After watching her Facebook news feed fill up with links to articles adoring the politics of Gaga, Thea emailed her local sex/race/gender/pop culture expert: Andrea.  Thea was puzzled by the wild adulation heaped upon Gaga as “transgressive” and “binary-breaking” by the gender studies crowd…not because Gaga is without merit, but because Thea could think of lots of other mainstream artists who had tried to play with appearances and femininity, and not gotten the same love.  When those adulations started to slide towards race, suggesting that Gaga’s work could be read not just as gender subversive, but also questioning and decentering whiteness, it was time for a Racialicious convo.

Thea: I was reading some articles over the weekend about how trangressive the video for “Telephone” is, and I couldn’t help but feel that people are reading things into her work. Not that there is anything wrong with that (especially considering what I do on Racialicious), but it seems as if people are giving her credit for being deeper than she is, rather than saying, oh look what this work could represent, regardless of the artist’s intentions.

There’s this article, which beyond seemingly giving Gaga way more credit than she deserves, makes a gratuitous comment in the article about how the positioning of Beyonce vs Gaga in “Telephone” is a reversal of the black/white dynamic. But I don’t think so at all. For example, in the video Gaga addresses Beyonce with a silly, cloying nickname with is a little condescending, and the video ends with Gaga definitely being the Decider. The article says that Beyonce breaking Gaga out of jail shows that black/white reversal, but the video ends with Gaga “taking care” of Beyonce: the reversal (which I’m not sure I buy in the first place) effectively nullified.

I do get the Gaga mania among queer and feminist theorists, but I also feel like there have been artists before her who were doing interesting things with gender in their work — like M.I.A. who really does not fit easily into either poptart or rock goddess categories. (And M.I.A. has gone so far as to call out the racist-sexism of the music industry, even at the risk of alienating key collaborators.) Even the evolution over the years of Beyonce has been fascinating, in terms of how she went from being this ideal of hetero desire (and also being a blond, light-skinned black lady who was accessible from a white point of view) to making these crazy-ass videos. Like the video for “Video Phone” is just weird.

So why does Gaga get all the love? How much of it is because, as a small young blonde woman she appears to be trangressive in a way that artists like M.I.A. or even Trina cannot be transgressive, because to begin with they are already seen as non-normative, simply because they aren’t white? Is it because the feminist model is predicated on whiteness, so that is what it is drawn to untangling?

Clearly Gaga is not oblivious to her own “normativity”; she actually uses it as a weapon, drawing in the viewer with the expectation that she will be blonde and submissive, and then upsetting those expectations by doing intentionally weird, gross things.  But while she’s playing with her whiteness, she (& her critic fans) seem somewhat oblivious to her white privilege. And the attendant attention she gets, while women of colour’s contributions to redefining music and gender performance are marginalised.

Or does Gaga get the props because she really is much more transgressive and interesting than any modern pop star, and I’m just too bitter to admit it?

Andrea: If I had to analyze her, I see Lady Gaga as the latest in a line of white women who use the paradox of white womanhood to gain attention and, through that, fame.  She does this by using the tropes of idealized white womanhood (various shades of blonde), her “minority” status of being a woman, and 1st-tier-school artiste (her outrageous outfits), so she’s seen as being able to “relate” to other marginalized people, like PoCs (especially the educatarati) and white queer folks and white feminists.  Through her blonded-out whiteness, she stands on the assumption of default whiteness as baseline for “racelessness.” She puts on the outfits to make her stand out, to make her “different,” which gets read as her signifying that she “understands” people with marginalized–especially visually marginalized–identities and/or politics.  For those folks who society makes to feel different via “looks,” LG is viewed white pop-cultural ally.  And the fact that LG does sincerely seem to stand up for non-hetero sexual and gender identities helps her gain a fan base, too.

Depending on the type of song, LG can affect an R&B melisma (“Video Phone”) or choppy dance-pop singing tone (just about all her other songs).  And the fact that she can, dancing-wise, keep up with R&B princess Beyonce–and that Beyonce and she guested in each other’s video–gives LG extra cred. Of course, her being all interracially “taboo” with Kanye–as ridiculous attention-whoring obvious as those various pairings appeared–just burnishes her cache.  She adds to the mythos of the “complexity” of whiteness via her image which, as you astutely pointed out, simply isn’t accorded to MIA.  MIA–for all her pretty right-on international politics and funky gear–is simply seen as an “exotic.”

