On my midterm essay, I wrote
about Eric Liu. "Though he denies it, Liu, in his pursuit of power, has
identified himself with the white mainstream. He asserts that he doesn't
want to be white, that he merely wants the power of being white. But in
order to have the power, does he not have to, in effect, become white?"
The professor wrote in his comments, "I liked the question about 'becoming
white,' - what do you think that means?" My question was, of course, rhetorical,
but I will try and answer it anyway. In short, becoming white is to assimilate
so well into the fabric of mainstream America that one has forgotten who
he is. Eric Liu has forgotten who he is. He believes that he still has
his own identity, but he says himself that his father had already assimilated
and his own assimilation was but a natural extension of that. Maintaining
one's ethnic identity doesn't have to involve being able to speak, or
read, or write the language (though it helps). But it does involve making
a stand, and telling yourself, "I'm different. I'm American, but I still
have Chinese values, I still have Chinese culture." But Liu never fought
for that, and now, it's too late for him to go back. He's too "white"
to go back. All his life, when opportunities came up for him to explore
his identity, he turns his back on it and prefers following the white
mainstream. Joining an Asian-American club in college does not mean that
one has to be "pigeonholed". It is merely recognizing that you have cultural
and ethnic ties in common with other people. And one can join an Asian-American
club and still have friends from ethnicities outside of it.
Now, I must admit, I'm not real involved with the Asian American Student Association or the Chinese American Student Association here myself. I would love to be involved in the Hong Kong Student Association here, but that particular organization is filled with graduate and doctoral students who I cannot relate with in terms of differences in age. One thing I do sympathize with Liu is his aloofness from Asian-American culture. Like Liu, it's difficult for me to have an Asian-American identity because I either feel Chinese, or American, depending on the time of day, but not both. Perhaps it is because I was raised in a Chinese household in a more traditional fashion than many other Asian-Americans and still speak in Chinese with my parents. Perhaps it was because there were many Chinese people at my high school, and I grew up talking with Caucasians and talking with Chinese people in different ways. But I just cannot identify myself with the Asian-American identity. This is not to say that I don't think others can't identify with the Asian-American identity. Many have, and I think it's a very legitimate identity, and I will continue to support Asian-American activities (I have, in fact, written for CommunicAsians, the AASA newsletter, for example). But Liu found that he had more in common with white people, and almost exclusively white people. Whereas I only reject Asian-American-ness as my own personal identity, he rejects the concept of Asian-American-ness as a whole. Not only that, he turns his back on his mother culture and becomes a member of the white elite. One has to be quite assimilated to join this elite, and Liu has indeed been real successful at that.