Which West Wing--fact or fantasy?

I found a cafe with wifi here in CT (Thank you "Brew") and couldn't resist blogging about a New York Times article that talks about the fictional West Wing and the current election we have going on, especially because David Axelrod (Obama's chief strategist) was contacted by one of the head writers for The West Wing in 2004 when they were developing the character of Matt Santos, a non-white, "minority" senator with a mixed-race family background who is going head to head against his Republican challenger, a senior senator from a Western state who is known for telling it like it is.

[click here for the article]


[That's Arnie Vinick (Alan Alda), Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), and Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) on the campaign trail]

For those of you who aren't West Wing fans, I can only tell you that the parallels are downright eerie. And I didn't even KNOW about the Phillies connection.

I only hope that our current election has as happy an ending as the fictional one (albeit without the tragedy of the V.P.--but they had to build that in since actor John Spencer did die in the middle of the series).

Real Americans

I've been meaning to chime in about the topic of patriotism and the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party about who "qualifies as a "real" American, about which sections of the country are pro-America, and about who gets considered "anti-American" versus who is a "true" American.

And it reminded me about the following quote from a novel I'm currently teaching, My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki:

“Where are you from, anyway?” he asked, squinting his bitter blue eyes at me.
“New York,” I answered.
He shook his head and glared and wiggled a crooked finger inches from my face.
“No, I mean where were you born?”
“Quam, Minnesota,” I said.
“No, no . . . What are you?” He whined with frustration.
And in a voice that was low, but shivering with demented pride, I told him,
“I . . . am . . . a . . . fucking . . . AMERICAN!” [italics in-text] (Ozeki 11)

The sentiments expressed by the protagonist of this novel, Jane Takagi-Little, are ones I COMPLETELY identify with--and which I recently blogged about.

And this is a theme that recurs for many Asian Americans (and other immigrant groups as well, particularly non-white immigrant groups). That somehow, because we are not white, because we are "hyphenated" Americans, we are not "real" Americans.

This theme has certainly replayed throughout history--the Japanese American internment was in large part based on the belief that Japanese Americans were not loyal to the U.S. but instead were "foreign enemy aliens"--even if they were born and raised in the U.S.

So I take particular offense at the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party and by Sarah Palin, Robin Hayes, and Michelle Bachman specifically. Because the idea that somehow I'm not a real American because I have an Asian face, because I was born in NYC and raised in CA (ie: NOT in the heartland of the U.S.), and because I'm a liberal academic elite--that these markers somehow mean that I am anti-American, unpatriotic, and "fake"--I just find that repugnant. And insulting. And demeaning. And wrong.

I do not wear a flag pin. I do not pledge allegiance to a flag in my classroom. I do not write in this blog that I love America. But none of these things disqualifies me from being an American. And neither does my dissent of the opinions of the current administration. Or my critique of race in America. Or my criticisms of America in general. In fact, as I've said countless times in other blog posts, dissent is one of the most American things I can think of. Dissent in a respectful way. In a way made to push us to be better. To do better.

I am an American. A real American. And there are times when I do feel pride in my national affiliation. And there are times when I feel shame and sorrow. But throughout it all, I do appreciate being able to feel both pride and shame, and to express these in this blog, in my class, in my research, and in my day to day life. And anyone who says otherwise does not know American history and does not appreciate true American diversity. And so you have to wonder, how "American" can THAT person be?

Now, don't take my word. Check out these other posts by people writing on very similar issues:

*New York Times Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich writes a great opinion piece, "In Defense of White Americans" that is an elegant deconstruction of Republican rhetoric and the disservice it does to white Americans in thinking that race baiting will work.

*My blogging sister, Tami of What Tami Said has hit the big time and has a post of hers featured in The Huffington Post, "Middle Americans Are Not Just White, Christian, Working Class Folk." As usual, Tami's eloquence and rhetorical fire leaves me feeling hugely impressed.

*Poplicks takes on the McCain volunteer who used the classic "black male attacker" stereotype as a last ditch effort to get her candidate elected.

And finally here's an appeal from Opie/Richie Cunningham/Ron Howard:

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

By the way, for all you regular readers, I'm heading to a conference tomorrow and will be without reliable internet until Election Day, so please bear with me on publishing comments or responding to comments or writing new blog posts. I'm sure I'll have LOTS to write about come Wednesday, November 5.

Dating across the color line

I know I said last week that I would be discussing Asian Americans and inter-racial dating. And then my week got away from me. And I know that in July I began to broach the subject of inter-racial dating and why some inter-racial couples may seem to be more acceptable than others. For example, Asian American women paired with white men seem to be a prevalent pairing that we see out and about and reflected in popular culture, television.

[Of course, the reality is that Asian Americans are barely visible on tv or in films, but on the rare occassion when they are, the Asian American woman-white man as a romantic pairing is not uncommon--Lucy Liu in the Charlie Angels movies is paired with the former Friends guy, for example.]

And in this previous post I also acknowledged that inter-racial pairings between black women and men of other racial groups and Asian American men and women of other racial groups seems to be the least common pairings that we see.

And interestingly enough, since I am not the first person to make this observation, there are people who have started websites and dating blogs that are dedicated to "BlAsian" couples: black women romantically linked with Asian/Asian American men.

[For example, see this recent Asian Week piece]

And I do wonder about this. I mean, not the specific pairing of African American women with Asian American men, but the idea that these two demographics may be in the category of those who do not date across the color line.

