Model Minority Report: Socioeconomic Status Thru the Lens of Asian American Studies

Wrote this essay for my Asian Amerikan Studies M.A. Immigration Course. I love this class because it’s sort of a place to process everything that is happening in my other classes and in my life. Our Professor is of Okinawan heritage and was raised in Hawaii. His spirit of Aloha and abilty to “talk story” with all of us, GOES.

Q: Is Class Adequately Addressed in Asian American Studies? Why or Why Not?
A: *DEEP INHALATION*…

Binary Refinery by Colin Masashi Ehara

In my lifetime, socioeconomic status, almost as much as race has been a confusing realm in which the borderlines are blurred in and around my existence. I have known people whose life experiences and dwellings made me feel as if I bathed in opulence, scrubbed with vanity and rinsed with privilege; and I have experienced feelings of indescribable inadequacy in the surroundings of others. I found as an undergrad that class status in regards to Asian American studies was generally something that did not tell my story. Various Asian American ethnic groups seemed to be racialized with immediate class-status roots, wrapped up, tied with a bow and presented to students in a nice little package. Chinese, Korean and especially Japanese Americans were “economically successful.” Filipinos, Vietnamese and other South/Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander groups were “colonized and stratified into poor/working-class backgrounds.” As a mixed race Japanese/Scottish/Iroquois American, I am often as an East Asian/Caucasian, racialized by others as someone whose experience should not know economic hardship. Growing up in the east bay during the 1980’s with a father who sold cash registers and mother who did clerical work at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, combined with 12 years in Richmond Public school education is not what one would typically label a “Japanese” or “”Caucasian” experience. I have resided for the majority of my life (until recently), in the grey area of the Asian American binary of a poor/working-class labor force and a entrepreneurial, professional middle-class. The mere fact that my story has yet to be told, is itself a testament to the current inadequacies of Asian American Studies in regards to class study; however, my being allowed to testify now points to a new direction.

Famed African-American comedian Chris Rock once stated, “to me, America is like that uncle in your family who paid your way through college…but molested you.” In regards to my family history, I know this statement to be particularly true. Prior to WWII, my Jichan’s family owned a large amount of land in the Napa Valley wine country. After Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan and all people of Japanese ancestry were interned in concentration camps, my grandfather’s family was forced to sell this land at rock-bottom prices. I have been told by my parents on separate occasions that this vineyard in Napa today accrues upwards of about $1,000,000 annually and is owned by a white family. During the war, my Bachan was granted early exit by enrolling in a nursing school, while my Jichan was drafted into the U.S. Army’s military intelligence services as a translator. After the war ended, my Bachan continued her work as a nurse and my Jichan worked freelance as a gardener. When the Civil Liberties Act was signed into law by President George H.W. in 1992, my grandparents were each given $20,000 and a written apology for their internment as surviving internees. The money, while nowhere near what might have been incurred with the land in Napa, was used to 1. take our entire extended family on vacation to Hawaii, and 2. finish the last of their payments on their home in El Cerrito. My grandparents were in essence removed from an upper-class future, placed into a working-class existence due to internment and eventually placed into middle-class status due to reparations from that same incarceration.

Due to the untimely conception of myself, my father was forced to leave graduate school before receiving his M.A. degree in Mass Communications. While my father and mother both possessed Bachelor’s degrees, neither occupied a career whose monetary benefits were very substantial. My parents both loved working closely with other people and having a sense of community and service to that community in their lives. When I came into the world, the options they had been presented with didn’t necessarily meet those expectations. I can recall both low points as well as high points in the memories of my socioeconomic history. One of these low points came in the realization that we could no longer afford the house we lived in. We were fortunate enough to have both family and friends who were A. willing to take us in, and B. willing to rent out our house themselves while we got “back on our feet.” We moved in with my Uncle Ronnie who was a Nisei man, born inside the barbed wire of Japanese American internment camps. He possessed a sharp temper, a contempt for white people (which my mother was) and a fatalistic attitude that lead to his eating fried foods, drinking beer every day after work, ignoring his diabetes and never caring for his health. Ronnie died in his early 50’s and while I am eternally grateful to have had him as a “safety net,” living with my Uncle Ronnie didn’t always feel “safe.”

