My friend Angelina and I always make a joke that she finds broken people. She finds people that have abusive fathers and low self esteem and she kind of just, mothers them? That might not be the right word I’m looking for, but you get the jist. Its literally like they just flock to her. I was talking to her one time and I told her that I was her only friend that wasn’t broken. Her face grew confused and she kind of just stared at me before she said, “Dude…your brother died when you were 8. You might be the most broken of them all.”

I’ve never seen myself as broken. I mean, I’ve been through some shit, who hasn’t? But I never really thought it broke me. Like she said, I was 8 when it happened. And it wasn’t like he was murdered or had some terrible disease. He was 12, and he got hit by a car on his way home from summer school. The end. And people always tell me that they’d never guess that I been through anything like that. Like I’m too happy to have had any hardship in my life.

I think that’s why I’m so happy.

I learned early on that life isn’t fair. That your entire world can turn upside down in the blink of an eye. And maybe part of the reason why I’m so happy is because I know that it can end at any moment. And if I’m being honest, I get scared when things go right for too long. At the same time though, I went through the worst thing I could possibly go through before puberty. I hit my lowest point when I was still in elementary school. And guess what, I made it! I mean seriously, how much worse can life get? The way I see it, life can only get better.

I guess I didn’t know I was different until my first day of Kindergarten.

Between the ages of 3 and 12, I lived in a white bread suburbia of Everett, Washington called Mill Creek. At the age of 5 I started at Silver Firs elementary and I was so excited because I got to go where my older siblings went everyday! I didn’t have to sit in the kitchen eating my cereal and watch them leave.

I remember standing in line with my mom and all the other kids were crying and I didn’t understand. Like, hello? Didn’t they know that THIS WAS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THEIR LIVES!? Okay, I didn’t know that either but the point is that I was excited.

So I’m standing there and the teacher comes out to walk us to our classrooms and I totally left my mom and didn’t look back and I was all like, ‘yeah! toys and other kids!’ I remember she sat us on the carpet in a circle to go around and introduce ourselves and I remember looking around and noticing that no one else had skin like mine. And then it got even more weird when it was my turn and I said “Imani” and they all kind of stared at me like ‘what kind of name is Imani?’ Anyways, it was one of those things that kind of just stayed in back of my head until it was blatantly shoved in my face like…every single class photo taken. I was that random black spot in the front row.

Then in fifth grade a boy called me and my friends (a girl who was half black, half white and another girl who was literally from Africa) the N word. And I was so taken a back it was honestly all a blur. It was like..he said it, then we all stared at him and asked him to repeat himself and he said it again! Then next thing I know I’m throwing his shoe across the street and my friend is chasing him downhill on his bike. And then we all got in trouble for fighting and got detention but nothing happened to him.

I moved to Bellingham (another white bread town) when I was 12 and ONCE AGAIN I was 1 of like, 15 black kids, tops in the whole middle school. And people started calling me Denzel because my last name is Washington and a kid asked me to explain a 50 cent song to him. Which is ridiculous because I was obsessed with Blink 182 back then… but people didn’t see that. They just saw my skin.

So to the public I was just this black girl. But my family saw me differently. I’d say I was the black sheep but that’d be wrong. I was the ‘white sheep’ in a herd of black sheep (get it). I was weird because I’d rather read a book than watch TV. I wanted to learn how to snowboard so I was ‘white’. I owned a long board so I was ‘white’. I listened to more Sublime than rap so I was ‘white’. It was like in the movie when Ben gets called a coconut. I had that too except for people like me, we’re ‘oreos’.

I get what its like to feel out of place everywhere you go.

It’s weird and confusing. Like to yourself…you’re just you. You’re skin color doesn’t define you. I could describe myself with ten different words and not list ‘black’ once. It isn’t the most important thing about me. It isn’t the only thing about me. Yeah, I’m black and I’m so proud to be! I come from a culture of struggle and determination. How can I not be proud to sport this ebony skin? But I’m more than that. I’m an author. I’m an animal lover. I’m not a morning person. I’m funny. I’m a sister. A daughter. And aunt. A college student. I’m struggling. But I’m grateful.

I’m Imani Kashala Shanyce Washington.