My generation had Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, two white women who affected white womanhood and visual difference with famous results.  Cyndi Lauper, unfortunately was 1) a better songwriter than singer (can’t tell you how many version of “Time After Time” I’ve heard!) and 2) her one-note Noo Yawk squawky-punky schtick lasted for but so long.  Madonna rode her wave much longer by constant visual metamorphosis, but 1) she was still within confines of certain ideals about white ciswomanhood and 2) people called out the fact that her constant changing was really based on constant culture-vulturing.  And now, she’s simply seen as a middle-aged woman trying too hard to be relevant to young people.  Comparatively speaking, Lauper seems to have become a bit of an pop-cultural elder stateswoman, Celebrity Apprentice gig aside.  LG seems to have picked up on Lauper’s and Madonna’s outre white womanhood with more talent than Lauper and without the same culture-appropriation embodiment squick that Madonna causes.

Then, a couple of days later…

Andrea: I may have to (sorta) take back what I said about LG not taking from women of colour. This article says she bites Kelis’ style.   Gaga just doesn’t culture-rake, unlike Madonna.

Thea: Hoooweeeeee!

Hm, do you think this is a fair allegation? I do remember that Kelis had over-the-top sexuality and that that whole “I hate you so much right now!” stuff made a bit of a dent, but was she as surprising and challenging of gender norms as Lady Gaga? I don’t see them as being that parallel…even though Kelis’ “Caught out There” video also features a dead (drugged?) man. It’s interesting also to think about cultural support – maybe Lady Gaga came onto the scene more at a time when people were willing to see her art/music as confronting gender normativity, than they were able to recognise that in Kelis.

But at the same time, I really do think we have to weigh the role of race in this – why have all the gender studies academics gone mad for Lady Gaga, and there was nary a spike over M.I.A.’s, Kelis’, and Beyonce’s evolution? I think you see the same thing with MCs like Foxy Brown or even Trina; within their art there is a bold attack and a pushback on a certain idea of what makes a woman – often in fierce and creative ways – but they are not getting the cred or the recognition that these virginally blonde women, like Gaga, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

Which I think both has to do with the fact that women of colour are already non-norm, but also just the fact that racist media gives much less time to women of colour than white women.

And then a few weeks later…

When two of the most original singers of color back up your opinion, you get a whiff of the minty lemon scent of vindication.  At least that how the two of us felt when none other than Grace Jones and M.I.A. recently gave Lady Gaga direct side-eye in the press.

Perhaps what we made explicit is what Jones implied to in her comment about Gaga:

Has she copied her? “Well, you know, I’ve seen some things she’s worn that I’ve worn, and that does kind of piss me off.”

Is she talented? “I wouldn’t go to see her.”

So, did she ask to play with her? “Yes, she did, but I said no. I’d just prefer to work with someone who is more original and someone who is not copying me, actually.”

And M.I.A. said this:

Again, there’d Lady Gaga – people say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I fucking do!

M.I.A.’s comments seem particularly spot on: while the spectacle of Gaga is dazzling, ironically as a singer, her music is the least progressive thing about her. Especially when you contrast it with M.I.A’s bonkers rhymes and bold call-outs to volatile political conflicts.

Is this just a media-fed beef of two women of color against a white woman who reached out to at least one of them (Jones) because they want to create some buzz for their projects?  (The color-coded dynamics of that set-up alone…)

Perhaps. But, within their individual complaints, is the very real observation of how the media (again) marginalizes the innovations of female entertainers of color by exceptionalizing or otherwise exoticizing them as they hail the white woman who copies their style all the way to the bank and back to the pedestal.

Photo credits: WireImage

Put on your glasses or pop in your contacts and get a good look at the picture below, because this is what karma looks like:

Meet “Mr. James,” new face of a McDonald’s ad campaign in Japan. Mr. James is a Wacky Foreigner in Japan who speaks broken Japanese, wears the archetypal nerd uniform of glasses, a short-sleeved shirt with a tie, and ill-fitting khaki pants, has bad teeth, and–we’re only guessing here–is probably someone who’s never gotten laid. Sound familiar?

