“Asian” is a Shitty Word

All right. Here’s a little rant for you all.

I hate the words “Asian” and “Asian-American.” I can’t stand them. Especially in the context they’re used in the United States. Because we make major decisions based on these words, when they refer to such a diverse group of people that they can’t have much meaning at all.

Okay, here’s a little thought experiment:

“ASIAN”

What do you imagine when you hear that word?

I see a Chinese-American with good grades. Let’s go with that. And let’s call him Michael Chang.

NOTE: If your name is actually Michael Chang, I’m sorry. I mean no harm to you; I just needed a name that isn’t of someone I know personally.

NOTE: This stereotype also hurts people who somewhat fit it. But because I have neither experienced nor done proper research on those harmful effects myself, I won’t comment on that. Let’s focus on semiotics.

That’s a stereotype (of a cis straight upper-middle-class man, you probably imagined). But this isn’t just a garden-variety stereotype. This is a nuclear stereotype. There are people who check “Asian” on the U.S. Census box — and people who actually live in Asia — who don’t know Michael, don’t understand his culture, and perhaps are offended that they are associated with him in any way.

Think about it. The continent of Asia is 17 million square miles. It has a population of 4 billion. That’s huge.

Shanghai is a rapidly growing business hub that is reshaping how we see technology. It is hilariously rich and getting richer, but it soon will have to reckon with issues of pollution, corruption, and an aging population. Shanghai is in Asia.

Lhasa is the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (which is not all of Tibet), a 200,000-person city hidden in the Himalayas where residents have 68% of the oxygen the average New Englander has and 0% of the human rights. This city held the beginnings of 2008 protests that turned bloody. Lhasa is in Asia.

Kanyakumari is the southernmost town of India. Here, you can see the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Indian ocean, with their three different colors of seawater, from one vantage point. It’s so beautiful that that view lingers with me today. Kanyakumari is in Asia.

Homs is a major city in Syria torn to shreds by years of civil war. You probably heard about on TV in the same sentence as ISIS. It holds a refugee camp for people from Palestine (and a few from the Armenian genocide) — or more likely, it held a refugee camp until everyone in Homs needed one. Homs is in Asia.

And then there’s Asian-American. That term, yes, includes Michael Chang. It also includes cutesy-indie-“emo trance” musician Mark Redito; the Cambodian population in not-really-too-nice Lowell; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Now do you see why it’s problematic to joke about “Asians” being so good at math, or to get scared about how many “Asian” people are taking up spots in prestigious universities? You’re talking about Michael Chang — or maybe his cousin who grew up well-off in China and is going to the US as an international student. But in the process, you’re unwittingly talking about a lot more people who might not be math whizzes, who might want to be French Lit majors instead, who might be struggling to get into college, even.

And those people get left behind in the discussion about “Asian-Americans,” which gets especially dangerous once you start talking official policies. For example, if college admissions standards change to account for Michael Chang, those changes will screw over a lot of people who checked “Asian” on their Common App but didn’t get the educational advantages Michael Chang got — most notably, a well-funded upper-middle-class school.

To be totally honest, I have an awful lot in common with Michael Chang — more so than with the people that really get shafted by the “Asian-American” fallacy. But I like words that have meaning. So please:

“Asian” is not a language. I don’t know all the languages in Asia either, but at least saying “some Asian language” shows you understand that there are gazillion languages on the continent.
“Asian food” is a misnomer. At least try to be more specific, because Thai food is as foreign to me as it is to you (unless you’re Thai).
Go ahead and joke about Michael Chang. He’s pretty funny, and stereotypes often come from a grain of truth. But remember he’s not just an Asian-American. He’s a cis straight upper-middle-class Chinese-American who grew up in a nice part of America. It’s a hell of an asterisk, yes, but it’s an important one.