Afro-Asian Solidarity in Desocializing Race: Eddie Huang on Racial Identity in the New America
‘Eddie Huang: Racial Identity in the New America (FORA.TV)’
Panel with Eddie Huang… Moderated by Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor of The Atlantic (05/07/13).
On immigrant culture, identifying with culture through hip-hop like Wu-Tang, defying stereotypes, casting down buckets, trauma, urbanic struggle, decolonization, and so much more!
CW: Mention of domestic violence, beating as a child. Food mentions. Socialization mentions. Culture shock/paradigm shifts.
This article is a recap with notes from Afro’Man Blac Media (aka Apollo Soléy Enki).
Rarely does Eddie Huang see a conversation about racial relations with an Asian person speaking. He and Ta-Nehisi Coates delves into this (in less than 30 minutes).
The Racial Binary: Black or White, & Bridging The Divides via Personality Through Reformative Healing (Hip-Hop)
The thematic nature of discourse is ‘Black and white of the 80s and 90s– not a Brown, yellow, Black, white situation’, as he says; There is a stark racial binary in many discourses, and not many nuances.
Ta-Nehisi Coates asks, “when did you feel a kindred spirit to Black culture?”… Huang replies, “First time was in McGruder’s North Virginia DC touching fruit to inspect for purchase in which I witnessed a young Black child being physically reprimanded by their mother in basically doing too much out of childishness. There was an extremely relevant cultural connect here that I noticed”.
They address the undercurrent of violence in urbanic cultures, in Afro + hip-hop cultures. Coming up in the crack-cocaine era of the 1980s and 1990s, listening to music, hip-hop, that addressed and pulled on that reality. Huang gets at a “Big misunderstanding about hip-hop [and perhaps the mainstream-perceived culture of violence?]” …
“I was drawn to and felt similarly to [cultures identifying with/as hip-hop] because I grew up in a home with parents whom beat me… That’s what happens in immigrant home a lot — definitely not co-signing it, it’s wrong.
(We were) desensitized to narratives laced with violence — so explicit music with violence, there wasn’t a (cultural) barrier for me. I wasn’t listening to the music for violence — hip-hop is deeper than that. It, and trauma, is a part of DNA and (genetic) fabric.
The gift and curse to this: The struggle is what made me, me. Without it, I wouldn’t be the same person. Because my father [and heavily corporatized, colonized, racialized world socializations for poorer, working class indigenous folk] beat me, I developed a nature and person that wanted to beat it, and my father. So many lessons in my life came from violence. This led to a sort of desensitization — and reaching out to others, community, with the same experiences.”
Coates ponders, “I wonder if this is why there’s always been strong oppositional between America, and the hip-hop music — even as if becomes the ‘pop music of America’, (as we see in mainstream today)…”
To which Eddie Huang profoundly remarks, “it’s really in opposition to immigrant culture”. And this part of the conversation really pulls you in, really grabs at your socialized mind…
“I don’t think we fully understand the culture of immigrants. We consume the culture, we try to be politically correct and legislate to protect the culture of immigrants… but do we truly understand it? Do we truly live amongst each other? I don’t think we’re at that phase yet…
“Obama being elected was fantastic, but I think a lot of people were very (perhaps ‘too’) eager to see America as post-racial, and I don’t see that, nor do I see the globe as post-racial.”
Very solid and profound points Huang makes here; And I especially admire how the discourse is framed around coming together through the art of hip-hop, (and also immigrant food cultures, later)!
Addressing Asian Stereotypes & Immigrant Socializations: “I Cast Down My Bucket in the Food Industry”
Ta-Nehisi Coates asks (after some casual ableism in framing the question proposed as ‘d*mb’, when it is simply ‘opaque’) , “Do you feel left out?” Huang replies, “Microaggressions towards Asian culture are prevalent. [As a result, there’s trauma brought on that changes a person… He brings up a connect…]
In 7th grade this Indian kid was driving me to school, and puts ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’ into the tape deck. When I heard those drops from the Shaw Brothers movies, it changed my life because I was like ‘somebody else fucks with us besides us and our community, more peoples appreciate this culture and sees value in it.’ From my perspective, at least with martial arts and kung-fu, people were about it.”
The conversation organically transitioned to the subject of cultural appropriation — or as said by moderator Coates, ‘essentializing somebody else’s culture’. Very important conversation to develop when gathering cross-culturally.