Clockwise from top left: Wacky Hiro Nakamura from Heroes, Wacky Engrish-Speaking Kentucky Fried Chicken-Grilled Chicken Lovers, I Survived a Japanese Game Show‘s Wacky Host Rome Kanda, Wacky Engrish-Speaking Six Flags Guy

Oh right. Usually THAT GUY has slanty-eyes.

Interestingly, there are some foreigners and non-natives in Japan riled up about this humiliating depiction of themselves, going so far as to compare Mr. James to Stepin Fetchit. Because there aren’t enough positive depictions of beautiful and sophisticated foreigners selling things to the Japanese, apparently. Arudou Debito, née David Aldwinckle, an American who’s become a naturalized Japanese citizen, writes:

“I think a strongly-worded letter from registered NPO FRANCA to McDonald’s USA HQ regarding the issues of stereotyping here would be warranted. Hell, you think McD USA would start putting up a full-body “ching-chong-chinaman” with funny glasses and protruding teeth, saying ‘Me likee McFlied Lice.’ You think that would fly over there? If not, it shouldn’t be allowed over here.”

Guess he hasn’t seen this Six Flags commercial, which began running last year, or this KFC commercial for their new Grilled Chicken, which has been running all summer.

Karma’s one wacky bitch, isn’t it?

[Japan Probe: Mr. James: McDonald's Japan has a gaijin clown]
[Mr. James's Official Blog]

Thanks, Josh!

Update: Jen received a lot of pushback on this post from people who, well, generally don’t think about racism unless it happens to them.  In a post titled “We Don’t Care About White People,” Jen responds:

But let’s get back to me not caring. I provided examples of Asian versions of Mr. James in my other post so as not to say, And now we’re even, but rather, Open your eyes, racial stereotyping is all around us, and actually, it’s often tolerated or ignored or dismissed, and yes, it’s sometimes even tolerated or ignored or dismissed by YOU. And that’s why I call Mr. James the face of karma. He’s getting people who don’t want to think about race issues or don’t have to think about race issues to think about them. He’s getting people who can’t be bothered or don’t see what’s wrong with stereotypes so long as they’re stereotypes of other people–the very thing Japan Probe accuses me of–to suddenly declare that negative stereotyping is bad all-around and, by golly, everyone oughta do something about that.

Well good. It’s about time more people did.

The “religion” tag at Racialicious pulls up pieces that are almost entirely focused on Islam. There’s not much coverage of other minority religions yet. I’m pointing this out not to blame — after all, to be published in Racialicious, you have to submit pieces in the first place — but rather to open up the topic for thoughtful discussion, and explain my motivation for writing about Buddhism here.

I can think of several reasons for the number of Islam-related pieces right off the top of my head: the prevalence of Islamophobia and the racialization of Muslims. There’s no corresponding “Buddhophobia”. A white Buddhist is rarely regarded as a freak of nature. Instead of being hated and feared, symbols of my religion are commonly sold in the Home & Garden section of chain stores! Buddhism appears to be eminently compatible with modern American society.

But if you look closely, you’ll see some ripples on the surface…

The overall aim of this series is to discuss how issues of race and ethnicity intersect with the image and reality of Buddhism in the United States. It’s a huge topic so I’ll try to make it more manageable by establishing what this series won’t do. After I provide a very brief historical introduction to Buddhism, I won’t go much deeper into teachings or philosophy, especially since I’m ignorant about so much of it beyond the basics and have zero qualifications as that kind of teacher. I’m going to stick to the surface, to superficial perceptions, stereotypes, illusions, skin color… although what’s on the surface usually connects to other issues which go very, very deep.

I’m going to be discussing a lot of generalizations about different religions. I’ll try to be as sensitive as possible and differentiate my own fairly neutral views. I might offend various kinds of believers, but once I get farther along, I think that the most passionate objections are going to come from other Buddhists. Contrary to popular belief, we’re a fractious bunch. I’ll try to steel myself.