This reading showed the history behind the racist words that have been used towards Asian Americans and it also connects them to more recent racist beliefs. From Walt’s favorite slur “gook” to the model minority myth, there have been many words and phrases with powerful and demeaning intentions aimed at the Asian American population. These all carried different messages but they all found common ground in singling out the “people from the Far East”. Oriental was used to create distance between those in Europe and the outsiders that were seen as exotic and foreign. Once the people who were seen as foreign became immigrants, however, they were all of a sudden seen as alien. So basically, if you are a tourist then America wants you because America wants a good image of having diversity and exotic displays, and if you are planning on staying, you are an alien who has come to take our jobs, steal our women, and pollute our country. 

One example the book used was the anti-Chinese feelings that arose during the gold mining years in California. Much like the Japanese, Chinese people had come to the east coast long before WWII. These Chinese immigrants were given jobs on the railroads, mining, farming, and other manual labor jobs. They were discriminated against for several different reasons. One assumption was that the “arrival” of the Chinese was dropping the price of gold, even though many Chinese immigrants had already been in America and had nothing to do with the control of prices for gold. The term “coolie” was given to the Chinese workers and was used to justify the belief that the Chinese workers were “unfree and servile, a threat to the white working man’s family”. (9) Asian immigrants alike were portrayed and thought of as being more primitive than the white population, very similar to the train of thought that was used to further support the enslavement of African Americans.

As time progressed, a new model minority myth was born. It was the idea that Asian Americans are smart, good at math, quite and subservient, etc. This was falsely believed to praise Asian Americans and their success, but all it really does is create a glass ceiling for Asian Americans, take credit away from their successes, and pit them against other minorities. This belief was founded on the idea that Asian Americans were the best group at assimilating to American culture which is both untrue and extremely damaging. For example, as we learned last quarter, the Japanese American population did their best to preserve their culture during their imprisonment as a form of resistance. The later generations have also been looking into the history of their families and digging up the stories of their parents so they do not go unheard. But despite the truths, we continue to see these Asian stereotypes played out in popular culture today. In the early 20th century there were many anti-Chinese songs, some of which were in the book, and now we see things like the recent episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Better Luck Tomorrow showed that not all Asian Americans are quiet, obedient people. It did a great job portraying suburbia and the not-so-studious behavior of the group but I was expecting the movie to maybe challenge the model minority myth more outwardly. If I remember correctly, there weren’t many racist words thrown out compared to Gran Torino but it instead just relied on the audience to realize what they were showing. If somebody watched the movie without thinking about what the story of Ben and his friends was supposed to challenge, then the movie could definitely miss it’s point.

Throughout the first 105 pages of Robert Lee’s book entitled “Orientals” I have made several connections, the first pertaining to the film Gran Torino we watched last Tuesday in class. The main character Walt who was a tough and gruff Korean war veteran with a hard exterior, was constantly displaying his racial prejudices through his use of derogatory words. Such words directed towards his Hmong neighbors as “Gook” and “Zipperhead” were commonly used in his vocabulary when discussing the Asian community. It can be assumed through his actions that he bought into the stereotypes associated to the Asian-American community, and thus resented their community. However the biggest connection was his dislike for them due to their presence in his once white community. When the immigrants from Hmong replaced his white neighbors and caused “Pollution” to occur in his prototypical “All American” neighborhood the connection can be made between Lee’s comments on the “Oriental,” being a “Pollutant to American society. As Lee states in his introduction under the section “The Six Faces of the Oriental,” “…the pollutant, the coolie, the deviant, the yellow peril, the model minority, and the gook- portray the Oriental as an alien body and a threat to the American national family (Lee,8).” This idea as the Asian community being a pollutant to American society is just like Walt’s situation early on in the film “Gran Torino” as he blames the Hmong community for polluting his neighborhood.

I have also noticed that through American history people dislike those that are different in appearance, but also those who bring competition. As expressed throughout the reading of Lee, you see that white workers, in particular the Irish, have this extreme hostility towards the Chinese because they are willing in many circumstances to work for cheaper wages. This competition is a constant cause for discrimination and hate between different races. It was even apparent in last quarters reading in regards to the call for Japanese Americans to be interned following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese community was becoming prosperous, and therefore financially impacting the white community therefore causing resentment. However it is odd that people direct their hostilities and hate against the race or ethnic group of which they are economically competing against, and not towards those in positions of power who are using their powers too divide the laborers and pitting them against each other for their own benefits. This thought crept to mind especially after hearing the hate the Irish workers felt towards the Chinese community and the use of the Chinese as strike breakers which can be seen in the case Calvin Sampson’s soling factory when Irish and French Canadians went on strike(Lee, 66). Furthermore both groups have been noted throughout the reading in Lee to have gone on strike in many instances. But instead of resenting each other why did they never band together? Would that have made a difference and enabled both groups to earn better wages and treatment?We will never know for sure, but it is interesting to think about, and I ask any of my reader’s to comment on this idea and give me their own thoughts and impressions on these questions.

