the random oracle

More on that NYMag article. (My critical juices are flowing today!  Or just looking for a good excuse to procrastinate…)  One phrase that jumped out at me in the article is the following:

How do you undo eighteen years of a Chinese upbringing?

I’m pretty sure that I’m not taking this out of context when I say that this article states this goal as a given.  I didn’t see any part of the article question whether or not it’s really the right way to approach the problem.

It seems to me that trying to undo a Chinese upbringing is stupid and useless.  There are clearly some things that the characters mentioned in the article should work on; if your friends can’t tell whether or not your angry or depressed or just catatonic, then you probably have a problem.  But that problem has nothing to do with a Chinese upbringing.  Anyone who’s been to a Chinese city or a Chinese-American function can attest that Chinese people are far from being quiet and impassive.

Second, what good will erasing a Chinese upbringing do?  Is he suggesting that Asian-Americans should strive to be more “white” (whatever that means)?  First, the reaction people usually have to someone who strives to erase their own racial identity is ridicule, not respect.  It makes me think of an Asian-to-white version of the Offspring’s “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”.

Second, as I mentioned in the previous post, I think there are plenty of Asian or Chinese values that are perfectly legitimate and worth cherishing, including some of the ones that he implied were holding Asian/Chinese-Americans back.  There’s no reason to throw out those values; instead I think we should work harder to show that they are universal values, not just Asian values, and that everyone should appreciate and strive towards them more.