Azn

I grew up in Crenshaw, which was everybody knew, a black and Japanese neighborhood.

Freddie and Keith were my first Asian buddies. Keith was Hawaiian and Freddie was Japanese. I knew Keith in the first grade and Freddie somewhat after. Keith was all smiles and full of energy and popular. Freddie was chubby, shy and laconic. Freddie and I lived on the same street, his was a single mom, and he rode a tricycle a little bit longer than anybody else our age. I never knew where Keith lived, and never saw him after school, but Freddie and I were closer friends. I don't know why and I don't know how long into our friendship, I hit Freddie. He ran home, told his mom, and I never saw him again after school. Well, maybe once or twice, but that was basically the end of it. 

There are probably more short stories like this I could tell end on end, but maybe they have that same theme. The friendship between blacks and Asians in LA is as varied as the number of different types of Asians, and yes everybody hates Koreans. At least, they used to. But on the whole the relationship is genuine and fragile. Whenever you try, you really can't make anything of it. 

I think there is a kind of social capital that black Americans have gained in a completely different way than whatever Asians have gained. When I think of Asian Americans, I almost never think of them as multicultural compatriots in a shared struggle for social capital. That has worked and can continue to work with Latinos, especially those who called themselves Chicano. But there has never been an Asian Chicano. Well, there's Margaret Cho, and that's about it. It's something I have variously found frustratingly disappointing and oddly attractive. But one thing I have long understood is that worse than blacks and worse than browns, Asians have never managed to be the authors of their own social acceptance. Asian culture was and remains all in the eye of the beholder, not in the aim of the creator. It all gets swallowed up in perception.

Here in SoCal, there are so many Asian groups that every place else seems freakily devoid. The idea that I might turn on a radio station and never hear Mandarin, Japanese or Korean on the AM dial seems uncivilized, as does any person who can't tell those languages apart. But let's face it. All us gringos care much more about the food than the people, that is except for the dudes with jungle fever, be they our dudes or their dudes. 

Almost all Asians I have known have attempted to compensate for a lack of social capital via ultra competence. I have never been able to determine, not that I care much, whether this is a personal matter, something that bespeaks a particular tradition, or was merely a reaction to racial stereotypes. It is not an intimation which I have been privy. I have known Keiths and Freddies. They either make it, or they don't, but either way, the intimacy has been lacking. 

I have known Asian men to get riled about banana chicks in their midst. I have known Asian women to find their roles stultifyingly austere. But I cannot know if I get that particular flavor of complaint straight, or through a black man filter.  And of course I have gotten my share of discussion about the 'model minority' role - whether real or imagined. What I haven't gotten much is a sense of Asian Americans to their native countries, if they have anything more than a passing familiarity with them. I notice this much more for the yellow Asians than for the brown Asians. Indians, are a completely different sort with which my experiences are more extensive. I know what Indians act like around Indians. So let me speak in broad general useless terms about that for a moment.

Once upon a time in Las Colinas, I was working for one of the most successful Indian companies in America. It was chock full of Indian nuts, and had some informal claim as the highest per capita PhD in Texas, if not the Fortune 500. So one day we were having a big meeting and one of the project managers was late, and we were sitting around waiting. Somebody asked who was he? And the answer was "oh. some white guy named Bob". It was funny, because that description suddenly made it easy, in this company, to identify him. But what was even more striking to me at this company was the extent to which the Indian social hierarchy, heretofore invisible to me, made itself visible. And since that day, although I have not given it more specific attention in a pattern-matching way, I have noticed how quickly such hierarchies are established stateside. It is my estimation that Indians here in America on work permits, are quite appreciative of the extent to which they are accepted into our creaky meritocracies. But really, I'm not talking about them here and I don't consider them Azn.

The Azn I wish I knew better are my associates from highschool, most of whom tread a fine line between conspicuous invisibility and innoffensiveness. Every once in a while I'll find an Asian dude my age driving a fabulous car, and I get this feeling that he's a cool, competent fellow I might knock back a few drinks with. But he's just on his way somewhere. These men have not become the sports announcer on TV, the over solicitous real estate agent, the friendly guy at the end of the bar. One of them, however is my General Practitioner, a Felix Unger type who wears his gloves and washes his hands a bit too often. But this fete manque doesn't bother me much - it's an empty spot like that trip to Berlin I never made. I was just going to be a tourist anyway, but it would have been nice to know I was welcome to learn the language and make friends. 

The problem with Asian Studies is the same problem as with using multiculturalism to solve the Race Problem - fighting fire with fire. There's always some esstialism involved. You always have to invoke some ancient Chinese secret to overcome the 'gaze'. There's always some black magic the Negro must use, some Judo for the Japanese. And for what? To get in the White door, as if it led someplace. There are always a hundred doors and a hundred keys. The problem is the fixation. Well, actually the problem is that the fixation is over-productive. You see Asian Studies, and American Studies and multiculturalism all work. They all work like that pill in the recent movie "Limitless". They work like Robert DiNiro playing a confident, powerful guy with the capacity to get in your face and make you suffer. They work like hammers and nails. 

One of the things you never hear about when these discussions come up is what to make of Asians who are Christian. I have never set foot inside a Korean or Philippino Christian church. But I know they are around. In Gardena, two towns west of where I live, I'm sure I could easily find a dozen Christian churches with Asian congregations. Where is the exchange? What does it mean to all of these racial and cultural signifiers we are trying to make sense of if and when there is that fundamental sameness? One of the favorite project managers I have worked with was a Taiwanese army seargant (boy you could tell) who sent his son to the same private Catholic highschool I attended. I remember so many times he would be shouting at the kid over the phone in Chinese. I felt sorry for the kid, rather the same way I feel sorry for any kid whose parents *and* teachers are Catholic. Where is the forgiveness? Where is the Christian fellowship? I suspect with some conviction that these might as well be different sects, as wholly other as Mennonties and Mormons. Yet I also suspect that there is a great story waiting to be told that will come from Thomas Sowell before it comes from Bill Moyers.

At bottom there will have to be a kind of studied indifference by the keepers of the culture that will inform our best sensibilities. I have found that kind of attitude works best when people get bent about American identity. Until then, we will have to stock our mental inventory with Dat Phans and Margaret Chos and Amy Chuas and a half dozen other riffs to satisfy the idiot level of stereotypes. We have to let all of the seminars take place, and try to reconcile Connie Chung and Tiger Woods. We'll have to have that conversation with the guy at the end of the bar, or commiserate/brag about our idiot/brilliant kids with the dad at the Friday night game.  It will become American, whatever that means, and then we'll talk about the bad old days when it was so difficult to watch the remake of the Green Hornet. And in the end it will all mean exactly what it's supposed to mean, nothing. Until we go to war with China. 

Speaking of which, I am reminded of the bottom line of Dr. Frayser, my dad's old friend. He is one of the kindest individuals I know, a real old school gentleman - the kind of man you expect to meet on a sunny day on Martha's Vineyard with his walking stick, straw hat and dog, knowing he as retired from fixing hundreds of human babies in his hospital. And because he was so absolutely gentle, his dictum was striking in its finality. He said, you know the reason why we respect Japanese and buy all of their products? Because we know they will fight us to the death. In the end, the only way to accept another human is to know that they can and will do anything you think you can and will do. The implications are simple and clear, and reiterate my indictment of Asian Studies. 

If the purpose of any study is to cultivate respect, admiration, acceptance and to break whatever is holding up that glass ceiling, then you enter a particular room with a particular shape and use particular tools to get a particular result. The problem is with the definition. You and I know what an Azn is. But that man is actually nobody in particular.