t · o · i · l

generasian:

Alexandra Wallace, UCLA student at the brink of insanity during finals week, decided that a youtube video was the best means by which she should express her rage at other students who do not abide by common library etiquette… among other things. The response to this video has been enormous, with students requesting UCLA’s Chancellor to expel her and my newsfeed exploding with an incredible amount of postings and repostings (because I find my facebook to be a good indicator of the salience of a particular topic). The first time I watched it, I had a lot of difficulty knowing how to respond. Sure, I was surprised, but at the same time I also felt that this was just a remix of the same old stereotypes people have been spewing for the past couple of centuries.

Let’s talk about some of the things she says.

“The problem is these hordes of Asian people that UCLA accepts into our school every single year - which is fine - but, if you’re gonna come to UCLA, then use American manners.”

Here she iterates her thesis statement for this video: Asian people are fine (even in hordes) but they have to use these “American manners.” She is setting herself up as the authority on American manners and, as a blonde Caucasian, she has the privilege of being able to claim Americanness without question. She is an all-American girl with an Asian problem. Oh hey, that sounds familiar.. since the late 1800s, America has had so-called Asian problems, it was just the era that determined whether the Asian in question was South Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, or East Asian. Great, so we’re historically familiar with these problems of “Asian invasion” (invasian, if you will) and the inability to assimilate to American norms.

Everyone and their mom (literally, according to Alexandra, “everyone they brought along from Asia”) cooking, grocery shopping, and doing laundry in the apartment complex, rather than teaching their children to fend for themselves.

Read: all of them tiger moms not letting their children grow up to be independent Amurricans. It’s an easy conclusion to come to. After all, recent Asian immigrants are constantly portrayed as sheltered mama’s babies with little common sense or street smarts. You can see this demonstrated in the massive explosion that was Amy Chua’s piece in the Wall Street Journal. David Brooks, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, wrote that Amy Chua was essentially sheltering her kids from learning how to properly function in a group setting, a.k.a. have social skills. It’s a common rhetoric used to display how unassimilable Asians are to American society. The argument was used against the Chinese who, according to warped understandings, would isolate themselves in Chinatowns and fail to associate with welcoming Americans. Or Japanese pre-WWII who lived in Japanese communities questionably close to military facilities and attended Japanese language schools. In truth, these ethnoburbs were the result of heavy discrimination and exclusionary housing policies, and segregated schools were in response to the exclusion of Asians from public education. The sentiments Alexandra expresses are nothing new - Asians have always been the perpetual foreigner. It’s hard to say what exactly is going on in her apartment complex, or to know if this is just one Asian family next door or truly the entire Asian diaspora showing up every weekend, but clearly this is more than an “Asians in the library” problem, but an “Asians in my proximity wherever I go” problem. Maybe she would feel more comfortable if all the Asians lived in one apartment complex, instead of cheapening her quality of life. Wait, that’s called redlining. In any case, hers is a complex argument, that Asians (a) come in hordes, (b) their child-rearing habits do not allow for children to live independently, and (c) their habits are shocking to American ways of life.

“OOHHHH ching chong ling long ting tong”

Do I really need to go into this? We all know that this is a stupid “accent” that simply will not die and I just don’t want to waste any more time discussing it. Please refer to NYU Alum Beau Sia’s great response to Rosie O’Donnell’s “Ching Chong impression” circa 2007 to understand the complexity, idiocy, and hate behind this “accent”. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s an internationally accepted norm to be quiet in a library. After, all didn’t the Silent Library game show originate from a Japanese show?

Going through their phonebooks checking on everyone “from the tsunami thing”

Okay, so you caught yourself there. Good job. It’s 4:00 am and I’ve listened to this video way too many times. Why would you even talk about the tsunami? To show your relevancy towards Asian issues? This one was a curveball and arguably the most insensitive part of the video. Really, it just further demonstrates her carelessness.

So that’s basically her main points, in a deconstructed nutshell. In my mind, it’s nothing more than a grating reiteration of the same stereotypes that have been passed around for years. They’ve become so internalized that they show up everywhere - from policy to talkshow hosts to viral youtube videos. What we need to do is understand where these ideas are coming from and how they’ve been perpetuated in reality as well as our imaginations. It’s easy to call this woman out on her bigotry, because it’s so obvious, but we also need to look at less obvious cues that these ideas persist and how they harm the Asian American community.

On that note, check out the autotuned remix of her rant.