14 posts tagged “minority”

Did you see the Democratic Convention? Barack Obama is so going to be the next President. He embodies what I think of as America -- a big ethnic mix. His white mother married a Kenyan, then later an Indonesian man. She had a child with each husband.

What's with people who always fall in love with foreigners? I'm talking about people who consistently fall for people who speak a different native language than they do, who come from a completely different culture than they do. Is it because they dislike who they are and where they come from and wish they were different? At some point it's like they're attracted to the exoticism, the different-ness, and not the person underneath.

So the parents are attracted to the foreignness in the other. But it's the child who has to live with being a true outsider. A mixed race in-betweener who doesn't belong anywhere. Although as far as I can tell, you stand out if you're NOT ethnically mixed in Hawaii (I've never been there, I'm just guessing).

Anyway, it's really hard to generalize the mixed race experience, but one thing most of us have is a hunger to belong and be accepted.

My two sisters and I went to a friend's bbq the other day. There was a little half-Vietnamese half white girl, about 8 years old. She couldn't stop looking at the three of us. "They...look like me" is what she said, and kept jumping on us and playing with us. The fact is, it means a lot to see a representation of yourself. When you're always the only half-breed in the room, it's magical to see three others just like you walk through the door.

At the end of the night, the little vietnamese-white girl presented us with two pictures she drew of us, "the three sisters." I think she wanted to draw herself in there too, but was too shy.

Shabbatt shalom.

The restaurants around my neighborhood have finally closed for the night. They open late and close around 3am on Friday (or I guess technically Saturday). Me and my dad are pretty much the only ones not dressed up and celebrating the shabbatt in our neighborhood, so nobody wishes us a shabbatt shalom when we walk down the street. Although it happens sometimes when I sneak up on an old man who starts his greeting before turning around to see me in my jeans.

It's not that I dislike my jewish heritage. I just wasn't taught very much about it. I feel like I owe it to my ancestors to study up on it a little more though, because they kept the faith alive despite a lot of crap. I don't like the cliqueyness and intolerance of a lot of jewish people though. Maybe it's not a lot, maybe the intolerant are few but very vocal. I don't like cliqueyness and intolerance in general, because if the whole world was intolerant of outsiders, where would that leave me?

The jewish side of my family accept me though. With open arms. I really do have a great family on all sides.

My dad came back from his camping trip today. He had a three-day beard and looked pretty tired, but kind of invigorated. He told me about where he went (some mountain on the Nevada border that's near Death Valley), and he asked me if it was similar to the boonies town my mother lives in. I couldn't answer him because I don't know what the place he went camping in was like.

Then Kosuke came to pick me up so we could go see a triple-feature on Asian punk rock documentaries at some artsy fartsy movie theater. I was kind of surprised to see Michael Des Barres there presenting the films. Gotta love LA. "Famous" people everywhere.

To be honest, we only sat through the first two. And the first one was just terrible. It was about the Beijing punk rock scene, except it wasn't really. It was half-ass and shallow and boring. The second one was cool because it was about the Tokyo punk rock scene, and seeing Shinjuku made me want to get on the next plane back. I miss it so much. But it was still crap. Both films were made by westerners for an English speaking audience, and neither of the documentaries really got past "hey! look at these Asian people playing punk rock!" And I was almost tearing my hair out at the end because it was just so repetative and boring. And there was absolutely no story!

It was worth it though, because I now know my favorite band name of all time. New Pants. That's what they were called. New Pants. They're from Beijing.

I went to go see this movie with my dad on Sunday. It was called Sword of the Stranger in English.

It was being shown in some really small theater downtown called Imaginasian. My good old dad said it used to be a Toho movie theater (or another Japanese movie studio) that showed their own films back in the day when there was a stronger Japanese American community here, but that space closed down a long time ago. I guess it finally re-opened.

We got there a little early and the theater was completely empty, which was a shame because it was really a beautiful little space. If you get the chance, you should go down there and support it.

The movie itself was pretty good. A little too bloody for my taste though. What was interesting (for me, and for probably a lot of foreigners who watch this film), was that the two main characters (the hero and his nemisis) were strangers -- they were outsiders, foreigners. In a country like Japan it doesn't take much to be an "outsider." A slight physical difference or a drop of mixed blood makes you a "stranger."

The nemisis was from China, but obviously from European stock because he was tall, big, with blond hair and blue eyes (he also had a very distracting mullet). The hero had reddish hair and slightly western features, which made me think of my part Ainu friend, who's father has reddish hair and western features. I mean seriously, the guy looks latin. These two main characters were both much stronger and more skilled than everyone else, which was cool. In my experience Japanese people don't appreciate foreigners being more skilled in their cultural techniques, like swordplay! I mean there's a reason why they stopped recruiting polynesian sumo wrestlers. I wouldn't be surprised if they do the same thing to Mongolians.

And I was sort of left scratching my head because I couldn't figure out why THIS film -- out of all the anime films that come out of Japan -- was chosen to be shown in America. As far as I know, it didn't make any particular waves in Japan. Then again I'm definitely no expert, so I might be wrong. It was good though, if you can stand all that blood and violence. I have a particular, almost irrational dislike of blood though, so you'll probably be fine.

I didn't realize that Cookie had such a Hokkaido accent. She's the part Ainu girl I worked with who's kind of tough, and who also always goes out with loser foreign guys (well I guess not foreign because now I'm in America! she likes white men who are unfaithful and irresponsible). Obviously we didn't email before and I just didn't notice when we spoke, but her emails now are just completely hokkaido-ed out! It's kind of cute.

