Hey the horse deserved it.

Well I've had the ability to go online at my leisure now. One consequence of this, I get into obscure news. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not. Don't ask me how I did it but I ran across an author by the name of Kenneth Eng. He use to write for the AsianWeek (online at Asianweek.com). Kenneth is a self proclaimed Asian supremacist (no I am not Kenneth Eng). He has written such articles like: "why white people will always hate Asians", "why I hate Asians", and "why I hate Blacks". The Asian Week got a lot of heat for printing "why I hate Blacks". They deserved all the heat and them some. Just by the titles of the articles you can sort of tell that they are just going to be rubbish. You all know me, I just couldn't help read them. My premonitions about the articles where right, they were rubbish. What got me was that none of the responses to the articles seemed to be adequate. There also seemed to be a lack of understanding about some key issues that go way beyond anything limited to Asian American issues. It sort of pissed me off that no one could tear apart such a poorly written body of work. Then I started thinking could it be that so many people don't understand such basic things that would make the writing of Kenneth Eng clearly crap instead of accused crap. I concluded that people were just to lazy to write a full response to something not really worth any body's time. Because my skills are not good enough to tackle things worth peoples time I decided to address the things not worth people's time. So I would like to write about some of the issues Kenneth brings to the table.

The first question/statement I would like to point to is that the notion of Asian is sort of an antiquated notion. What does one mean by Asian? Does missing a tuck on the eye lid suffice to make one Asian. Do you have to have black hair? Do you have to be from an Asian country? If so is India a part of Asia? How about Russia? It seems that Kenneth and many Asians have fallen into the problem of making a generalization without any clear lines. In fact being Asian is a preoccupation of people in America not Asia. If you go over to anywhere in Asia and ask someone if they are Asian you will probably get the response, "I'm Korean" or "I'm Chinese" or "I'm Tia" etc.

This leads to the second point, you can't be an Asian supremacist. The fact is there are very few unifying social/cultural traits of the group "Asian" in America. Almost all of the similarities are artificial at best and make a poor basis for making a social evaluation. Lets face it a Korean would much rather hate a Japanese person than a white person. Just like in Japan you would be hard pressed to find a Japanese person that would marry a Korean over a white person. Unfortunately a lot of these notions have traveled across the ocean. In the end there are hardly any "Asians" that would consider the whole of "Asians" better than whites. You could be a Korean supremacist but not an Asian. This is just the tip of the iceberg of intra-Asian relations.

Third Kenneth makes a point of Asians sucking up to whites. One example he points to are Asians that speak with a British accent to sound more sophisticated. See the thing is everyone, whites included, speak with a British accent to sound more sophisticated. The problem here is that Kenneth seems to think that it is a bad thing for one culture to accept and ingrate a better aspect of another culture. What you say a culture can be better than another in certain respects? I figured Kenneth being a supremacist and all could have figured that one on his own. For instance if it is my culture to rob people, or burn the wives of a husband on a funeral pyre, or to do honor rapes, I think my culture could be vastly improved by adopting another culture's view on such topics. I believe it imperative that one evaluate the aspect itself to conclude if it is a positive trait to adopt. Does that mean the original culture is changed/diluted/lost? Yes but culture for culture's sake is of little value. Diversity for diversity's sake is of little value (not valueless). We have to ask does it provide benefits to society. This brings me to a topic that was lightly covered in a previous series of post involving racism, but the horse doesn't deserve that much.

Fourth Kenneth points to Asians lacking honor. He point to Asians being rather complacent about protecting one's self and standing up for "our community". The oddest thing is he points to the Japanese samurai as an example of honor. You got to be kidding me the samurai, really? I think Kenneth has been watching to many movies made by the white man about the samurai. The reality is that the samurai during the Tokugawa period were nothing but bureaucrats. These bureaucrats made it a practice to live off the broken backs of the peasant. Yes the samurai could have a peasant executed no reason at all. Most samurai were cowards. You know who did most of the war fighting in feudal Japan? The answer is, not the samurai. These are the same group of people that would have a peasant held so he could test his sword out on him. Yep a lot of honor there. Yeah and when the samurai did fight they weren't the most honorable of people. You know who most of the ninjas were? If you guessed samurai you may be on to something. This relates to another of Kenneth's points: black people are weak willed because they were enslaved for over 300 years. Sorry to say the vast majority of "Asians" were enslaved till after WWII. Now does that mean the samurai are of no value? No it just means that there are good things and bad things about every culture and sub group.

Lastly Kenneth's points seem to boil down to everybody hates Asians so Asians should hate back. No Kenneth everybody hates white people. Check that rich white people. Kenneth points to personal experiences of hatred. I got news for you Kenneth, everyone, including white people have suffered hatred of the sort you describe. A question you might want to ask is when was the last time being "Asian" negatively effected you during a job interview? How about getting into college? I have long contended that everyone is racist so we should just admit it and deal with it. Everyone one makes snap decisions about other people, the question is are we allowed to change or reinforce those decisions based upon our merits. If you look at our "Asian" average income and college attendance rates I think you can see where I'm going.

Unfortunately I am probably suffering from what every other person who bothered to respond to Kenneth Eng suffered from. Because while I could write another 5000 words about how poorly written Kenneth Eng's articles are (including style points) I just ran out of motivation. One last note as an Asian people we seriously need to get over our addiction to pop music. Come on enough is enough. I'm begging you please on my knees.