A little self respect please.

I’m not someone who routinely peruses the internet reading blogs, but I came across one the other day that totally enraged me!  An Asian American woman wrote about dating white men, and her intentional avoidance of dating Asian American men.  Now, I understand and completely agree that people should have the freedom to date and marry whoever they choose, and the blogger has every right to hold the position she does, and to date as many “geeky, scrawny, effeminate” white boys that she can fit into her busy schedule.  I’m not here to cram some separatist agenda down people’s throats, or ideas about “keeping blood lines pure” (although I may have unapologetically spewed such rhetoric in the past), but I am here in defense of not only Asian American men, but Asian America’s future. 

Masked behind anger, profanities, disdain, and at times crass descriptions of men and Asian America is the basic argument that the blogger refuses to live in “patriarchy and cultural sexism and a lifestyle I grew up with and want nothing to do with anymore.”  That’s completely fair.  I don’t pretend to know how the blogger was raised, what her family and home life were like, and how those have completely scarred her.  In fact, I will agree with her that there are parts of Asian American culture that are completely screwed up, archaic, and border on, if not mired in, emotional/psychological abuse.  But what I don’t agree with is the willingness to completely turn our backs on Asian American culture in a desperate attempt to assimilate. 

Let’s be clear, the blogger is not asking all Asian American women to completely abandon Asian American men and Asian American culture.  The blogger is merely speaking for herself, as an individual.  (Y’know individualism, the foundation of those White American values the blogger is so completely enamored with that she would throw herself on the floor of the great White kingdom unashamedly begging for admittance.)  For those who, like this blogger have decided that this is how they would like to live their life, I wish you the best.  Eat, drink, and be merry. 

But for those of us who see ourselves as part of a larger Asian American community; for those of us who appreciate who we are, where we’ve come from, and those who have gone before us; for those of us who care about future generations of Asian Americans; and for those of us who can take our eyes off of ourselves for one minute…, for us, we must commit to doing a little hard work.  You see, it’s easy to walk away from things we don’t like.  It’s easy to say “Fuck you, Asian America” and never look back, but what will happen to our identity, our sense of self, our future sons and daughters, and all the beautiful aspects of Asian American culture?  Will it all just become one big amalgamation of whiteness?

Rather than washing our hands of the broken parts of our culture that perpetuate sexism, that unabashedly uses shame and guilt to control people, that frowns on any grade less than A+ and any profession that doesn’t bring in a six figure annual salary, rather than leaving it all behind and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, let’s do a little work. 

Let’s engage with one another.

Let’s promote some change in perspective. 

Let’s have hard conversations. 

Let’s cry a little. 

And when we find ourselves falling into those old patterns, and ways of being, let’s try again, and again, and again.

But let’s also do this in our way, as Asian Americans.  

And maybe, just maybe, our future sons and daughters won't harbor the type of self-loathing that makes them say, "I want nothing to do with where I've come from", but instead carry with them a sense of pride in being who the village raised them to be.