Re: "Whiteness" Re: Obseneties

On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > Actually, I *have* seen Asian-people-brought-up-partly-in-parents'-Asian-
> > culture-and-partly-in-American-culture identify themselves as
> > "Asian-Americans," not as a color thing, but as a cultural thing.  Many
> > people with Asian parents and American citizenship who are my age have
> > this cultural clash problem; we deal with it all the time and are sort of
> > caught in a neither-fish-nor-fowl situation.  I don't know that the term
> > is all that "accurate," but as a cultural identification doubtless some
> > people find it helpful.
>
> Interesting.  I've never seen that usage.  My friends in that situation
> usually don't refer to themselves with any kind of label whatsoever.  They
> know they don't fit either mold, and don't try to make a new one to
> classify themselves in.
<wry g>  When most of the high school population falls into that
category--semi-American culture, semi-Korean culture--it's convenient to
have a quick identifier.  Personally, I went through high school being a
loner.  If you say "Korean-American" it's often faster, especially when
people in the area know what you mean, than explaining your whole
family/cultural situation.  Most of the time people who ask aren't that
interested in details.  Frex, whenever someone asks me where I'm from,
I'll usually say "Houston" or "Houston and South Korea" without going
into the bloody details.

YHL