[Blarg]

When I read last, whites were the majority in Hawaii.

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As to the melting pot, I do agree my description of a previously homogenous US is pretty wrong and telling. BUT through the lens of recent assimilation leading to different bias, it still holds true.


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Maybe it's late at night, but I'm not sure I understand this.

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Culturally speaking, Irish and Italians as full citizens have been a part of the US for a far longer time than asians and I don't think you can ignore this fact.


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I don't, and agree. I think it is extremely telling that there is a virtual black-out of Asians from American entertainment, for one. Even 35 years after Bruce Lee, they still appear almost entirely in kung fu films, which seems ridiculous to me. While blacks are statistically over-represented in American t.v., Asians are virtually nowhere to be found. The best we can get is maybe some cute Asian chick. But Asians in general, and Asian men in particular, are bizarrely absent from representation in American films and t.v. I don't think that's an accident; I think it is prejudice.

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Culturally speaking it doesn't make sense to lump all of white america together, but in the privilege they have in blending in better b/c of longer history in the US and physical similarities, it does. I'm not trying to belittle the Irish and Italian assimilation experience, only outline that it is at its conclusion and the Asian one is not.


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It never does. It is not right to tar and feather people with the crimes of their ancestors, especially when the ancestors are not even their own. I am a first generation European, for instance. I feel no guilt regarding African slavery under American rule 157 years ago, and think it is absurd and offensive that I should. It's a terrible and atavistic thing to be held accountable for what happened before one was even born; even more so when the ancestors one would be held responsible for are not even one's own! Let's get cultural/mystical for a moment here: In the ancestor-centered Confucian and Buddhist traditions of the east, especially, how could it not be understood that ancestors should not be maligned, and that bad karma cannot accrue without individual choice?

I agree that being accepted as American is harder for Asians than for Italians and Irish in the present day.

But I think it is eerie and somewhat fascinating how little of a burden it is to be Asian in these days, when so many minorities have suffered so long, and some suffer still. Right now, many Asian stereotypes are positive. Who on earth could have expected that for any minority during the centuries long parade of minorities disembarking on our shores?