From the news tab, an anonymous tipster points us to a blog which took an amusing and slightly dil-warming look in to what tweens and teens in Hong Kong think of other Asian people:
When you think about Filipinos, what comes to your mind?
"Tak-shing Building!"
"They know how to sweep the floor!"
"I see them in Central all the time."
"Bun-bun. Filipina girls. But I have never met a Filipino guy yet."Do you feel that you disrespect them by calling them such names?
"Hey, they come here to work. We have more money than they have. They are getting paid, so wouldn’t you say that they can be ordered around?"Someday, you will be working and earning money too, and you will give spending money to your mother. Does that mean that you can order your mother around?
"But how can that be the same? My mother is not a Filipina."
Awesome. And now, on to the germane part (aside: does anyone know what “Ah Cha” means?):
When you think about Indians, what comes to your mind?
"They’re very ugly!"
"Some of them wrap their heads up. Some have a red dot in the forehead. They have big beards."
"They’re Ah Cha (阿差). Why do you have to ask?"
"Hey, how can you be like that? Do you know what they call us Hong Kong people?"
"I don’t know."
"They call us ‘friends’."
Finally … finally I heard something that passes as acceptable!!! I went from wanting to cry out of despair to wanting to cry out because I was touched! A three-hour class with twenty young Hong Kong students between the ages of 9 to 15. Sixteen of them said the above, three maintained their silence and a girl said that last thing … luckily, among the twenty, one of them was decent.
To the parents of the children — how are you teaching your children!!!!!
No worries, yaar. We’re teaching our children to be equally obnoxious. 😉
:+:
I just couldn’t resist that picture. Can you? Cute brown kids: my favorite way to start the day. 😀
Heh, Heh. I always knew Mr K was just MoorNam wearing a che guevara t-shirt.
BTW I think there are large numbers of Evangelical Christians among Asian-Americans. Do you know if this is true?
yes. asian americans are far more likely to be non-christian now than 10 years ago. the growth of evangelicals is because growth is easy from a small base.
I wish my 14-year old daughter was a little more like her friend Wendy Lee – a dozen awards every semester, taking high grade math tests just for sport, not having sleepovers and certainly not having any spare time for IM or, god forbid, myspace. But I will say about my daughter what Henry Fonda said about Jane in one of his Academy night speeches, “Shut up, she is perfect.”
When you think about Indians, what comes to your mind? Basmaati queens, perhaps 🙂
Here’s an interesting article on evangelicalism in the Asian-American community at the academy. One of the astonishing tidbits it mentions is that about 98% of a Christian gathering at Cal was Asian-American. Nationwide it seems that alot of Asian-Americans become attracted to Christianity in college.
One of the astonishing tidbits it mentions is that about 98% of a Christian gathering at Cal was Asian-American.
cal is nearly 50% asian american. so yes, shocking, but not that shocking 🙂
Nationwide it seems that alot of Asian-Americans become attracted to Christianity in college.
look at the american religious identification survey and you will see asian teens are rather unaffiliated. this sort has a large % that are a good yield for potential missionaries.
Do Asian Christians have the self righteousness it takes to go out and convert others? Just can’t envision Chinese missionaries.
Do Asian Christians have the self righteousness it takes to go out and convert others? Just can’t envision Chinese missionaries.
south korea is the number #2 missionary sending country after the USA. they’ve gotten into trouble in places like iraq because of attempts to convert muslims. conversion in china is almost totally through on-the-ground proslyetizers. asian american xtians also have a somewhat obnoxious rep. among non-christians who are asian american.
Dae… come out to Cali and we’ll kick it at the chaat house, soju bar, denny’s, or anywhere in between … it’s all love on the left side.
Denny’s? I never knew it was such a popular destination for Cali Koreans.
I guess it’s kind of like the west coast White Castle, no?
razib the atheist, you are so correct. I forgot about that Moon guy from Korea. I am not sure if he was a proslyetizer in the true sense of the word, but he was pretty aggressive in his religiosity. You seem to be quite knowledgeable about religion. What’s your explanation for Hindus not being very successful at converting others- not in the recent times when India was a colonized country but in the olden days when Hinduism had the muscles to flex? There is always the odd Bali, but come on – a religion of a few hundred million even in the olden days surely could have done better.
What’s your explanation for Hindus not being very successful at converting others- not in the recent times when India was a colonized country but in the olden days when Hinduism had the muscles to flex? There is always the odd Bali, but come on – a religion of a few hundred million even in the olden days surely could have done better.
one could argue that buddhism respresents the aspects of hinduism which can be extracted from an indian substrate and universalized. and many of the kingdoms of southeast asia were hindu before they were buddhist, e.g., the khmer kingdoms or mahajapit in java.
In other words, Hindus didn’t have to go to foreign lands to convert. They did the conversion at home and just shipped them out. I mean the Buddhists.