Huang opens up about RZA’s ‘Man with the Iron Fist’ and says “there are things that are like ‘get back in the studio, hahaha’… but I think the intent is very real, and there’s genuine appreciation and attempt to understand. I’ve heard GZA perform live, and have heard him talk about the Eastern philosophy of Wu-Tang — Wu as the tongue and the wind is the sword.” So, the intentionality of the convergence of art and culture is a huge cultural connect, in many ways, and for many people. Which opens discussion here on intent vs. impact. This is arguably the meaning of hip-hop: radical intersection.
Food as a Vehicle for the Indigenous Soul: The Gateway
Also a point of cultural convergence, Huang notes, is American food consumption. He brings up food consumption as ‘(their) gateway into our (Asians) culture’, and this being the spark to his decision to go into the cooking profession and become a restauranteur. He discusses defying “the Asian stereotype of being a cook”, around the 10:50 minute mark of the video link, and confronting the notion of the stereotype. “Then I finally realized, in a sort of Booker T. Washington “Cast Down Your Bucket” sort of way, I cast my bucket down in the restaurant, because I knew people wanted the food.”
Continuing the discussion of his familiar, and also of immigrant culture, Eddie Huang notes how he quit his job as an attorney: “Family couldn’t understand, saw it as a downward assimilation. Even Taiwanese newspapers and Chinese television stations — some people cannot see the work we’re doing culturally in terms of Asian identity and immigrant identity in America (hence the title of my memoir “Fresh Off The Boat”).
Cultural Socializations, Behaviorability, and Respectability Politics
Huang very intimately grapples with how his family “sees me simply as a player in a game, and not the coach”, and really opens the floor for the discussion of the Western politics of: behaviorability, socialization, and respectability. Respectability politics becomes a theme of the discussion — one of my favorite complexes to dissect, being that it is such an intersection of societies. Huang gets at the anti-colonial academic syntax of his memoir,
“Writing the book in the way I talk to friends, was intentional. When you go to write, you embark on a literary endeavor (and you just can’t always expect the respectable academia of semicolon, complex sentences, SAT words). I spent 30 years where I had to go business casual, and that’s not what I wanted here…. Like Juelz Santana ‘From Me to U’ — this is me, my book, the me is me.”
Eddie won my soul with that; His genuine nature is striking, and so refreshing. Truly what we need in our comrades, family members, community members alike!
He continues, so artfully,
“There’s certain cultures you’re expected to know and quote in certain situations. I’ve always wanted to flip (that expectation) on people, and talk about the clash of civilizations, but using examples of the WWF as opposed to, like, the Middle East. I felt there was room for a common person like myself, who just sees the concepts and theories at work.
[A revolutionary, a visionary — he’s kindred!]
“Because I went to college, and I saw how they were making it too complicated. It’s as simple as Hulk Hogan vs. The Iron Sheik, you know? Or Rocky IV as the Cold War.”
There is so much to be said about this revolutionary avant-garde approach at dissecting colonization, corporate socialization, and bringing ‘new-school oldheads’ — “the village weirdos”, as he so beautifully says — together for world-shifting epiphany, journey, and healing. Eddie Huang is a renegade. I’m late on that tip (this panel was about 5 years ago), but the fact is eternal!
Huang’s other work is also mentioned. His Review of Marcus Samuelsson’s Restaurant in Harlem Red Rooster (titled: “Marcus Samuelsson’s Overcooked Memoir Makes His Pricey Harlem Discomfort Food Hard to Swallow” — truly a drag, lol!) is widely lauded and appreciated as being grassroots-led, and also a voice of the community and people.
Coates compliments Huang, “you have a very, don’t wanna call ‘pop sensitivity of art’, but really a ‘grassroots sensibility’ of what art is”, and Huang brings up how the review was written by him, with the opinions of friends, through community. It was a communal think-piece, and a beautifully written one, at that.
“Guy comes to Harlem and tries to dress it up. You don’t need to dress up Harlem to make it presentable to the world.”
Huang replies, poetically — in the key of hip-hip,
“Love is worth nothin’ to me if I have to change myself to get it from you. If I’m fakin’ the funk, I’m not gettin’ your love, I’m gettin’ the vapors. For me, for Harlem, for anyone.
We have to be confident as immigrants — and anyone of Subculture– we have to be confident like the Ramones. Whether it’s punk rock, hip-hop.
“You know, ‘White Brooklyn’ [the gentrifying ‘BrooHo’ culture] right now might as well be an immigrant community in a (weird) way — nobody understand urban beekeepers. But you gotta own it.” I love how witty his humor is, how striking and direct his thoughts are. He continues that wave with one of my favorite points, points that definitely resonate with me personally and spiritually, from what I have noticed and talk about in my decolonizing work as well,
“And that’s a very telling thing about the power structure in America…
White Brooklyn is about to proliferate, being that they are of dominant culture. White Brooklyn is a very interesting place to study and see power at work.” He mentioned, at the time of this panel May 2013, that he lived in StuyTown, in the white projects, living there because it is by the restaurant he manages, and also because there’s a basketball court.