My own background in Buddhism is rather unique. I was half born into it, half converted.

Back in the 6th century BCE, Buddhism began in India based on the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. Several hundred years later, the Indian king Asoka converted to Buddhism. This was a huge turning point in the religion. Asoka sponsored massive efforts to spread Buddhism through peaceful means. One wave entered Sri Lanka, became Theravada Buddhism, and from there spread across Southeast Asia. Other waves went overland and became Mahayana Buddhism in China and Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet. The influence of Buddhism waned within India as it became stronger in the East.

The fact that Buddhism has diminished so much in its birthplace is, naturally, a sore spot for many Buddhists. In 1948, a Cambodian monk, Bhante Dharmawara, came to India in order to work towards reestablishing Buddhism. In his life before monkhood, he came from an influential family, and was probably able to draw on these connections to establish the Asoka Mission near New Delhi. According to one story, he mystically cured the sick uncle of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Whatever happened, Bhante and Nehru developed an extremely close relationship, and Nehru sponsored and helped the Mission as much as possible. Nehru himself was a firm agnostic known for his support of secularism and distrust of Hindu fundamentalism.

In the 1970s, my parents came to live at the Asoka Mission. The Mission was centered around a group of monks, but anyone at all was welcome, especially if they pitched in to help.

My mother left the US in the 1960s, mainly for political reasons and disgust at the Vietnam War. She lived on small remittances from her parents, and odd jobs: janitorial and agricultural work, housesitting, and so on. She first went to India to explore her belief in Buddhism. My father, a Japanese fellow hippie, ran into her at the Ajanta Buddhist caves. They fell in love and began to sync up their migrations, since my father’s job also involved a lot of travel. I came along a few years later.

I have fond memories of the Mission. The land was beautiful. Even the dust struck me as having a beautiful color to it. I wandered around anywhere I wanted. The monks were always nice and smiled at me. Sometimes they gave me fun, important jobs like squeezing behind the statues to give them a dusting.

My mother valued her time there and the opportunity to hear Bhante speak. He was an important guide for her. But the living conditions were rough. Every night, she would wrap up our provisions and hang them from the ceiling in an increasingly complicated network of ropes. Every night, the rats would sneak in, perform unbelievable acrobatic feats and grab some of the food anyway. We were used to rough living, but according to my mother’s complaints, the rats were a minor annoyance compared to the heroin addicts. The Mission did not turn people away, and many of those people were hippies who’d fallen as low as you can go in a city where you could buy a fix for a nickel. The stress of shielding children from the sight of drooling passed-out junkies became too much for my mother to put up with. She did a good job, though… when I think back over my time there, I don’t remember seeing anything traumatic.

My father is a Japanese Buddhist in much the same way as my mother’s parents were white American Christians. You’re born into a faith, it’s your heritage, it’s an important part of transitions, such as death, but other than that, it tends to fade into the background of your life.

My first real introduction to a different way of living a religion came around the second grade, in public school in the United States. I was one of those kids that loved dinosaurs. I met another kid in my class that loved dinosaurs too… and he was also the only other Asian kid I knew! His family was from the Philippines. I was so happy to meet him. I was sure we would be great friends. We had so much in common. One day, as we were going through lists of our favorite dinosaurs, I mentioned something about the dinosaurs evolving. My friend was horrified. “God created dinosaurs on the sixth day,” he said. I disagreed. He never spoke to me again. The next day, as I rode my bike up to school, I was suddenly surrounded by a ring of classmates who all pointed their finger at me and chanted “you’re going to HE-ELL, you’re going to HE-ELL.”

My mother’s belief had faded somewhat in favor of an agnostic skepticism. She never joined a Buddhist community again after leaving India. She grew to believe that all religions were wrong, but that Buddhism was the least wrong. However, she still retained a strong attachment to Bhante and continued to follow his career. At the age of 90, he moved to Stockton, California to minister to a large group of Cambodian refugees who had been resettled there. Many were suffering terribly from cultural alienation and PTSD. My mother attended Bhante’s funeral when he died at the age of 110 after decades of service to the refugee community.

