Minorities: Feminine and Masculine

Throughout different readings and other materials the sexual exploitation of minorities and especially the women is something that always stands out. From picture brides, to war brides, all the way to prostitutes the minority women have little voice in regards to their fate in America. In regards to male masculinity there was the queue the Chinese men had that the white Americans saw as abstract and a threat to the system. The idea of short hair for men and long hair for women was befuddled with the introduction of the long hair of Chinese immigrants. Their hair was a target of abuse and was easily exploited.

On the flip side there were the Filipino men which gained the reputation of being better lovers than whites which then caused yet another movement against minority groups. The whites would then compare the men to barbaric, primal and beastly. The last thing the whites wanted was a new face stealing their women. Which furthers the ideal of powerlessness of women in this time period in which they are similar to a trophy to brag about.

Overall the group in power, the white Americans tried to find any trait that disagreed with their own qualities and use propaganda and scare tactics to prevent any kind of potential change from the minorities. The women had no rights except white women over minorities. There was little potential for change during the times that would upset the balance of white male dominated power. The transition between generations is always a high interest point due to all the change that can occur.

“Richard Sherman; You Just Won The Super Bowl…”

“…what are you going to do next?”(announcer). “I’m going to Disney World!” (Sherman).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now how many people would actually expect to hear something like that in today’s world from Richard Sherman moments after the Seahawks beat the 49′ers in storybook fashion? We talked a bit in class the other day about why he is getting such bad press. Shortly after the big game Forbs published an article that as of today has 44,496,464 views(!) Here are just a few snippets:

“His degree from Stanford was in communications … which might explain why, while he seemed to be hollering like a crazy person, he didn’t curse and looked into the camera the whole time.”

“If you stick a microphone in a football player’s face seconds after he made a huge play to send his team to the Super Bowl, you shouldn’t be surprised if he’s a little amped up.”

“Ninety-nine percent of on-field interviews are boring and useless. The TV networks do them anyway for the 1 percent of the time they get a moment like Richard Sherman.”

 ”As a reporter and writer, that raw emotion — whatever form it takes — is exactly what I hope for. That’s why media people fight for access to locker rooms. After players and coaches cool off, most of them turn into Crash Davis, reading from the book of cliches.”

“But we — the media, and fans in general — don’t know what we want. We rip athletes for giving us boring quotes. But if they say what they actually feel, we rip them for spouting off or showing a lack of class.”

“It’s like we want them to be thinking, Well, that was a fine contest, and jolly good that we won. Which NO athlete is EVER thinking.”

So why all the fuss? To use the local vernacular; haters gonna’ hate. That’s all there is to it. Be sure to watch the game Sunday– and when the Seahawks triumph over the Broncos listen for Richard Sherman to give Mickey’s magic-kingdom some love~

-Orientals ix-p105

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.

Orientals 1/27

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.

Orientals ix-105

The first few chapters of Robert Lee’s book Orientals was very informative as to define the names that Asians were labeled. It reminded me of Walt in Gran Torino and how he would call his neighbors “gooks” all the time. It was, of course, meant to be very derogatory towards the Asians; however, later in the movie Thao ends up doing these chores for Walt. As Walt gets comfortable having Thao doing a few things for him I think Walt begins to see Thao as the “model minority” type, the perfect worker. The further I read, the more I understood that having Asians in that time was like a double-edged sword for the U.S.

I understood that having Asian was useful to the economy by labor getting done, but also threatening to the superior white race of the country. Asians were needed to work the fields, railroads, mines, and other various work places to build the U.S. However, the immigration of Asians gave the whites nostalgia. They felt intruded and that the Chinese ruined the nice “tone” of California (28). Thus, having the Asian immigrants come to the U.S. was bittersweet.

Asians eventually began to gain their rights to citizenship; however, this was like an invitation to the whites to study the Chinese culture. This lead to U.S. white citizens to make assumptions about the Chinese and their appearances. “Oriental sexuality was constructed as ambiguous, inscrutable, and hermaphroditic; the Oriental (male or female) was constructed as a ‘third sex’” (85). The term “third sex” was constructed specifically for the Chinese. “Sexuality does the political work of defining and regulating desire as well as the body, determining whose bodies and what body parts are eroticized…what privilege, rewards, and punishments accompany sexual behavior”(86).  Defining one’s sexuality was just another political vehicle to categorize racial identities. This tactic, I have never thought of, or read of before.

Unfortunately, some of these terms like “gook” and “model minority” are still used in today’s society. However, the new way to refer to someone as a model minority is to simply ask, “You’re Asian, right?” Implying that when asking an Asian that that they are good at math, know “kung-fu,” for eat with chopsticks. After reading this first part of the section, I realized how some things might have changed, but how some things are simply altered to modern day communication.

