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ABC and banana

Posted by zenithdream on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 2:40:42 AM

Identity is a difficult subject to discuss because it is so personal, and it is even more difficult to describe someone's identity clearly in a country like the USswheresjust about everyone's family came from somewhere else. My professor, until she left Eritrea, always considered herself Eritrean.When she got to America, however, people looked at her and saw a black woman, not an Eritrean woman. Similarly, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese people come to the US and are often just called "Asians".Appearance is used as the main condition for identity, although appearances can be quite deceiving.

Is there a difference between a Chinese person born in China and a person born in the US to parents from China?Most people would agree that there is.There are certain phrases that people frequently use insgroupsto define the Chinese-American identity. The two most commonly heard terms are "ABC", meaning an American-born Chinese, and "banana".The former is often considered an acceptable label for people of Chinese descent born in the US; in Canada there is the corresponding term "CBC" for Canadian-born Chinese.The second term, banana, is usually regarded as derogatory or offensive, and it refers to someone who is "yellow" on the outside but "white" on the inside.

The phrase ABC is used so commonly that many people think it is an appropriate description of Chinese-Americans.However, the phrase hides what I think is a very dangerous belief about identity. Identity is developed and learned, not given at birth.To say that someone is an American-born Chinese is to suggest that if that person were born anywhere else in the world, he/she would still be fundamentally Chinese because Chineseness, the quality of being Chinese, is inherent in this person.It implies that an ABC is Chinese first and just happened to be born in the United States.Yet being Chinese is not an inherent quality that one person has simply because he or she looks Chinese.Just about every Chinese-American recognizes that there are huge differences in personality, behavior and physical appearance between themselves and their native Chinese counterparts.

These differences are what the term "banana" addresses.Bananas are yellow-skinned but with white insides - for people, this is meant to describe individuals who look Chinese but whose "insides", that is, their behavior and personality, are "white".But this also carries a demeaning and offensive undertone: that these people are only half-real, they are neither completely Chinese nor actually white. Even worse, the term is sometimes used to suggest that Chinese-Americans really wish that they were white.Being white, of course, is assumed to mean being American, which is a third misconception.Not all Americans are white, and in not too many years the majority of the population in America won't be white (i.e. of purely European descent) at all.

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Care your dream

Posted by zenithdream on Sunday, March 23, 2008 3:39:11 AM

My dream ended when I was born. Although I never knew it then, I just held on to something that would never come to pass. Dreams really do exist. But in the morning when you wake up, they are remembered just as a dream. That is what happened to me.

I always have the dream to dance like a beautiful ballerina twirling around and around and hearing people applaud for me. When I was young, I would twirling around and around in the fields of wildflowers that grew in my backyard. For hours I would dance as if people were watching me. I would dance so fast that I would forget where I was, until I would hear sounds that reminded me of where I really was. I thought that if I twirled faster everything would disappear and I would wake up in a new place. Reality woke me up when I heard a voice saying, "I don't know why you bother trying to dance. Ballerinas are pretty, slender little girls. Besides, you don't have the talent to even be a ballerina." I remember how those words paralyzed every feeling in my body. I feel to the ground and wept for hours.

We lived in the country by a nearby lake and I would sometimes go there to hide. My parents were never home anyway and I did not like to be at home where I could hear the walls talking of pain. When they were home, my mother just yelled and criticized because nothing was ever perfect in her life. She dreamed of a different life but ended up living in a country far away from the city where she believed her dreams would have come true.

I enjoyed hanging out by the water. I would sit there for hours and stare at my reflection. There I was, looked nothing like a pretty ballerina dancer. Reflections don't lie. Once the waves would come, my reflection was gone. Washed away just like my dream to dance. I sat there staring at the water, hoping that my reflection would reappear and be different.

As I grew older, I began to realize that the reason my dream was even born in the first place, was because it was something that was inside of me. The dream I had was never nurtured and cared for, so it slowly died. It's not that I wanted it to die, but I allowed it to die the day I started listening to the words, "You can't do it." When I finally woke up from many years of dreaming, I realized that you can't settle for dancing in the wildflowers, you have to move on to the platform. I still go to the lake sometimes and sit there. Looking at my reflection is different now too. When I was young, I looked at how others saw me, now that I am older and wiser; I look at how God sees me.