Reading this book, I could get new information about Chinese Americans, and I’m glad because I only know Japanese Americans from last quarter. So, I felt like I had more knowledge about Asian Americans. I didn’t know the effect caused by Chinese immigrants, the reason why the stereotype against Chinese people was long hair, and so on. So, reading this book was good to know about them. However, honestly I didn’t clearly understand because there were many different words in this book. For example, it is still not clear how different “miscegenation” and “amalgamation” are. In this book these words defined that “miscegenation” sexual relations between races and “amalgamation” stand for marriage relations among different ethnic groups. However, I have never studied about gender, so it is complicated to me to discuss about it. Before I forced technical problem like this, I just studied about history, but it wasn’t correct. Although we now are studying about Asian Americans’ history, I think we learn about not only history but also many fields. This history has many connections with different fields. Thinking about that, it is understandable why this book is too difficult for me to understand.

One thing I could comprehend is the sentence; “her death takes away the reason for his future return to China.” (Lee, p99) It was nonsense because there were some reason for returning to China. He should have knew about his roots, and I thinks he had a right to know it. I know how important knowing about themselves’ roots are for people who don’t know who they are exactly in America. However, at the same time, I know it was true that he loose the reason to return at that time. Returning to their other home countries was too hard because it cost too much and also they need to connect there. However, he couldn’t have any connection in China after his mother died. This thing remained me about “red pill and blue pill.” To know the truth, he had to choose the way to go. Or, he didn’t do.

This section of the reading had a few unique stories that made learning more about the minority groups history in the United States all the more interesting. There were a lot of cool topics to discuss in the book but one that stood out was how Lee delved into sexuality within the Chinese community. One example being the long hair of the Chinese being “…perceived as sexually and racially ambiguous,, and therefore dangerous.”( Lee p.38) Their hair was a stark contrast to the image in typical white America where men had short hair and women had long hair. One could view the long hair as a failure to integrate American culture which would cause conflict and dissonance between whites and the Chinese.

Another point in regards to sexuality was the Chinese’ lack of women in America. Lee goes over how the Chinese men would marry native Hawaiian women, but mostly white Irish women which is oddly humorous given the animosity between the two groups at the time. The fear of permanent residence of the Chinese in American society, especially in California made the whites even more disdainful of Chinese integration. This then sparked the “amalgamation” and “miscegenation” movement by the Irish which showed the “unacceptable nature of sexual relations between races.” (Lee p.76) There was a more comedic side to this as well which involved the story of Patsy O’Wang who was a half Irish half Chinese who would change his personality based on his consumption of Whiskey or strong tea. Though in the end Patsy accepts his Irish half to set forth a better life in American. While both groups were “lesser” in the eyes of the Protestant-Anglo Saxon the Irish still had a step up on the Chinese simply due to being white.

The importance of sexuality was even ingrained into the land itself with the idea of it being “virgin” ready for settlers to take and conquest. So with the Victorian idea of sexual chastity of white women in contrast to the overwhelming majority of Chinese prostitutes there was a definite threat to all of the white America’s ideals. Though there was a large number of white prostitutes existing at the time, funny enough.

The threat of sexual turmoil was evident still with stories such as “the Haunted Valley” and “Poor Ah Toy” both of which involved racially mixed relationships. The core idea being that the Chinese men in the stories were powerless both to white men and women which made their sexuality a deprived state. The only thing the Chinese represented were an object without a voice.

Finally there was the Chinese’ general work choice which further pushed them away from masculinity. The main job being a launderer, the Chinese men were seen as doing women’s work. This was further established with the court case of Montana in 1910 where the lawyer for Quong Wing argued that a $10 license to operate a laundry was unfair, not on the grounds that it was racially unfair but rather the law was discriminating against sex.