Honda Civic

 

So I will start off my rock posts by looking at the Honda Civic. I guess one could say that the Honda Civic is a love it or hate it kind of car. They have a reputation for being “ricer burners”, this was one of the terms that the rival gang in Gran Torino used. They are also extremely reliable and economic. Some Civic’s from the late 80′s and early 90′s still get better gas mileage than a Prius. For somebody looking to get into modifying cars, they are easy to work on and parts come relatively cheap. We saw one in Gran Torino; it was driven by Thao’s cousin Spider. It had a spoiler on the trunk, the rear of the car sits much lower than the front (implying blown shocks or cut springs), and it has a black hood. This in itself is a stereotype of Honda Civics, not to mention that it was driven by an Asian American gang. But to really understand all of this, I must go deeper.

There has been a history of tension between American car companies and their employees, and Japanese car companies and the people who support them. With the fear of Asian Americans taking the jobs from the middle class white workers, the tension could become quite deep seated. Not only were the Ford, GM, Chevy, etc. employees still harboring anti-Asian beliefs, but the opposing Japanese car companies took more business from the American companies as well. While the Japanese cars were gaining popularity due to their efficiency and affordability, those who backed the American companies continued to protest the Japanese car companies. Honda was a leading car company for a long portion of time and their flagship model was the Honda Civic. Eventually, Civics could be seen in any city around the country. This popularity acted as another physical manifestation of the idea that the “Oriental pollution” was coming to the states. Civics, as well as pretty much any car made by Japanese companies, became a vessel for these racist beliefs. With the emergence of the term “ricer” spawned another struggle for Asian Americans.

 

Above are two memes that show an example of some typical “ricer” jokes. The term goes hand in hand with people who modify their cars in ways that seem useless and are incorrect. The Camaro, which is a popular American muscle car, in the first picture is equipped with a large, gaudy body kit and Lamborghini style doors. These mods do not make a car perform any better and are simply exterior modifications. So it is fairly easy to see why somebody might make fun of somebody else for building a car in a way that they feel is amateur. But, that is only scratching the surface. The word “ricer” does not just mean that a car is amateur, it has quite the racist connection as well.

Rice is the base word of the term “ricer” and it is used because the cars are Japanese, and everybody in Asia eats rice; right? And if you are Asian American, you must drive a “rice burner” right? Because that’s all you people do is farm rice and drive stupid cars, right? So now anything related to rice is funny, right? Rice burner, ricer, ricer boy, rice rocket? That is what the term carries along with it. It is another outlet for racism and it is even equipped with a “shield” meaning in case anybody tries to bring that up.

So what does somebody mean when they say “ricer”?

When somebody is calling out a car as a “ricer”, they are saying multiple things. First off, they are looking down on the car and its driver because it is an import, not domestic. More specifically, that it is imported from Japan most likely. They are expressing their disapproval of the car, the driver, and how the driver modified the car. But, what kind of driver is it? The automatic assumption is Asian and can even be linked to gangsters, hoodlums, or delinquents. So the word is used in many different situations and carries several meanings. It also has a circular nature to it. For example, if an Asian-American is seen driving a Toyota, somebody might assume that person driving the Toyota must race since they look to be Asian and are driving a “ricer”, even if the car is not modified and the person has no interest in racing.

This isn’t the first time food has been used as a racial slur but since it is linked to cars, it has the perfect cover to allow the continued use of the word. Now, people within any car scene are usually familiar with the term ricer. Some people even try to claim that they are not racist by distinctly saying that when they say “ricer” they are referring to a poorly built car, not a Japanese car. There is even a whole movement that has been started called Rice Killers and it’s main goal is “uniting imports and domestics against rice!”. It is backed by a forum and has grown to a point where they are making profit by setting up car events and selling merchandise. It seems that they forgot to realize that they are still using the term “ricer” which is demeaning in and of itself. In a failed attempt to end the dispute between imports and domestics, Rice Killers has done nothing but promote the use of the word and all the others that go along with it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So I guess if you take a word with a racist meaning and background, and claim that it is actually just an acronym for something not racist, it is totally okay to continue using the word….. R.I.C.E. isn’t any different than rice; they both say rice. If somebody were to come up with an acronym for O.R.I.E.N.T.A.L. it would not get rid of the word’s history, intent, or meaning. Rice is another way to create distance and promote that Asian is synonymous with alien. He NATURALLY thought that “ricer” meant a Japanese car. And yet, he thinks that it’s possible to take the same word, create an acronym out of it, and say that it means idiot. It seems to me that it is just another method to link a negative word like idiot to the list of other things that “ricer” connects to. It links things like poverty, gangs, and stupidity to Asian Americans and tries to hide behind an “innocent” target of ugly cars.

