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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V17, #41 (October 9, 2007), page 7.
DSW II
(Don’t scare da white people)
Reader response
Some weeks ago we talked story about what brown boys do when we get a moment, a moment of relief, at the end of a bruising work week. We talk about white folks.
Okay-okay, it’s not aaalways about that. And sure, we’re not always talking turkey or trash. We talk about girls too. About sisters. About the ouch and the yum of it. Of them.
And of course I overstate. In the art of writing it’s called hyperbole. You exaggerate a point to provoke constructive argument.
But bottom line is: We do talk, we talk a lot about white guys. It is fair and accurate science to say that peeps finding their families, finding our ethnic communities, as numerical minorities in a society historically and contemporarily ver-ry uncozy with respect to our color and our inscrutability (our race and culture), will need to decompress after the bump and grind of another hard week in Portland, Oregon. Especially us big boys. Us rice pickers, spear chuckers, taco benders, garbanzo grinders, all the same. America is harder on men.
Enough of what’s up with the fellas.
What follows are DSWs given me by girls. Our wahine. I got some of them after alcohol, many of them between giggles, most after making solemn promises to fix plumbing, repair broken locks, beat down bad boyfriends or husbands.
Andalé mujeres, let’s add to my earlier list of six Big Don’ts (AR, September 18, 2007) by setting out another unlucky 13 DSWs:
- Don’t scare da white people by talking about Unlucky 13 while you’re packed in a downtown elevator of an office building over thirteen floors tall.
- Please DSW by shopping in groups larger than two, darker than plain white Xerox paper, in the Pearl District.
- Please don’t scare white folks by having a birthday party with all of your colored friends at the MAC.
- Hmong or Mexicans or Moroccans do not wear cowboy boots or hats at country/western events. DSW.
- Do not speak with your accent at places where impatient people stand in line. You will not be understood and you will slow everybody’s day.
- Do not karaoke (though that word and this idea is Japanese) in your own language. Even on weekends, DSW.
- DSW by looking so doggone alike. If you’re a bunch of Chinese chicks, help white people out by calling your sisters early and making sure everybody wears very different colors, say: one wear all red, one all blue, one all plaid …
- Don’t scare white folks by winning too many awards. Spelling bees are okay; we show we’re eager to learn their language.
- Nonyas: Displaying plastic flowers in your restaurant or on your porch is probably un-American, definitely un-Oregonian.
- Bargaining like you’re in Bangkok is not cool. Not at Nordstrom Rack.
- Driving like you’re still in Delhi will scare white people. Don’t.
- Camping in central Oregon. Please see No. 2.
- DSW by painting your house as if you’re still in Mexico. White peeps reeeally worry about this.
* * *
The Asian Reporter’s Expanding American Lexicon
andalé (Spanish): let’s go-go-go.
ayoh (Indo patois): let’s go-go-go.
inscrutable (English): to not-scrute. No way of scruting. What Westerners believe Orientals are not able to do, or have done to us. Though no Asian knows exactly what that means.
MAC: Multnomah Athletic Club, an old established downtown Portland club, known for an exclusive Old Portland establishment membership.
mujer: (Spanish, Indo patois): woman.
nonya: (Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Indo): woman.
wahine: (Hawaiian, Maori): woman.