In other words, Hindus didn’t have to go to foreign lands to convert. They did the conversion at home and just shipped them out. I mean the Buddhists.
i believe southeast asia was converted mostly via ceylon. east asia via afghanistan and the tarim basin. itz complicated 🙂
buddhism died in the subcontinent proper with the arrival of islam and that religion’s success in the last redoubts of buddhism, though there are still a small community of indigenous bengali speaking buddhists, called bauras or something i believe. that is, it is a mahayana community with a straight line lineage back to the pala times..
p.s. it can be argued that hindusim as a religion in the western sense only arose with the rise to power and numbers of an unassimilable anti-hindu religious element. muslims.
bengali buddhists, barua. (it seems they are therevada, which suggests burmese influence to me)
Ahn-young haseyo.
those kids are so god damn happy. it’s a good thing.
KXB: I live in Houston, and have grown up here. People are generally much nicer period in the South than in NYC. There is an unfair stereotype that there are just a bunch of hicks here. Racism is VERY, VERY prevalent in so-called more international cities like NYC.
Case in point: my uncle in Saddle River, NJ (just outside NYC) wants to get together with other, well heeled and connected mind you, Hindus, to build a temple. There is already several Synagogues and Church’s in the area. The local residents are not giving them approval to build there. In Stafford, a small town outside Houston, the Swami Naryan’s built a beautiful 14 million dollar temple, and had 25,000 people attend, I witnessed parts of it, and there was a major event. The mayor called the temple “the pride of Stafford.” There are racist attacks in the East coast all the time. Italians Americans are some of the most racist I have heard in the East coast (Even though a lot of them are darker than a lot of Indians!).
Ikram: I’m from Sugar Land, very desi place obviously. But when you talk of Woodlands, I say give Woodlands another 5 years, you’ll see it turn brown too. I know someone, Pakistani family who want to move from Sugar Land to Woodlands because they said, “Bad crowd is coming to this area.? Im not sure if they didnt like the fact that there are so many desis here, or blacks or what.
The sense of community amongs the Indians is also better down here. In the East coast, I have seen bougeousis Indians are much colder, and more formal. I don’t get it….
Yes, yes…the Northeast is full of mean people. Call the wah-mbulance already.
I’ve lived in Dallas, right by Highland Park/SMU. I can totally see my quondam neighbors welcoming a temple built by and for people whose souls they were praying for, let’s forget that they were so sure those unsaved Hindoos were going straight to hell. There was plenty of racism; I always said that I thought it was much worse because of the sugarcoating they gave that shit. I’ll take bigotry in front of my back, NYmotherfuckingCity-ishtyle any day, thanks.
There’s good and bad everywhere. Dallas is no paradise and Houston ain’t magically delicious either.
Texas is not the South. Or so I have been told many many many times.
But Austin is…
Agreed. Notice how I didn’t include it in the tirade? It’s like a little bit of San Francisco, in the state where you’d least expect it. 🙂 That and I love the Hula Hut sum’n shameless. 😉
And yeah, I don’t think of Texas as classically “Southern”, either. Texas is…Texas.
Am I the only guy who has parents that refer to all east-asians as “chinese”
no. If you correct them though they will do it more just to piss you off.
Vurd.
Soon all of Houston will be Sepia. The wheels are in motion. Muhaha.
Uhh.. Texas is not the south? That is absolutely ridiculous. The culture is completely southern. And PLEASE don’t compare Dallas to Houston, its a day and night difference. I’ve lived in Houston for 26 years, and I went through the entire school system here, frome pre-k to High School. I went to college in Austin. I think I can speak for Texas.
Anna, have you ever lived in Houston, or are you presuming that because its “just 4.5 hours away” that its the same place?
I’ve lived in Houston (and the US) for only a year now and even to my untrained eye, the place is completely unlike say Aiken, South Carolina (I’d always assumed that was just a big city/small town difference though). From what friends say I’d gathered they don’t like Texas being grouped with the South either. Personally, I haven’t experienced any racism here but that doesn’t mean much because 95% of my interactions are limited to the Texas Medical Center.
Great picture by the way!
Sigh. Sometimes mac’s auto-completion can be a pain. Could one of the administrators remove the link on my tag? Thanks.
I have to say that in the US, in Central PA, the thoughts about Indians are that they’re terrorists or that everyone with a turban must be a muslim. In the Harrisburg area, people refer to any gas station or convenience store run by a sikh as a Haji-Mart, though I try to correct people on it, it’s pretty ingrained. It’s getting better, as more desi move to the Harrisburg area to work on State contracts (both computing and construction), but PA by nature is generally very segregated in that area. James Carville reportedly explained PA to Bill Clinton like this: “You have two of the most liberal cities in the US at either end, and Alabama in the middle”.
I don’t disagree with the characterization.
n the Harrisburg area, people refer to any gas station or convenience store run by a sikh as a Haji-Mart, though I try to correct people on it, it’s pretty ingrained.
I’ve noticed that too about Pennsylvania. When you cross into New Jersey it becomes very different. Razib: Thanks for the link.