I took G's advise and laid out in the sun for a little bit. If I'm still sick tomorrow, I'm going to be mad. There's actually a lemon tree in between our apartment building and the next one. There's kind of a yard. If I took a picture of the lemon tree in the yard with the big blue sky and the palm trees in the distance and showed it to my friends in Tokyo, they'd probably have a heart attack. No matter how poor and how hard your life is, at least you've got the sun and the space here in LA.

I only brought about 6,000dollars with me. And that's pretty much all the money I have. I actually had almost zero when I came back from New York in May, so I was a little relieved that I was able to bring that much back with me. My dad was a little disappointed, because he needs me to pay for my share of the rent, etc. Money isn't everything, yo!

My twin sister's car had to be squashed, so she's driving my little sister's car while she's in Cambodia. When she returns it's going to be two cars and four people. What kind of city is LA anyway, where everyone has to have a car?

I'm gonna have to get to know the bus system I guess. If gas prices keep going up, everyone's going to start taking the bus. I hope they do, that will dilute the freak pool.

This one guy I met the day before I came to LA keeps emailing me. I think he thinks I'm his long lost sister or something, because his background is even more confusing than mine. His mother is zainichi Korean (ethnically Korean but born and raised in Japan, but not given Japanese citizenship), so he also doesn't have Japanese citizenship, even though he was born and raised here and can only speak Japanese. But his father was an American soldier, and he was some mixture of black and native american. This is all according to his mother though, because he's never met the man and his father didn't hang around enough to get him any form of US citizenship or anything.

So this guy is dark-skinned and wide-eyed and doesn't look Japanese at all. But he was born and raised Japanese and can't identify with any other culture. But he doesn't even have Japanese citizenship, he has Korean citizenship! I get confused just thinking about it, so I can't imagine what it's like to BE him.

He's probably emailing me now because I'm half American like him, but I'm ACTUALLY American so he feels like if he gets to know me, he'll get to know the part of himself that he never knew.

Anyway, just typing all this out is making my cold worse.

George Takei talks to Adam Carolla and Teresa Strasser about being forced into an intern camp after the Pearl Harbor bombings here and here.

For whatever reason, Japanese Americans and Asian Americans in general aren't very vocal about the racism they face. There seems to be a "don't talk about it and just move on" philosophy, but it's always worth it to hear our elders talk about their lives.

I'm guilty of dismissing old people as cute. They're little and they're sometimes awkward and they look almost child-like.

Then you realize what they've lived through.

A cop came to our building today.

I don't like answering my door, I don't like answering my phone if I don't know the number, I'm distrustful of a lot. I think a lot of immigrants are. And you can't really spend your formative years in LA without being scared stiff of cops.

I shouldn't have answered the door, but I did.

He asked me a question and when I answered he smiled and apologized. "Oh you're Japanese. Sorry, I thought you were a foreigner. There are a lot of foreigners in this building." He wanted my details. I haven't registered my residence here yet because I'm lazy and I'm leaving in a few weeks, so why should I waste hours at city hall? So I said "yeah, I'm Japanese." Then I cut him off and asked him if I could do this later, I was kind of busy. He said yeah, but took my name down anyway. I said it really fast so he wouldn't be able to write it down properly. He looked confused because my first name is English and my last name sounds like a really common Korean name. So I told him I'm half foreign, and admitted that I have U.S. citizenship.

Maybe I should have started dating that cop who was asking me out a few months ago.

Kiss my ass.

I'm home, home home. Home where everything works and people aren't lazy and you don't have to check everything to make sure you haven't been short-changed/given the wrong order/accidentally put on a wanted list.

I hadn't paid my phone bill so my phone's not working. Oops. I'll sort that out tomorrow. I guess I'd better do that first thing. Otherwise I won't be getting any work, and then I won't be getting any money, and then what will I do????????

Does anybody remember this book? It's a picture book called "Crow Boy," and it's about a shy little Japanese boy who' made fun of by his classmates because he lives really deep in the mountains and is a little strange. The pictures are just absolutely beautiful, and it was one of my favorite books growing up.

A close family friend, an older Japanese American lady named Shinobu, gave it to us I think. Shinobu was totally American, but her little old and ancient mother was a real Japanese obachan. They lived together. I don't know why Shinobu never married, and when I knew them her mother was just so very, very old. As far as I could tell, her mother could only speak Japanese despite spending most of her life in California. I guess back in the day, the Japanese American community was much stronger and more thriving, so you could live without learning English. Today most Japanese Americans can't even speak Japanese, and they're probably mixed race (like me! But I'm different, my mother is not an old school immigrant).

Anyway, I just loved the Crow Boy book. Because I really identified with the boy. He was a little different than all the other kids and he seemed to come from some place separate from where the other kids came from. He felt detached from the classroom environment, and would stare out of the window or at his desk instead. The food he ate at lunch was also weird compared to the other kids.

Then one day at their graduation ceremony, Crow Boy sings like the crows that he saw on his long walk to and from his home deep in the mountains. And everyone is so moved.

I felt kind of like Crow Boy when I was a kid.

This dude kicks ass. He's been on TV quite a bit lately, and you can laugh if you want, but watching him makes me feel so good. He's half Japanese half African American, and he sings enka, which is Japanese folk music usually sung by old dudes. Common themes include things like "man my life sucks, I have to drink myself to death."