The last meme shows a picture of a group of Mustangs, another iconic American muscle car, rolling down the highway. The caption says FEAR …. we can smell it ricer boy. This can literally be seen as a group of big, strong American men hunting down a small, weak Asian boy. As disgusting as that is, the word “ricer” continues to have some sort of immunity. While movies like the popular Fast and Furious series can promote the Japanese car culture here in America, they can also  perpetuate the use of “ricer” even further.

I hope that this has been an informative post. I am open to any criticism towards my post, writing style, content, anything you can think of. I will end it with a few pictures of Civics modified to different tastes. Unlike the hatred for Civics in America, in Japan there are entire racing series based around Civics alone.

family-album-treasures-touge-eating-honda-civic-640x451 tumblr_m33n9vnhcb1qiey8ao1_1280 Africa castrol-honda-civic-racing IMG_6712_copy 6873744418_7b34f77b40_b

Good Publicity

So, we talked about Richard Sherman on Thursday, and about how one mistake put him in a negative spotlight.  Chico was explaining the racist remarks people were making about him.  It’s amazing how one mistake can make someone a target for so much disrespect.  People will use any excuse to talk badly about someone or to try and make them look bad; especially if they are successful.  Anyway, yesterday I was scrolling through facebook and I saw an article about Richard Sherman on Buzzfeed.  Most of the time BuzzFeed is pretty stupid and unimportant, however every now and then they post something worthwhile, and I think this is one of those times.  The article was called “23 Reasons Richard Sherman Is Actually One Of The Most Likable Players In The NFL”  The reason I really like this is because it’s so frustrating when people try to attack someone’s character based on one thing that they did.  I honestly didn’t know who Richard Sherman was before all the publicity about his interview happened.  And it’s unfortunate that most people are gonna have a bad impression of him because of all of the bad publicity.  However, it’s articles like this that are great for showing a different side of him so that people won’t just hate him based on something they don’t know.  I don’t know if this article is biased or not, and I don’t know how credible BuzzFeed is, but that fact that this article was posted is what is important.  Also, this doesn’t necessarily relate to Asian Americans, but it relates to what we talked about in class so I thought it was relevant.

Here is the article:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjkiebus/23-reasons-richard-sherman-is-quietly-one-of-the-most-likabl

Also, this is a video of Richard Sherman ‘punking’ some fans is number 8 on the list and it is so damn cute.  Here is the link for it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

 

January 23 Class Notes

Anime Wong (play on//week 9 animes?): First Chinese American actress
Racialicious: “Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture.” & East Main Street
Parrying Katy: Geisha’s just love with all their heart. I think Katy Perry wasn’t being racist, I think she’s just ignorant about the culture and the lifestyle of Japan. I mean yea she could have just not said anything, but I mean, I don’t think she meant to be racist/offensive
Covering Richard Sherman: Monkey & a Thug. A corner back who was part of the team who gets to proceed to SUPERBOWL XXXXVIII. Super exciting right? But, he had made a very aggressive commentary against Crabtree of the 49ers saying that [sherman] is the best corner back in the league and that Crabtree shouldn’t be talking about him. & people reacted to this by calling him a “monkey & thug.” A thug: young black person who is outspoken. This bugs me. It’s a sport, it’s competitive, and it’s the nature of the game. People get heated and into the moment, of course there’s competition and people will talk, but what do people expect? It’s not like nobody else has ever lost their cool in a heated moment like that.

CULTURE: Integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, speech, action, and artifacts that depends on mans capacity, customary beliefs, social forms, material trait of a racial religion or social groups.

Popular Culture starts with studying someone’s culture
Define:

1. Culture that is widely favored or well liked by many people
2. Culture which is left over after we have decided what is high culture
3. Mass Culture
4. Culture which originates from “the people”
5.Culture rooted in exchange and negotiation between dominant and subordinate groups
6. Culture which no longer recognizes distinction.

———————————————————-
Stereotype: greek/ stereo:hard, fixed – typos: blow, impression
Oriental: geocentric, why isn’t the U.S. the “East?”
Yellowface: derogatory of blackface. blackface 1830-40 cultural form to characterizing black people

Orientals 1

~p50

“In its ruling, the court recognized the fact that some Asians, including Ozawa, were of a paler hue than many European immigrants already accepted into the nation as ‘White.’ Race, … . being of Japanese ‘blood,’ could not claim to be white, no matter how white his skin”(Lee,p2)

I quote this because I have never thought that Asians have yellow color faces….. But according to this quotation, Yellow means blood and race… Yellow is sometimes used for caution or warning by dangerous.

 “Much as the ‘anomalous’ condition of ‘free’ persons of color in New England at the beginning of the nineteenth century constituted for whites the negative meaning of their blackness, … , and the Chinese were constructed as pollutants.” (Lee,p31)

In my understanding, before Chinese came to the US for gold rush, they were seen as foreigner and their culture were seen as new things for Americans, but after gold rush, they were seen as strangers with different faces and races. So criticism was mounting over Chinese labor immigrants. In the quotation, “pollutants” is used as if Chinese were poison against Americans.

