land. I met one man born in the early 70’s who was removed from his parents care as an infant, forcibly made to attend a Catholic school, and then whose parents were forcibly removed from their land in Texas because the Federal government found oil on their land.

Gee, where are the protesters when they are needed? Too busy externalizing their collective imperialistic guilt to look in their own backyards, apparently.

China, Foreign Policy and the Language Fetish

Research jobs regarding China policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institute and the Rand Corporation all shared one criterion: fluency in Mandarin.

This is interesting. Assuming this is a valid requirement, one must look a bit deeper into the assumption. That is, if one is fluent in Mandarin, then automatically, and especially given the collective linguistic retardation of 95% of all Americans (after all, why speak other languages when the States are sooo important?), linguistic capability is a significant plus. This is especially true when so many Americans who travel abroad think that they do not need to speak any language other than English because the States are the center of the globe.

However, there is a caveat. For those Euro-Americans (that means Americans of European descent, though white-Americans are so used to being just "American" and everyone else is othered) who do study Chinese, a few characteristics emerge.

1) Euro-Americans who study Mandarin tend to fetishize it. That means, even if they are receiving a Ph.D. in some field of Chinese Studies, they concentrate so intently and intensely on acquiring Mandarin skills (speech and written) that they spend absolutely no time developing critical thinking skills.

2) The result being that many non-Chinese Ph.D. students graduate brag about their linguistic skills (i.e. accent, ability to replicate calligraphic characters, to name a few) to the detriment of any significant substantive research, which tends to be very conservative.

3) That means that those who focus on acquiring linguistic skills have not explored different ways of thinking about material in Chinese. They simply replicate the same old methodologies: translate the material, take all the historical signifiers mentioned in the text as actual fact, situate those "facts" (rather than metaphors and didactic signifiers) in a historical landscape, and VOILA! A new translation that has been completely misconstrued is added to our fount of "knowledge" about Chinese history.

4) Which means, finally, that what we know about China: its history, its religion, its women, has been tinged by that initial linguistic fetishization.

Foreign policy think tanks should reconsider the absolute requirement of linguistic fluency for those who have Ph.D.'s in East Asian fields, but who also demonstrate an ability to think critically, creatively, and especially in this day of lemmings, individually.