No, they DON'T all look alike.
If you're one of those minorities whose ancestors hailed from the eastern hemisphere, figuring out what box to check in the "race/ethnicity" section of any form is a stressful experience requiring a quick soul-searching session. Now, though, the University of California hopes to ease that existential burden for UC applicants, raising the number of Asian/Pacific Islander categories from eight to 23. From The Daily Californian:
...the University of California will increase threefold the number of subgroups under the Asian and Pacific Islander categories on its admission application, officials announced Friday. [...]
Asian American categories will include Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Japanese, Pakistani, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian and “other Asian.”
The Pacific Islander category, previously under one heading, will now include Native Hawaiian, Guamanian/Chamorro, Samoan, Tongan, Fijian and “other Pacific Islander.”
And no, this is not about being PC. Or at least, not just about that. In between the Asian supernerd stereotype and the fact that Asians now outnumber whites across the UC system, many Asian minorities fall through the cracks.
It's kind of the reverse of the way whites assimilated: Asians are now being officially subcategorized in finer detail, while whites have blended from very distinctive communities — German, Italian, Polish and others — into this monochromatic mash. Part of that has to do with intermarriage: Many people know where their parents and grandparents came from, it's just that none of them came from the same place. That's generally still not the case for Asian Americans.
Not that this ethnic differentiation is a new phenomenon. Go to any number of California colleges and you'll see the unsanctioned version: Pakistani students sit at one club table and the Pilipino students man their own. (Some Korean-Christian groups, however, do have a tendency to proselytize to unsuspecting freshmen.) Self-contained social networks spring out of those isolated groups, and it's debatable whether that's a good thing -- even if the alternative is the monstrously huge Asian American Association.
Oddly enough, Asian Americans aren't the only ones experiencing diversity/fragmentation issues. A recent Pew poll found that 37% of African Americans surveyed no longer saw blacks as a unified race. The question is, how exactly would they break blacks down by ethnicity? Is it region, or dialect, or country of origin?
can we just omit race from the UC application--better yet, from everything? I think it creates more controversies than actual benefits. Instead, why don't we just use socio-economic class to keep stats, if that was the intention about who's who. By using socio-economic class, it is race-blind and will create less controversy than having 20+ asian subgroups...20+european subgroups...20+ african subgroups...creating mayhem all over America!
Posted by: sacratomato | September 10, 2008 at 07:43 PM
Asians are not united because, for all common knowledge, we have not mixed with each other at all. Now we know that this is not factually true, but how many Vietnamese immigrants, for example, know with hard evidence that they have recent Cambodian ancestry from their neighbors. Unlike the bellicose Europeans, Asians have not warred on each other and mixed to the same extent. It's not like it's a totally inside job either, whites specifically try to play Asian animosities against us. I suggest Asians intermix with different Asian groups to become united in such a way that other races could not divide us.
Posted by: Niki Surti | September 08, 2008 at 11:47 PM
whites have blended from very distinctive communities — German, Italian, Polish and others — into this monochromatic mash.
Huh? Have you ever heard of the Soprano's? Listened to Garrison Keilor? Wonder why Ricky Skaggs can blend in flawlessly with the Chieftans? Ever ask were Weird Al learned to play the accordian?That's a 'monochromatic mash'? Even in California, the hippies of the SF and north carried on the transcendentalist. Unitarian Universalist vibe set by the Yankee settlers of that town, while the okies and arkies contributed to the conservatism (and the Crystal Cathedral) of Orange County.
There's a whole big country out there -- and its been developing a unique patchwork of culture for about 400 years, long before the post 1965 flood of immigrants. There really interesting thing about this post is the attitude: people like Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin appreciated the America their parents immigrated to -- including its variety of regional and homegrown ethnic cultures. With this latest crowd, seemingly not so much.
Posted by: Mitchell Young | December 07, 2007 at 01:16 PM