“Asian American” is an imagined category created for political clout; its significance in identity-politics has formed strict boundaries around the Asian American identity.
We’ve gone about this process all wrong. While well-intentioned, consolidating 20 million “Asian American” people under a single category has diminished the value of individual experience. That is the only way I can rationalize why I constantly ask myself, “What does it mean to be Asian American?”
It is impossible for there to be a singular Asian American experience. Of course, there are similar themes that tie our existences together, however those themes are divided along gender, class and even subcultural lines. To think about “the” Asian American experience rather than “an” Asian American experience is to effectively delegitimize the lives of anyone who doesn’t fit neatly within certain boundaries.
We must problematize this mentality to rid our group identity of its essentialist nature. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in an unnecessarily painful search for a “correct” identity that can be dangerous.
Michael Deng, a student at Baruch College, lost his life in a racialized fraternity hazing ritual. In the final stage before his initiation into an Asian American fraternity, Deng was pummeled to the ground in an effort to give physical form to the historical pain of the Asian American experience.
The logic that stemmed this ritual is valid: discrimination is what binds Asian Americans together. To give membership into an Asian American organization based on understanding of that discrimination makes sense — if one doesn’t care about progress or diversity, that is.
The belief that discrimination is the sole determinant of one’s Asian Americanness is incredibly unproductive.
I’m not saying that our ancestors’ and parents’ problems are irrelevant. In fact, they are integral in shaping one’s understanding of what it means to go through the world in a racialized body. However, we are tasked with a very different set of obstacles than they were and to fixate on the discrimination they faced is to deter ourselves from making progress. So yes, discrimination does bind us together, but let’s also not forget that discrimination wears many different hats.
A century ago, it looked like “yellow peril.” Today, it looks like the “model minority” myth. Who knows what it will look like tomorrow? Basing Asian American identity on a fixed idea of discrimination is dangerous because the idea of Asian American becomes fixed as well. We’ll inadvertently weaponize a benevolently conceived political construction against ourselves and cause unnecessary infighting.
You might be asking, how can we cast away a part of us that is so integral to our identity? I’m currently facing the same dilemma, but we can start by recognizing that “Asian American” is largely a meaningless label.
Nobody grows up speaking Asian American, nobody sits down to Asian American food with their Asian American parents and nobody goes on pilgrimages back to their motherland of Asian America. In removing the significance of this label in our lives, we can negotiate our sensibilities the way we want — not in accordance with some grand narrative that doesn’t apply to everyone.
Labels are powerful and carry with them the burden of history. However, it is the manner in which we define them that determines whether or not they empower or disable us.
