oak23:

oak23:

I think the most honest aspect of Crazy Rich Asians is that Asians born and raised in Western Cultures will always been seen as foreign and as outsiders to Asians born and raised in Asia and it is something white people will never fucking grasp cuz they see us as all the same lmao

This is especially ridiculous when white people go “See? Asians in Asian country where they’re not marginalised aren’t offended by racism” because that xenophobia and racism doesn’t even touch them and they see themselves distinct from us western born Asians 

But white people think solidarity is something inherent amongst Asians when there’s major issues of classism and racism amongst the many groups within Asia

Disclaimer that I haven’t read this book or seen the movie, but this is completely accurate.  I’ve literally had an Asian from the mainland call me by a racial slur for being American.  I know mainland Chinese people who don’t understand why racism against Asians in America is problematic.  

Also there’s the fact that – lol, believe it or not – Asia is the biggest continent on the planet, and therefore not one single country.  Even if you just look at East Asia, which is partly where the model minority myth comes from (and not South Asia, which is where the people come from that America profiles as terrorists), that has:  

• China
• Japan 
• South Korea
• Mongolia 
• Vietnam
• Thailand
• Cambodia
• Laos
• and varied others that I’m not going to list because this post is long enough, but you get the point.  

China, South Korea, and Japan are the countries with a lot of people who came to America. They’re the kinda upper-class, industrialized countries – in the same way that America is an upper-class, industrialized country:  They’ve got poverty problems and a lot of issues of class and marginalization within their country, but their GDPs are high and they’ve got famous exports.  Chinese and South Korean first generation immigrants have a somewhat friendly truce; both groups are mixed on Japan – some immigrants hate Japan for war crimes and genocide and other atrocities during WWII, others feel like the war is over and it’s time to forgive and forget the new generation of citizens, if not the Japanese government, which never apologized or made reparations or admitted any kind of guilt.  

I can’t speak for the other countries, so if anyone wants to weigh in on them – especially Cambodia, Laos, and Mongolia – that would be welcome.  People tend to forget they exist.  

In terms of governments, Taiwan absolutely hates China and wants to sever all ties; China views this indulgently, like a parent with a tantruming child.  Across the pond, in America, Chinese second-generation immigrants on average don’t really care if Taiwan’s independent or not.  Taiwanese second-generation immigrants have Very Strong opinions about how Taiwan is its own country.  

The Hmong people are a group of nomads who fought for the U.S. during the Vietnam War.  They were paid about a tenth as much as U.S. soldiers, and after the war ended the U.S. basically forgot about them.  Maybe a quarter of them made it out, the rest of them dying on land mines or of exhaustion on the way.  The U.S. embassies then had the gall to be like “oh, okay, you guys are refugees now.  Maybe if you’re good, we’ll let you immigrate to our country.”  They let a small percentage of Hmong through.  Anyway, there’s groups of Hmong in America now, and they’re probably the most looked-down-upon. 

As a nomadic people with no established civilization, most of them didn’t have formal education systems and never learned to read or write, putting them at a huge disadvantage when they came to America.   Most Asian-Americans don’t know they exist, and those who do have a history of not really getting along with them.  China conquered territory that the Hmong were living in several centuries ago and tried to assimilate them, and they stubbornly retained their own culture no matter what China tried to do.  I think Vietnam might have had something similar happen.  In America nowadays, the Hmong mostly keep to themselves and don’t interact with other Asian communities.  

There’s an additional divide between Asian mainlanders and Asian-Americans.  Once again, I only really have experience with China and Japan and can’t attest to the other countries.  Japan’s people are a little too polite to seem hostile or discriminatory, but there’s a sense that Japanese-Americans are… different.  

China’s just straight up “you’re a foreigner.  Tell me all about your foreigner school and your foreigner life with your foreigner friends.”  It’s funny unless they’re significantly older and then you can’t be snarky.  

Finally, there’s a divide between immigrants.  For each of the Asian countries with significant numbers of immigrants to America, there’s a divide between the poor immigrants and the rich immigrants.  This is ESPECIALLY huge for the Chinese.  

America passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.  Before that, a lot of the immigrants from China were poor laborers who eked out a living running laundromats or restaurants.  Some of them eventually worked on the Trans-Continental Railroad.  They formed communities that eventually became Chinatowns and tried to keep to themselves.   This probably had to do with the fact that white people massacred dozens of them for existing.  

The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943.  After that, especially after 1980, a lot of Chinese immigrants came over for college or graduate school.  These were middle-class to upper-class Chinese, with privileged backgrounds and good educations.  They finished their studies, got decent jobs, got married, and had kids.  They still kept to themselves.  

These were the stereotypical “model minorities”. 

 Meanwhile, the immigrants from before 1882 didn’t just stop existing.  They had families and had kids and their kids kept running laundromats and restaurants and continued living in poverty.  There are a huge amount of Chinese people – and Asians in general – living below the poverty line, something that flies in the face of the “model minority” myth, and that gets ignored because people from better backgrounds raise the average income enough that it’s easy to pretend those outliers don’t exist.  We’ve always been good at pretending poor people don’t exist.  So even within Asians in America, there’s a huge divide between the well-educated immigrants and those descended from them, and the people who are still impoverished.  Obviously marginalized races aren’t immune to prejudice, and classism definitely exists between communities.  

tl;dr, the assumption that Asians are a monolithic group that face the same problems is hugely incorrect on a number of levels.