Talking Points: Alien Encounters
Narcissistic naïve Americans most often than not, tend to generalize and give labels to everything and everyone. Labeling, however, this isn’t a new phenomenon that we do as people due to the fact that we see labels everywhere in our daility lives. From the neatly stocked shelves of Wal-mart to the organized mess maze in Ikea, we love labeling because it allows us to put things in boxes making it easier to address. People may fall under this box narrative nightmare too. Certain politicians refer to big groups of people as “the Mexicans” and “the gays” however, this poses a problem when people say “the Asians” why? well, because unlike Mexicans or Mexican American, we cannot use an umbrella term for ALL people that identify as Asian because surprisingly, Asia is made up of more than 40 countries! Each country has its own set of unique languages, cultures, peoples, and traditions, so by generalizing, one is erasing millions of peoples identities.
From a naïve American point of view, Asia might only be made up of China, Japan, and both–North and South Korea with the occasional Vietnam pop up, which might usually be brought up in the context of war. That is Asia to the naïve thinking American. Asian American to the naïve American could possibly be defined as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean American individuals without any thought for the rest of Asian communities living within the veins of USA that have an impact on US culture, food, and economy which has enough power to become part of popular culture.
Pop culture that births from Asian American sub peoples such as Korean, Japanese, Chinese is prominent in Hollywood. However, the representation for specific Asians who are American tends to leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
Mimi Thi Nguyen and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu talk about the impact that Asians who are American have had in the country and how generalizing the entirety of Asians that are American may have boxed the entirety of the metadata Asian demographics into one very broad thing: Asian American. They talk about the fetishization and popularity of “Asian” products that the west/Americans were obsessed with in the 1990s that came from “Asian” creators, but they never specify where the products that are trendy come from. Because of this i stand in my theory that when Naïve Americans say “asian” they specifically are refering to china
