Finding Work

What are the chances of me finding a job in my near future? My Dad predicts not even a sliver of chance. He recalls my boisterous, sluggish search for volunteer hours three years ago during my senior year of high SkOoL: "Uou could not find any opportunities so you were sent back to Chinatown, and you had to plead your own people for work." He makes it so disgraceful. Not only does he feel like it is shameful and faceless to inquire work from fellow Asians, but he sees that the American Dream is to be among White folks and to compete amongst them.

I was hurt that he used terms such as "our people" and "plead." I did not plead anybody for work and if I pleaded, it is not as shameful as groveling or ingratiating (sucking up) myself with a higher authority figure. How can he play strategic essentialism and hoist the race card, plotting Asians against each other? Why must the dream surround breaking out of the Asian community. Dad wants me to learn English and use it as a stock in trade in order to break free of the immigrant chains. His goal is for me to work alongside White men in decadent suit and tie. My reaction to this: Face Palm*, Why must I fully assimilate and prove myself to White men? Why must he use terms like "lo fan" and "bak jung yun" as if the yellow race is pitted against the white. I have no intentions of proving myself to anybody but myself. I don't HAVE to and I don't NEED to prove myself to White society, misusing the word society as if society isn't a singular whole, but just another imagined community (When people say things like "Who's from Brooklyn? Raise your voice and represent, you're calling on imagined communities [Benedict Anderson]).

By the way, in order to curb racism or hopefully nip it in its bud, let us readdress microaggressions hidden in everyday life. There are facets of our unconscious that leaps to work when we stereotype. We also tend to satirize, poke fun at OUR OWN skin color and race, stepping outside of ourselves and making fun of our own race because we CAN and because WE ARE EXCUSED. However this is a form of reproducing racism. Peter Chow's thick Chinese accent and stereotypical Chinaman attitude is a reproduction of racism because he naively and ignorantly believes that his Chineseness gives him every right to speak in an overly Chinese accent, glamorizing the very failed accent that shapes Chinese and gets us made fun of. Just because you are Chinese DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO make noises like ching chong ching chong at the dinner table. It also does not give you the right to make chinky eyes. To participate in making fun of your own race is no better than cursing out your own race.

My parents want me to "live a better life" and to accrue munificent amount of money. They want me to graduate with a batch of framed diplomas and degrees, safe to say that killing a few trees to manufacture my paper degree is slavish. I thought we were going green... digital diploma please, in the form of a JPEG or a PDF File please. :) My parents want me to become ... well right now they're tossing and turning in bed because they really have lost hope in me. But not completely. My Dad goads me to drop my guitar. In high SkOoL, he smashed my first guitar by stabbing it with a butcher's knife. He persuades me to stop fiddling with my guitar and to return to bed with my books which are gathering dust. Somehow he doesn't believe that experience is key. He thinks that knowledge in books is the way to go. He hasn't been out much. He needs to go out more. Doing is living. Reading is just accumulating, but not doing. I need to start working and to feel the rungs of the ladder, not to just observe it from a far distance.