Steven Seagal had lately become a student of Bhante, and the funeral was actually delayed for a little bit in order for Seagal to attend, because his flight was late. Bhante’s Cambodian relatives put a good face on it, but one of them did end up snarking to my mother, “couldn’t he just jump out of the plane, like in one of his movies?”

These rambling anecdotes of my family history contain the seeds of what I want to discuss when it comes to Buddhism. First of all, Buddhism stakes its claim as a universal religion. Many (not all) strands of Buddhism don’t proselytize aggressively, but Buddhism is supposed to be for everyone. No one should be turned away, no matter how obnoxious. Not even heroin addicts abusing their American privilege in a poverty-stricken but generous country. Not even (ugh) Steven Seagal. Second, Buddhism is a worldly religion. It’s highly interwoven with race, class, ethnicity, politics and economics. Third, Buddhism is highly variable, and contains huge internal conflicts that rarely come to the attention of outsiders. Fourth, Buddhists in America have had to evolve unique ways of surviving in this culturally Christian nation.

The next installment of the series — Is Buddhism the Anti-Islam? — will talk more about cultural Christianity and how Buddhism and Islam are often stereotyped as polar opposites from a culturally Christian perspective. Complicity and Conflict will discuss representations of global power struggles involving Buddhism, including examples in which Buddhism has been complicit in state repression. Yes, I will be touching Tibet, but gingerly, with a ten-foot pole. Converts and Immigrants will outline the sociology and history of Buddhism in the United States, and provide an alternate narrative than the one in which white converts represent the face of modern American Buddhism. I might change the order and add or subtract from the series based on comments and suggestions, so feel free to comment on other issues you want to hear about. I might not have the space to include it, but I’ll probably try.

—–
Postscript: Although this really belongs more to the later part of the series, I have to mention that there has been a recent blog tempest over some remarks by C.N. Le at Asian Nation.

C.N. Le is Vietnamese-American professor with a PhD in sociology. He’s very well-known and respected in the Asian-American blogosphere. On July 15th, he wrote a post describing his family’s experience at a Buddhist retreat. He mentioned a couple of white Buddhists who did not clean up after themselves, and suggested that just possibly maybe occasionally provisionally perhaps perhaps perhaps… white privilege was involved. The right of C.N. Le to make this rather mild criticism was noted and defended by the few Buddhist bloggers who have a sophisticated awareness on racial issues (the ones I know about are Angry Asian Buddhist and The Buddha is my DJ). Thank goodness for them. Otherwise, the reaction from Buddhist blogs appears to consist entirely of ridiculous racial hysteria and sanctimonious dharma-beating. For example, This person’s post can be summarized as “I AM A PERSECUTED WHITE MAN!! C.N. LE IS THE ASIAN KKK!! AND I BET HE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A REAL SOCIOLOGY DEGREE NYAH NYAH NYAH!!”. And this is from a blog called “Progressive Buddhism”. Sigh…

I didn’t want to get to this sort of stuff until the later part of the series, but I’ll provide a brief preview right now. Below is a mathematical equation containing elements that combine to form my perspective as an Asian-American Buddhist contemplating the persecution of a white American Buddhist.

(almost all the problems experienced by white Buddhists) +
(extra problems experienced in general by people of color Buddhists) +
(extra problems experienced only by Asian-American Buddhists) – (-white privilege) =
STFU

I can’t speak for all other Asian-Americans but I imagine more than a few of them share my reaction. It’s why I don’t bother participating in these sorts of communities. I don’t feel like being insulted, ignored and erased when I try to connect to my religion. My only message to them: I’ve already heard everything you’ve had to say. I’ve even experienced it along with you. You haven’t done the same for me. Let me know when you’re ready to start listening.

Oh, man. As if we needed another reminder as to why cartoon art is a medium that can be used for evil as easily as good, comes now the next installment in a series of racist National Review covers trafficking in Asian stereotypical imagery.

You’ll remember, of course, that back in March 1997, the National Review released the infamous “Manchurian Candidates” cover seen here (which, due to the fact that the Internet was just a tot when that slice of tripe hit the newsstands, I was only able to find in greyscale — embedded in a journal article written by Darrell Hamamoto, w00t!)