[And I suppose I should add the caveat that I am concentrating largely on straight relationships, because that's the population that has largely been studied in Sociological circles and that I'm familiar with in terms of anecdotal evidence, although I think that interracial dating taboos and issues are similar within queer relationships.]

And one of the other things I have been thinking about regarding inter-racial relationships, is whether there isn't also a correlation between community acceptance and/or the prevalence of certain pairings. I'm not a sociologist and don't have stats readily at hand, but from what I recall from reading various articles on this subject, Asian Americans of either gender are more likely to date and marry white Americans than other groups. And part of me wonders about the acceptability of dating and marrying inter-racially outside of a white demographic. Because anecdotally I have heard of some Asian American families being very opposed to their sons/daughters dating let alone marrying African Americans.

I'm not trying to say that all Asian families are conservative and racist. Nor am I saying that all Asian Americans support inter-racial dating/marriage with white Americans. But I do think that Asian American families have their own prejudices to grapple with--and I wonder how we can start to address these issues in Asian American communities (I don't mean within academia or activist circles, I mean literally in the suburban areas where people live).

But maybe I'm wrong. My own family has varying attitudes towards inter-racial dating, whether white or black (or any other identity--although interestingly enough, my paternal grandparents were livid when they discovered one of my cousins went to the prom with her Japanese American childhood friend because they had lived through the bombing of China by the Japanese army during WWII and hated the Japanese with a loathing that can only be bred by living through war).

Any thoughts?

I feel patriotic today . . .

because I voted.


If you CAN vote, you SHOULD vote. This is the most American thing you can do, but more importantly, it's your RIGHT to vote and your RESPONSIBILITY.

Almost every state in the nation has early voting--and if you missed registering, most states allow you to do one-stop shopping by registering AND voting at the same time.

Please vote. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for or tell you who I voted for (although regular readers of this blog can easily guess). What I will say is that everyone CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. And to quote a very wise man:

"Be the change you want to see in the world" -- Mahatma Gandhi

Wise words from Colin Powell

By now everyone who isn't living under a rock has heard of Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama--his explanation is very eloquent but even more his wise words about not confusing and equating Muslim Americans and Arab Americans with terrorists is a bucket of ice water that we need on the anti-Islamic rhetoric that keeps popping up.



[tip of the hat to Poplicks & for a link to the image that Powell references, click here]

P.S. Yes, I know I promised a real post about inter-racial dating taboos, and it is coming, but it is too tempting to post these videos, especially because the political junkie in me just can't resist.

SNL on Thursday

Two for the price of one (and originally aired on a Thursdy)


[spoofing the third Presidential debate]


[Weekend update with crazy McCain lady]

Asian Americans: we're not as conservative as you think

I recently came across this entry in Angry Asian Man about the National Asian American survey that polled Asian American voters across the nation (in 8 different languages--so it's the most comprehensive political polling of this particular racial group to ever happen) and discovered that overwhelmingly Asian Americans supported Obama (41%) over McCain (24%).

But what it also revealed this past Wednesday was that 57% of Asian American voters in California opposed and planned to vote against Proposition 8. For those of you not in the know, Prop 8 is the measure meant to overturn same-sex marriages--you know that post I wrote in May making the connection between banning gay marriage and anti-miscegenation laws and those happy pictures of couples I posted back in June? Well the forces of hate are at it again. I tried to think of something less polemical, but it's hard not to think that someone is in need of a hug when a Prop 8 supporter like Mr. Bill Tam goes on record in a prominent newspaper as saying the following:

Gay marriage supporters "have very cleverly portrayed homosexuals as a kind of minority,'' Tam said. "They've been very effective in portraying it as a civil rights issue, and this is very much a concern for us. We hope to convince Asian-Americans that gay marriage will encourage more children to experiment with the gay lifestyle and that the lifestyle comes with all kinds of disease,'' Tam said.

Oh Bill Tam, you poor misguided soul, with your rabble-rousing, fear mongering message of equating a particular type of person, a minority group, with an unsavory lifestyle rife with disease. This sounds familiar...this sounds like... WAIT A MINUTE! This is what people used to say about Chinese people living in California in the late 19th C.! Chinese women were accused of being promiscuous and lascivious and prone to all sorts of venereal diseases, and Chinese men were also accused of being nasty rat eaters who allowed vermin to infest their homes and who subsequently brought about all sorts of disease! Oh Bill Tam, you are using late 19th C. rhetoric by white Californians that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882! Oh Bill Tam, you are using RACIST RHETORIC to support a bill meant to exclude a group of people for no other reason than bigotry and prejudice. Ironic, no?

Here's the thing though, the Bill Tams of the world aside: Asian Americans are not as conservative a group as you may think. I mean, I know that there are these stereotypes of ultra-conservative Asian Americans who only care about money (hence the number of registered Chinese American Republicans, which my Mom likes to remind me of recently--she's a rabid Democrat but has some Republican leaning friends and right now they are driving her CRAZY) or who come from traditional Asian cultures that frown on gay lifestyles (or which don't even recognize queer as as category).

Anyway, for all you Asian Americans in California and across the nation that are taking non-conservative stances in the upcoming election season, I say BRAVO! Especially bravo because you are breaking stereotypes about conservative and a-political Asian Americans. Especially my own family--I want to give a particular shout out to them (you know who you are) because after all, how could I have become so social justice minded if it weren't inculcated in me from the very beginning?

[Next Up: Asian Americans and inter-racial dating--are there still tabboos? Tune in next time!]

Tell it like it is Campbell