 

p51~105 

“Furthermore, … ., menial and heavy tasks became identified with racially subordinated peoples. Such heavy work at subsistence wage was deemed suitable for freed Balcks and Chinese or morally degraded ‘white trash’.”(Lee, p57)

 This quotation says that sweated or heavy works fitted on Blacks, Chinese, and ‘White trash’ who did not have skills. Of course, the wages for those works were lower than other jobs needed knowledge or technique. Thus, the employers  made a good use of  unskilled people with cheaper wages. According to the same page, surprisingly, the wages for Irish and Chinese immigrant day labors were cheaper than enslaved Africans having skills. The wages were  set by skills and races at that time.

“……the Chinese represented a third sex – an alternative or imagined sexuality that was potentially subversive and disruptive to the emergent heterosexual orthodoxy.”(Lee, p88)

“The Oriental in America could be imaged as an erotic threat to domestic tranquillity for two related reason.”(Lee, p88)

 These reasons are interesting for me. Because more than 10,000 Chinese women were brought to the United States as prostitutes, Americans saw the Chinese as odd. In addition, Americans viewed Chinese men as evils toward White women because Americans thought thousands of Chinese immigrant men who worked as household servants threatened White women. I feel like ‘third sex’ is very strange and weird word. Chinese were no longer seen either as female or male.

 

 

 

 

Book Impressions/Connections: “Orientals” pt1

Reading through Robert G. Lee’s book on Asian Americans in Popular Culture, I’ve been thinking a lot about connections. Some obvious, some less so– all filtered and framed through my love of music and film. Reviewing my reading log for the chapters three and four, there are several notes labeled “connections.”  Here then, is a sample of those notes along with some of the connections I made.

“The ethnic stratification of the labor market and the radicalization of class struggle resulted from the massive wave of immigration to America between 1840-1850, the emancipation of souther slaves in the wake of the Civil War” (pg53).

berlin-wall-coming-down

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall

This Reminded of a similar situation be it on a smaller scale, of what happened in Germany when the USSR collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. I was stationed in the Benelux at the time, and witnessed the celebrations and contentions.  Initially nearly everyone in Germany celebrated the fall of the USSR and the wall with a warm acceptance of the East Germans as they flowed into the West. Shortly thereafter unemployment rates grew however, tensions flared and resentment festered for years after. Once the dust settled there was a clear sense of us and them.

Chapter Three talks a lot about “coolie labor” (menial) and “free labor” (craftsmen). The idea that the collie labor was reserved for the Chinese, while the crafts-type work became somewhat nostalgic and the realm of the white-worker. Considering this was in the mid/late 1800s, it is surprising to see these portrayals continue today in some rather unexpected ways. To connect it with my Rock subject, the world of guitars provides a good example of this. For instance, Gibson Guitars has two distinct product lines: US made Gibson guitars, and their imported Epiphone guitars.

electric-guitar-epiphone-les-paul-standard-plus-cherry-sunburst_close

The US line is presented as an “…ambitious quest to recapture the craftsmanship, performance and quality of an area that had passed…” Their vision is firmly fixed in the nostalgic (with rare occasions of exploration in modern technology) and their guitars– the Les Paul model for example– start at $2,000 and skyrocket from there. The Epiphone Les Pauls are imported from several Asian countries; China, Korea and Indonesia to name a few. The price of these new typically run between $200 – $600. The US made versions are hailed as the “holy grail,” of the craft, while their imported cousins are thought of by many as comparatively inferior, low-quality beginner guitars.

One last connection I’ll mention here was hard to miss:

“In the popular press, many a political cartoonist portrayed the stereotyped Irish Mike or Paddy as ape-like, with hideous low brow and jutting lower jaw. Such simian images of the Irish immigrant were as commonplace as similar subhuman images of the Chinese and the African American…” (pg86).

This reads like a page directly from the National Socialist German Workers Party of the 1930s; a title reminiscent of the Workingman’s Party of California the author mentions in this context on page 62; ideologies from 1876 mirroring those of the 1930s.

My notebook is filled with connections similar to those mentioned above; some more direct than others, but all are tied with one common thread; anytime groups of people gather, subgroups emerge, leaders rise, and injustice follows. Carl Marx had an optimistic vision of communism where the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie cease to exist:

“Following the proletariats’ defeat of capitalism, a new classless society would emerge based on the idea: ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’. In such a society, land, industry, labour and wealth would be shared between all people. All people would have the right to an education, and class structures would disappear. Harmony would reign, and the state would simply ‘wither away’” (British Library)

The fatal flaw of course as I mentioned above, is that of group dynamics. History provides example after example of Marx’s failed manifesto time and time again. Leaders will always rise up and assume power which eventually leads to history’s truth that, “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.”