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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #20 (May 15, 2007), page 7.

It’s still May. May is still Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. And guys like me are still getting grumpy questions and unkind comments about it. About APA Heritage Month.

Of course, there’s plenty of black and white and brown folks ready to party with Asians and Islanders, but let me say a few words about those other guys. Those not happy about us having a month of eating and drinking and dancing to excess.

If I get this wrong, please correct me, but I think the objection to our celebration goes as follows: "It’s not that I don’t like you in particular; I believe Hispanics and African Americans shouldn’t have a heritage month either." Focusing on our racial and ethnic differences, goes the reasoning, only furthers our social distance. It encourages divisiveness.

Differences and divisiveness lead to communal conflict. Often cited are the former Yugoslavia’s Serbs and Croats, Rwanda’s Tutsi and Hutu, and Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’a. Not pretty.

Americans should focus on our similarities, this theory goes. We are really a lot alike.

Whew. That’s saying a lot.

This is an important objection. These are necessary conversations. Three kinds of answers come to mind.

With all respect due people so believing, I don’t think there’s much of a chance of America going the way of those three miserable societies. In each cited instance, it seems some strongman shut down all domestic debate and shot dead anyone who had a problem with that. When he ultimately lost his grip, all that silenced rage broke lose, differences suppressed by the big bad old boss got exaggerated by little ugly new bosses competing for power in the vacuum.

More interesting than this dread of ethnocide, is the problem of public anxiety over American communities different from our mainstream. It can’t be that there aren’t enough cops and prosecutors or state militia to keep ethnic minorities in check. Our prisons are packed with brown boys and black men.

Indeed, it’s hard for folks like me, politically and economically subordinated ethnic minorities, to imagine why such a muscular, such a wealthy, dominant group is so insecure. So anxious about differences. About our differences. Where does this fear come from?

We are different. That is a fact. Very different. Asians and Anglos, Arabs and Islanders, Latinos and blacks, are not the same. Some aspects of our cultures are contrary. And we will likely always be so. Insh’allah.

Differences are good. Our elders have always taught that we need folks with different attitudes and different skills around our kitchen table. Old folks think slow and careful. Young guys are strong and itchy. Each familia needs someone good at plowing rice, someone good at reciting poetry, someone good at beating bad guys, someone good at talking with my enemy, someone good at talking to our common God. It seems natural and necessary that some folks are bigger than me, many are smarter, most are holier.

Americans seem anxious for folks to be equal. Yanks have equal rights and equal access, we do equal admissions, equal employment, and equal lending.

In Oregon, if I talk one way to my Mexican bud but another way to my Hmong brother; or, if I treat a white co-worker different from my Khmer cousin; or, if my manner with a young Indian is different from my manner with an elderly Anglo — I may be perceived as racist or sexist or age-ist. Not by minority ethnics, mind you. But by majority whites.

At our northeast Portland corner coffee shop, big parents bend over to ask little kids in teeny-tiny voices what they want, then beg them to eat a little more. Outside, dogs sit on the long wooden bench while old folks stand under a maple. American egalitarian instincts have gone, well, a bit busuk.

Equal is good. What equality means, needs some discussion. But I’m pretty sure "equal" does not mean we are the same.

APA Heritage Month is of course a time to celebrate our ancestors and elders. It’s everybody’s month to revel in Asian-ness and Pac Islander-ness — and while aspects of our ethos and our aesthetic are certainly non-Western, it seems America can benefit from making room. We are in the middle of a world of anger, at America. At us. APAs can help.

Change is necessary; differences are healthy.

It’s really okay. Asians and Islanders and white folks all in the rub for more sustainable common society, getting our way sometimes, sometimes not, is good for everyone.

Let’s be different. Then let us help out. Then let’s party.

busuk (Indo patois, from Javan): over-ripe. Not rotten, nothing under heaven is bad, just not mindfully tended.

familia (Indo patois, from Spanish): association of interdependent people, reciprocating in roles like traditional family members.

insh’allah (Indo patois, from Arabic): if God wills it so.