Asian Americans understandably reacted with stunned rage at the depiction of then-President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton, and Vice-President Al Gore in stereotypical Chinese garb, their features warped into exaggerated Asian caricatures (slanted eyes, buck teeth).

The National Review was unrepentant in the face of charges that the cartoon was offensive and inflammatory, responding, in part, that:

“Caricatures and cartoons … require exaggerated features and, where a social type is portrayed, a recognizable stereotype. Thus, a cartoonist who wants to depict an Englishman will show him wearing a monocle and bowler hat, a Frenchman in beret and striped jersey, a Russian in fur hat, dancing the gopak, etc.”

The first point can’t entirely be disputed: The cartoon medium often uses simplified, exaggerated features for emphasis, for satirical purpose and for ease in depicting broad emotion.

But it’s one thing to exaggerate features — Obama’s protruding ears invariably become giant jug-handles when he’s rendered, for instance. (The Mike Ramirez cartoon below actually essentializes Obama’s appearance down to his ears — and still manages to make its point clear.)

It’s another to incorporate racialized features that weren’t there to begin with: For instance, consider these images — a caricature of Obama from an “Obama Waffles” package, as gleefully sold during the right-wing “Values Voters Summit,” and a close-up of Obama’s official portrait from his days as Senator from Illinois.

Apart from being overtly racist, the caricature on the box doesn’t remotely resemble Obama — with its pop-eyed expression, darkened skin, enormous, toothy grin and thick lips, it looks a lot more like…well, the picture below can speak for itself, I guess.

Going back to the National Review “Manchurian Candidates” cover now, what you see is that there’s more going on in the images of the Clintons and Gore than the typical flamboyant exaggeration used in cartooning. In addition to Bill’s bulbous nose and Gore’s pursed, almost sneering lips (both typical of their respective caricatures), you see…hmm…narrowed eyes…oversized, bucked teeth…a Fu Manchu moustache — hey, just about every racist synecdoche in the anti-Asian propaganda library! (At least the stuff that belongs above the waist.)

Just to be clear here: It’s one thing if they were simply drawn in Chinese clothing or doing quaint folkdances, as suggested by the National Review in its disgenuous response. That would arguably be in-bounds satirically (regardless of whether you find the political point being made to be fair or accurate).

But layering yellowface-propaganda memes into the picture transforms the caricature from an act of humor into an act of war. The images above are examples of what I’m talking about.

Even if you’re insensitive enough to racial propriety to want to give white people Asian features in order to prove a political point, that simply isn’t what Asian people look like, and never has been. The squinty, buck-toothed Asian person with bright yellow skin and eyes angled at ten minutes to two does not exist in nature. However much you soften it, those false features are in fact weapons of mass destruction, artifacts of an era where it was used to dehumanize the enemy enough so they could be killed without compunction.

For that reason, there’s no acceptable way they should be invoked in a casual popular context, any more than minstrel stereotypes or anti-semitic “Elders of Zion” caricatures have a place in everyday culture. Discouragingly, they remain persistent in media today — from entertainment (see left: Rob Schneider in 2007′s “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry“) to news and commentary. Well, actually not most news and commentary — it’s really only the profoundly racist right-wing organs that still blithely fart out the yellowface imagery. Like, for instance…the National Review.

This cover to the right is the current issue of the magazine, on stands now. As you can see, it depicts Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as the Buddha. Despite the fact that Sotomayor is Catholic and a Latina woman. While the historical Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, was Hindu (before the whole Bodhi tree thing), and an Asian man.

The caption, “The Wise Latina,” frankly offers no real f*cking explanation for the image. I suppose it’s because the Buddha was wise, although you could just as easily have depicted Sotomayor as King Solomon if you’re looking for a legendary figure of wisdom; maybe it’s because to the raving radical Right, Buddha is seen as a proto-hippie and probably a pansy too, while King Solomon, that guy threatened to cut babies in half — not very pro-life, but not “empathetic” either. Badass!

But seriously: If they wanted a figure of wisdom and empathy, why not caricature Sotomayor as someone who’s of the right gender and a coreligionist, at least: Mother Teresa? That would have preserved the necessary level of corrosive offensiveness, right? Too close to home?

