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GOLDSEA |
ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
WHAT FOBs THINK OF AMERICAN-BORN ASIANS
y FOBs we mean anyone who has ever been called an FOB. -- "fresh-off-the-boat", anyone not born here. In other words, half the AA population. Even the 2 million AA who immigrated as kids and speak English like -- or in some cases, better than -- native-born Americans rarely escape the sting of being dismissed by American-Born Asians (ABAs) based on real or imagined differences.
The stereotype of the hopeless FOB who just doesn't get American culture is all too familiar. But intra-Asian prejudice is a two-way street.
No less insulting are the images held by FOBs. ABAs are the descendants of the lowliest of peasants forced to flee their homelands to become indentured servants, sniff some FOBs. Born and bred to accept second-class status in a white society, sneer others. Slackers who don't know the meaning of ambition and sacrifice -- and who lack the guts to do anything about it in any case.
FOBs run the socio-economic gamut. A significant minority (perhaps a tenth) are highly successful trans-Pacific business families seeking a safe haven for their fortunes. The vast majority are engineers, scientists, physicians and academics braving the uncertainties of new lives for a chance to work hard for more money and better opportunities. A few are refugees and illegals risking their lives to escape hopeless, grinding poverty.
It's safe to say few FOBs feel in any respect disadvantaged relative to American-born Asians. In fact, given a dozen years most do as well or better than ABAs financially, if not socially. They can be excused, then, for harboring some less-than-flattering assessments of ABAs. By the same token, in their struggle to acculturate, FOBs often come to appreciate the trails blazed by the ABS, or at least, by their ancestors.
Assuming you're FOB or straddling the FOB-ABA fence, what's your image of ABAs? Let's hear the good as well as the bad.
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:03:31 PM)
Hmmm. I am curious which race I am so ethnocentric about, being that my father is Dutch and my mother is Jewish, and my husband is Chinese and I was born in the US? I like windmill cookies and eat rusk for breakfast alot and try to keep up on my Dutch by speaking it with my Dutch sister-in-law, like my father. I am not religiously Jewish like my mother as I became baptised as a Christian when I was old enough to decide for myself, and I am totally immersed daily in my husbands Chinese culture , and continue to learn and love his culture, take language lessons and celebrate with our son. I think cultural differences is actually the word that you need. But from your post you say you are young and perhaps you have not experienced living in a house where you are in a life long relationship, and you are learning about that persons culture and it is different from the ones you are used to. FOPS ,like my husbands parents may be, also have gone through this in a similar fashion. But still they CHOOSE to insult American culture, which is different from just loving their culture and ignoring and not acculturating themselves here, to the point of putting it down daily to my face. I wonder if you were living with a family of a culture you were not born into, and they told you continually that your culture, or cultures, were not as good as theirs and put down everything to your face, I doubt you would be throwing around such false words to me now!I never do that to them. I suppose if you had in-laws of a different culture and they told you that you must eat with a fork, when say you eat with chopsticks, you might disagree. I compromise and now use both.
Now back to the REAL subject, which my original posting is about, which was FOP's, intra-Asian prejudice, and acculturation, or lack of. I am curious where the intra-Asian prejudice comes from betweeen Cantonese and Mandarin speakers? Is this a widespread prejudice with Chinese or Chinese American or an isolated one?
Hannybunbun
Thursday, March 21, 2002 at 06:52:04 (PST)
yes, cantonese ppl aren't really all that nice. and being refined, yes, these people have no etiquette or true culture...instead they have a money oriented and provincial mindset which makes them obnoxious.
there are some exceptions tho, the southern chinese groups who have been assimilated by the cantonese such as the hakkas and teocheows do emphasize on refinement, their cultures are more subtle than the rude and brash cantonese.
i'm "cantonese", and the only thing good about them is their cuisine. other than that, i don't seem much worthiness of the cantonese culture. however, there is one cantonese that i truly admire and that is bruce lee. he brought cantonese culture into an intellectual level for non cantonese ppl.
bruce lee was a renaissance man
Wednesday, March 20, 2002 at 11:47:01 (PST)
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