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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)
bruce lee was a renaissance man:
Most of the Hakka in HK are COMPLETELY assimilated to the point where the only way you might tell the difference between is by the food their grandmother wants for dinner. I've met maybe 2 HKers under the age of 45 who could hold up a conversation in Hakka. Hakka culture is only being perpetuated in Meizhou and maybe the Caribbean (I'm not sure, cuz I've never been to the Caribbean, though my friend born and raised in Jamaica speaks Hakka better than me. I was only in Meizhou for 5 days - though that was the first time I ever heard a group of kids my age talking Hakka on the street).
T.H. Lien
Thursday, March 21, 2002 at 21:25:59 (PST)
bruce lee was a renaissance man,
bruce lee is a disgrace , he shortened his height with kung fu, and began parading around going "I am cantonese" , while most cantonese are not like that.
so dishonorable...
Thursday, March 21, 2002 at 19:30:33 (PST)
I've never heard of being "cantonese" as a culture or a title unless referring to the language. True, F.O.B.'s are money oriented and lack some of the qualities that we consider "American," but can you really blame them?
I'm an second-generation ABA and first-generation male ABA in my family which speak cantonese as well as mandarin. I've been to school with many FOB students and have met, worked with and consulted many of their parents and families who are also FOB.
They see the ABA population as one that doesn't know the kind of culture and etiquette they do. However, the culture they know is practically all they know. that's all they bring with them when they come "off the boat."
While there have been many ABA's that have promoted the Asian culture to the masses positively, there also have been those who have helped create those stereotypes that exist till today.
While I'm not a FOB, I feel as though I'm between an ABA and FOB. While I've never felt what an FOB feels, I know an ABA like myself might have had an easier road in life.
There are many ABA's trying to find their Asian heritage which FOB's have somewhat grew up in. Similarly, there are FOB's here that test their own.
dvlsromeo8
Thursday, March 21, 2002 at 19:19:15 (PST)
to bruce lee lover get a life. So your cantonese parents were worthless too. Quit talking smack about your own kind.
lay smack down on your candy ass!!!!!!!
Thursday, March 21, 2002 at 12:32:48 (PST)
hannybunbun:
my bf is of a different ethnic background and i get referred to routinely by his mother as "the chinese girl." i'm not saying that you are a racist person or anything of that sort--simply that i took offense to your comment that your in-laws ate chinese food and watched chinese cable all the time--as though that were a crime or something. aside from that, let's just drop the topic. i don't know you, and it's getting to be a pointless discussion.
as to your question about the hostility between mandarin and cantonese speakers--i'm cantonese but went to a taiwanese chinese school for most of my childhood and teenage years. i always just thought it was because the cantonese (mostly from hong kong) thought that the taiwanese were traitors, and the taiwanese thought that there were superior because they were separated from Red China.
i used to hate taiwanese people just because of the things i heard. but throughout college i made very many taiwanese friends and truthfully, it's hard to hate on a race of people or an ethnic group when you actually have a friend of that race or ethnic group. i used to hate koreans and now i live and koreatown and cannot name one thing i hate about koreans that is specific to koreans. i think the same would go for fops and abas. once you get to befriend others of that group, i'd like to see how long you can really continue your shit-talking.
penelope
Thursday, March 21, 2002 at 09:17:36 (PST)
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