Whatever. As it is, the cover is just stupid and meaningless, as well as offensive — to women, to Latinas, to Buddhists of all backgrounds (note: The National Review guys are of the same ilk that went ballistic when Rolling Stone depicted Kanye as Jesus), and yes, to Asians. But it bears mentioning that it registers as EPIC FAIL even in the offending Asians category.

Because, unlike their “Manchurian Candidates” cover, where at least they picked the correct racist stereotypes to parade, the “Wise Latina” cover puts the hideously slanted eyes and bucked teeth of East Asian yellowface stereotype onto an image inspired by a Northern Indian man of Brahmin descent.

In fact, to the left here you can see the original image of Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha that the artist used as a reference (it’s actually quite a popular icon). Notice any differences?

As usual, National Review has been quick with a completely absurd and totally disingenuous retort to the appalled reactions they’ve been getting from, you know, everyone. From editor-in-chief Rich Lowry:

“I take it the theory is that we don’t think Latinas can be wise so we had to make her look somewhat Asian. Or something like that. What these people don’t understand is the entire concept of caricature (or of a joke). Caricature always involves exaggerating someone’s distinctive features, which is all that our artist Roman Genn did with Sotomayor. Oh, well. Keep it humorless, guys, keep it humorless.”

No, Rich, the theory is that you took a Latina woman and turned her into a North Indian man with horribly racist East Asian-stereotypical features because you guys are clueless morons. And actually, that’s kind of funny, in that Lowry and the National Review don’t quite get that the joke, ultimately, is on them.

Here’s an interesting article in the San Jose Mercury News that pokes some holes in the generally accepted notion of “success” among Asian Americans living and working in Silicon Valley: Despite their success, Asians not rising to heights of Silicon Valley’s corporate world.

A survey of local executives reveals that while Asians make up more than a third of the work force at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies, they only represent about 6 percent of board members and about 10 percent of corporate officers of the Bay Area’s 25 largest companies.

According to a new study, among the 25 largest Bay Area companies by revenue, 12 had no Asian board members, and five had no Asian corporate officers. Despite the growing prominence of Asians at Silicon Valley tech companies, they’ve made no gains in the share of seats on the boards of large tech companies since 1999. What’s up with that?

It’s the dreaded Bamboo Ceiling, of course. You’d think that of all places, the Bay Area, where Asians are at least 23 percent of the work force at Silicon Valley companies like Cisco Systems, Intel, Sun Microsystems and eBay, we’d see more Asians at the upper levels of management. But it’s
the same old story!

–
Photo of Palo Alto employees Buck Gee and Wesley Hom from the San Jose Mercury News

I first learned about Project Secret Identities over two years ago when a call for story submissions started to float around my corner of the interwebs. My excitement was limitless! No more waiting for some white guy to come save me! Now I could have my own superheroes. Secret Identities promised to fill the need for comics that cast us as the superheroes and I waited with bated breath for the release.

Here we are in 2009 and the book has been released to much fanfare. And yet, I feel disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I dig the nerd specs on the pleasing green cover (I rock my own pair everyday). There are some real gems in this anthology including the oft-cited “The Blue Scorpion and Chung” (Bruce Lee hated being Kato) and the true-to-life stories in the section From Headline to Hero (“Taking Back Troy” re-imagines Vincent Chin’s story in a way that doesn’t let us forget it). Despite the many great stories found within this anthology there are some glaring holes that I can’t seem to fly over.

The editors of the book tell us that Asian Americans have more in common with Clark Kent than just his geek chic appearance and as such present an opening for our superheroes. Yet the editors define Asian American by the stories they chose, and it seems like they define Asian as “East Asian with a sprinkling of Filipino and a drop of Indian.” In other words Secret Identities is more East Asian than Asian, and Shen and Yang have — I’m sure unintentionally — deleted most of the Asian continent in their selection process.

