Word: asian-americans
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...broader category of "Oriental." At some point during high school I was abruptly informed (by a white friend) that "Oriental" was now a racist term and that I would heretofore be known as "Asian." College brought the all-important addition of "American," so that I am now "Asian-American," or, if one really wants to split hairs, "Asian American" (the hyphen, to some, indicates an undesirable hierarchy or dualism...
...African" in African-American, then, locates black culture outside the United States, in its ancestral, African roots. At the same time, the "-American" places blacks among the ranks of the American hyphenated. Among these ethnic groups, too, the move toward hyphenation has been a conscious, progressive struggle. Only in our own generation has "Asian-American" supplanted "Oriental" and other such terms...
...became part of the stereotype brought down upon thousands of Japanese-Americans in the internment camps of World War II. For Asian-American activists of the 1960s and 1970s, the pressing issue was carving out a unique place in America for the Asian community: the finding of a uniquely American identity, one that was not simply defined by our Orientalness. It was no surprise that writers like Frank Chin turned to black culture as a model for Asian-American identity. Chin saw blacks as everything Chinese-Americans were not: independent, defiant of white culture, rejecting assimilation in favor of constructing...
Does it mean that everyone has to start concentrating in Asian-American and Latino studies? That everyone has to take a course on Marcus Garvey and Cesar Chavez? That everyone should start wearing. Maxine Hong Kingston t-shirts...
Personally, I wish my mohawk-headed friend had taken more ethnic studies classes. Perhaps he would have realized the diversity of experiences in the Asian-American (not to mention Chinese-American) community, and not been so quick to lump them all together under demagogically convenient labels...