The day things began to change was when my father was hired by what was then the Richmond Unified School District (after going bankrupt and being bailed out by the State of California, the name was changed to the West Contra Costa County School District), as the new Public Communications Officer. For one, we were able to afford moving back into our small house in the Richmond Annex and two, my mother was then allowed to quit her job and return to school to pursue a LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) degree. The fact that both of my parents had been given access to higher education was the determining factor in our ability to transition from a working-class lifestyle, living month to month, paycheck to paycheck, to a lower middle-class standing in which a home, savings account and hope for a better future were possible. Education was stressed in my household intensely and in many ways, even after school ended my education did not.

My parents enrolled me into the 1st Grade at Kensington Elementary in the hills above Richmond where we lived. It was touted as the best elementary school in our area due to the wealth (and epidermal hue) of the residents in its vicinity. I found in this institution a rude awakening as to the fact that to other students here I was both “Chinese” and “poor.” My hand-me-down clothes combined with my slanted eyes and thick, black hair inevitably got me picked last in all sports or even rejected to the point of not playing at all and languishing on the bench by myself. I recall feeling enough anxiety each morning my parents took me to school, that I threw up in the hallway or in the classroom on multiple occasions. It didn’t take long for my parents to see that I might fare better in a different social setting.

I began the 2nd grade at Fairmont Elementary just a 5 minute drive from my house. This school was about 40% Black, 25% Latino, 20% Asian and 15% white. It was at this school that for the first time in my education, being a person of color did not seem an immediate disadvantage. It was here that being white many times made you a target of insults and name-calling, isolation and internal anxiety. In the span of two years I had been freed from the strata of middle-class Asian America and flung towards the opposite binary of working-class Asian-America. It was here among other working-class people of color that I learned “coolness” – the suit of armor that shielded you from insult and attack; whose shine could be used to attract the attention of the opposite sex, but at the same time often prevented its wearer from showing their true, full selves to the world.

The blatant differences I noticed in my upbringing came when visiting the homes of some of my Black, Latino and Southeast Asian American friends. With some of these peers I noticed that unlike my house, their education primarily ended when the bell rang at school. There was often no one home to help or encourage completing homework assignments and television was the babysitter. In others’ homes parents might be physically present, but alcohol or other drug induced comas kept them from being mentally, spiritually, parentally present. While my parents resided in the same vicinity (even the same block) and sent me to the same under funded schools as my peers, they did not possess any drug dependency, had a two-parent household and had attained access to higher education. Within the frameworks of race and class, I was given a deep look into varying worlds as they crashed into each other in front of and around me without remorse.

Today I feel jaded and clear eyed, hopeful and pessimistic, extremely positive and very disillusioned. Asian American Studies has been offered a wealth of information as to the experiences of a plethora of different Asian Americans in regards to their class ties and experiences through data and a multitude of statistical analysis. This knowledge is of the utmost importance and remains extremely valuable. However, if a picture is worth a thousand words, these myriad data complete a picture of the tip of an iceberg. I believe that to truly convey a thorough understanding of the socio-psychological effects of class (especially coupled with race), that stories need to be told and heard. The oral histories of Asian Americans who reside in the grey areas between the binary poor/working-class and entrepreneurial/professional middle-class will play a fundamental role in completing the “big picture.” The mere opportunity to write this essay in an Asian American Studies Graduate course not only addresses inadequacies within common sense understandings of the racialization of Asian Americans, but makes me feel more hopeful for the prospects of deeper study of socioeconomic standing within an Asian American studies framework. My story and our further study of class-status within Asian American Studies is a step away from the “black-white” binary socioeconomic map America creates and reproduces.

_________

“Only God can judge me so I’m gone, either love me or leave me alone…”

Colinresponse