While Asian America isn’t as explicitly defined as it was in Aieeeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, where Frank Chin stated in the introduction that the work would feature Japanese, Chinese and Filipino writers, Secret Identities doesn’t acknowledge its bias at all nor does it emerge from the same historical context*. So where are some missing identities that didn’t make it into the book? What about the daughter of a Cambodian refugee and a Filipino cannery worker in Seattle**? Or how about expanding our knowledge of Asian American hate crime victims by looking at the death of Cha Vang, a Hmong immigrant, whose white killer did not get charged with a hate crime? On a similar note: where are the stories of poor and working class families and young LGBT runaways? All of these are real aspects of our diverse community.

There are so many members of the APIA community who have fought courageously to get recognized within the monolith of Asian America and this heavily East Asian male representation does nothing to recognize that battle. The reason why college organizers at UCLA spent so much time trying to disaggregate the numbers of Asian American admitted students is because those identities remain invisible without it. When we allow these identities to remain under wraps there are serious economic and racial struggles that cannot gain any ground because varied communities are dismissed as doing fine and become lost within the model minority myth. Can Secret Identities really be “The Asian American Superhero Anthology”?

Maybe this is less a criticism and more a longing for a different kind of Asian American voice and maybe I’m just a backseat anthology editor. I would have started by taking a hard look at who the editors are and what communities they can reach. When I asked Jeff Yang why Secret Identities has so few stories outside of East Asia I was told that they had put out a general call for submissions and that some of the stories submitted just weren’t good enough to include.

Now I know that you know that this sounds pretty similar to what people of color have been hearing as a justification for crooked systems, biased hiring processes and exclusion from publishing houses for decades. I understand that an editorial board must have standards and cannot squeeze stories out of people but they also have a responsibility to broaden the reach and broaden again if need be. I also know that ALL of the editors of Secret Identities are East Asian men.

If the editorial board had more varied experiences to draw upon then perhaps the War and Remembrance section would have been able to draw connections across time and space to tie our diverse communities together. For example, there is nothing in Secret Identities about wars in Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Guam or Hawai’i. By leaving these narratives out of the picture you miss an opportunity to illustrate the arc of U.S. military imperialism across the Pacific Rim. Japanese American internment is a big and still divisive issue (as demonstrated by a Senator’s recent comments) but so is the U.S. presence in the Philippines, Korea, Guam and Okinawa (to name a few). Shifting the focus, not away from internment, to include these other sites of struggle would have been truly welcomed by anti-miltarism activists with comic book nerd secrets.

It could have elevated Secret Identities to a place within academic curriculum that is crying out for more accessible ways to spread this history. I think the story “Hibakusha” stood out to me because it highlighted a story that is often unknown: forced laborers in Japan from Korea whose descendants are known as Zainichi. “Hibakusha” written by Parry Shen is about descendants of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and focuses on the effect that the atomic bombs had on their physiology. But let’s take a step back and think about the testing grounds for these weapons and how little recognition Pacific Islanders get in the cultural narratives about this war and when thinking about Asian America at large. I would have pushed Mr. Shen to look further and think about places like the Marshall Islands whose waters and atolls were irreparably changed by atomic testing done prior to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. As it stands, the anthology essentializes how war has shaped our collective stories of migration and memory when it could have pushed us all to think of our histories in broader and more connected terms.

What I so desperately want to see is a story that handles our connected histories and stories with grace. Something that can hold the multiplicity of the APIA community, particularly the parts that are the most secret. Our shared migration experiences can live side by side on the page and I challenge future anthology editors to see how vast we are ethnically, politically, sexually and socially. I wish I could have claimed this book as one that includes an experience very close to mine as a young, queer, second-generation activist. I wish that the stories of my friends and community could have found a place within this anthology. We all have the responsibility to create spaces for our own identities, but just as important is our responsibility to call out those who claim to represent us while shutting us out.

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*Aieeeeee! was published in 1974, not ten years after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act that finally abolished the quotas of immigrants from Asian nations.

**This is the character generated by the audience at Parry Shen’s and Jeff Yang’s talk at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle on May 14th, 2009. A fuller description of this potential superhero character: A young woman whose parents are a Filipino canner in Seattle and a Cambodian refugee. Her history is steeped in death and war and her power lies in her emphatic ability which is deeply connected to her Buddhist spirituality.