The conversation blossoms into the subject of Harlem as immigrant community, with Ta-Nehisi Coates referencing Afro peoples from West Africa, down South, and also the facts of life of many other immigrant communities. Huang mentions the complex of colorism in speaking on these de/socialized conversations, “A person of Asian descent defending native Harlem residence is ‘strange’ when you look at it from a skin deep level. But when you go deeper, you see kinship.”
This intellectual, sociopolitical act of delving deeper into the fabrics of socialization is something I center my thought, lifestyle, and work around. It is crucial in liberative and healing work through community, through like-individuals-being-as-one. What does this ‘going deeper’ do for us, on a decolonized level, in our journeys for liberation, peace, and justice? What does it mean for shedding our systemic, colonized conceptions & of socializations like corporatized racial structures and its violence, and its traumas? Huang gives us plenty of delicious food for thought. ;)
Huang continues, dipping his toes in historics, “History of Chinese people isn’t ethnically ‘one people’. Yes, Han Chinese, but China was really a melting pot.
‘We have no idea how’ to trace back beyond those dynasties, but I hope there’s one day where we can all speak about communities and neighborhoods that we care about, and that we have a kinship with, and that we love.
In regards to my memoir (my decolonizing text), I wanted to test people and society, and my reasonable arguments– whether they would look past my face and listen, (or not).”
Segueing from the subject of “mobthink” socializations, of the complex of race even beyond what is colonially constructed, Eddie Huang and Ta-Nehisi Coates bring up the glorious subject of returning to one’s motherland(s), in mentioning a podcast in which Huang previously discussed this. This voyage back is something many displaced indigenous peoples wish to do; And it requires a lot of heart, soul, dedication, and fundraising. Huang returned to his motherland of Taiwan, and opened up about the life experiences that curated.
“There is such beauty and unity of [being in your native, homogenous community, or] seeing everyone look like you.
Coates affirms this, in mentioning this being the complex behind HBCUs, and why AfroAmerind (African-American) + many other marginalized peoples seek refuge in these communities, socially. They also discuss the MIT student population, and how they’ve noticed that the demographic is mostly Asian/Asiatic, or ‘AsiaMerind’/ Asian-American peoples.
Realizing you’re not the minority [which is the REAL WORLD reality, and not the FIRST/COLONIZED WORLD reality — a key point!] brings up many paradigm shift. Huang continues, “It was strange to realize (we’ve) been kept in a sort of aquarium, or exhibit. Like, I was the DC Panda. [Laughs and jokes, but the irony + dualism of this is that, it’s funny because it’s true… So, what does this connection say about the barbarianism of colonized cultures, and how marginalized peoples are treated socially as animals, under circumstance?]
Watershed moment for me to realize there are Asians in mountains, lakes, (and unfortunately in Uggs and rollerblades *facepalms*, lol). I was like ‘we can be anything we want to be’. So I came back to America really mentally free. It was super liberating.
“I had friends that went on ‘yeshiva’ birthright, and I went on Taiwanese birthright — they call it ‘Study to our Love Boat’ –, because you go back and see the country. It’s life-changing. To be kept in a kind of exhibit all your life, not around the community or the culture you came from, not around the country of people who look like you… and to one day be ‘released back’ — it’s life-changing.”
Speaking on ‘individualism vs. communalism’; Or, how Western society socializes being an individual among people and no clear nor meaningful communities vs. Eastern and/or indigenous societies socializing being a communal, spiritual individual AMONGST COMMUNE, of a village, of a larger net of similar social beings.
Ta-Nehisi Coates asks, “Do you feel like (we as a society) will get any better with our representations in pop culture?”
Huang defines community as, “a group of like-minded individuals, peoples facing similar and shared problems”. As an individual of a larger ethnic community, he explains, “Growing up, I felt the burden of defending us a people. After I wrote my memoir, the burden was lifted. I was me. People ask why I wrote a memoir at 29, 30 years old. I say there’s lighting and abbot I’ll never feel again. I don’t feel the same way today that I did a year ago…
I felt that no one was telling the story. Like Street Fighter, writing the book was unlocking the character. Now I can play the game, as my true, personalized character.
Yes. It is getting better… I just want all the weirdos in the village to stand up. I just want to see everybody stand up.
