Asian-ness (was Re: "Whiteness" Re: Obseneties)

In a message dated 2000:09:01 2:38:19 PM, yl112@CORNELL.EDU writes:

>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.
    My Father, a bittersweet product of the British Colony of Malaya,
emphactically speaks of these kinds of Asians:

    - "bloody old wogs" => American translation, damn tradition-bound Wiley
Oriental Gentlemen

    - "FOBs" => Fresh Off the Boat, a la wet-behind-th'-ears naive awe-struck
tourists, immigrants, newcomers, etc.

    - "ABCs" (interchangeable with "Banana") => American Born Chinese

    -"banana" => utterly Americanized Asians (in the tragic sense of "they
have lost their marbles and their heritage and gone too gung ho on American
values of the lowest common denominator")

    -"BBCs" => British Born Chinese (according to me dad, BBC's also are from
Hong Kong, Australia, Canada & Europe... even South Africa... & to him, BBCs
tend to be non-banana due to better education & a more informed sense of the
world)

    hehe...

    A BBC,
    czHANg

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