The article is not surprising really. Here is something for you all to ponder over. In my 10 years in the US, I was often subject to FOB jokes, jeers and sneers. Sometimes 2nd and 3rd generation Indian American kids can be crueler than White people or other races. I was lucky in that I never encountered a single case of racism from someone of a different race. Making fun of FOBs is so institutionalized in Cali that I remember attending a skit done by Indian Americans at UC Berkeley where “The desi software engineer from San Jose” was lampooned. How often have you heard about “aloo roti breath”? I am sure that the percentage of FOBs with bad breath is roughly similar to the percentage of other races.
I blame Manish Vij. He was obviously the evil mastermind behind such shenanigans. We shall overlook the fact that he graduated from Cal well over a decade ago, because it is fun to blame him for crap Indus did. 😉
Well, that’s kinda there in every South Asian thing in every Univ in the US. Every generation of students who come in think they’re coming up with the smartest new joke when they put that shit in their scripts. It does get old after a bit.
Anyway, don’t let that bother you too much. Trust in God, but lock your car. So if you are a FOB, be yourself, but get rid of the head waddle and the extra hair and get some real exercise. Trust me, it works.
I agree, Houston is very different from ‘Texas’, whatever that implies to y’all. It’s a very diverse city (50% latino, BTW), with a huge Chinatown, Vietnamese, Indian, Mid-Eastern and Korean areas. You guys need to seriously get your kundis down here at some point 🙂
I’ve been to Houston. Several times. Half of my Mother’s family lives there and since there’s always a wedding or an engagement happening, I’m invited back. A LOT. In 1992, we almost moved there and I was forced to apply to Rice. After some Oscar-level theatrics (“You wouldn’t let me go to Columbia, but you’ll pay for fucking RICE?!”) horrifying threats of haircuts (my hair was down to my knees, per my Father’s wishes) and general mayhem (I believe my sister went on a hunger strike), we talked my Father (and my very relieved Mother) out of such lunacy.
I’m not a fan, but I’m not talking out of my ass, either, despite what some here would love to believe. Austin, Dallas, THEN Houston…and that says it all.
Im kidding of course, Im actually curious if any east asian stand up comedians have done jokes about south asians, maybe now all of them will.
Hmmm, haven’t see it happen, but this guy and these guys are freakin hilarious.
(“You wouldn’t let me go to Columbia, but you’ll pay for fucking RICE?!”) Ms. Anna,
If one gets admitted to Rice, then almost all the tuition and expenses are taken care of through grants, scholarships, and loans from Rice U. itself. Basically, your education is heavily subsidized, as per one’s resources.
Hardly, anyone pays the real tuition @ Rice, unless you are a son/ daughter of an oil baron.
Rice U. is one of the best “deal“(according to Money Magazine and US News and World Report) since they have the richest endownment dedicated to undergraduate student financial needs – oil money from alum. Also, it is one of the toughest school to get in for undergrads. It also honors a strong legacy system.
Er…there might be a few Rice students here, just so you know. We do get onto SM.
How nice for us! I’m still not scared of you. 🙂
fuck texas 🙂
there is sum good sushi in houston though…and cajun food too….
Ok. Now the champalls are off. As a person that has lived in every time zone (sometimes multiple times) and grew up on the West Coast (Bay Area) and grew to love the East Coast more, I got to come to the defense of Houston. The weather is hotter than hell but the people are nicer than anywhere I’ve lived. Austin is the best because it has lots of hills, Lake Travis, and places to go camping but Houston isn’t too far behind. And as other people have mentioned Houston is NOT the south. In the next decade it will probably be one of the most cutting edge cities to live in also because the space race will be in full swing. And Rice students are cool too.
They do have good sushi. In fact I’ve made it a birthday tradition to have sushi (followed by a train of Sake bombers) at the sushi joint underneath Angelica theater. That’s how we will do a Texas meet-up 🙂
Remember the Alamo.
In the next decade it will probably be one of the most cutting edge cities to live in also because the space race will be in full swing.
Abhi dude, Houston is one and always has been of the most cutting edge cities.
Not only space technology, it is oil and gas capital of the world. Do you know how much profit BP made last quarter per minute. $55,000 dollars a minute. ExxonMobil will post their profits in a few days. Houston is where all the deals are made be it Gulf of Mexico or offshore west Africa.
I think Austin is an incredible high-tech city with great music scene. I think there is independent film making too. At the height of telecom boom, Dallas was the hub.
kush, like i said, fuck texas. let them be there own country if they are so c$$l 🙂
The Texas bashing reminds me of something.
A friend of mine moved from Houston to the bay area, her degree is from Texas A&M.
She says you would not believe the snippy things people said to her in her job interviews. Seems like San Franciscans feel a greater kinship with Ayman Zawahiri than folks from Texas.
Hmmm. Wonder…why…Texas…gets…bashed…
Anna:
Sorry to break it to you, but visiting Houston several times and having relatives here is quite different from someone like me who has lived here 26 straight years (minus 4 in Austin).
You write, “I’ve been to Houston. Several times. Half of my Mother’s family lives there and since there’s always a wedding or an engagement happening, I’m invited back. A LOT. In 1992, we almost moved there and I was forced to apply to Rice. After some Oscar-level theatrics (“You wouldn’t let me go to Columbia, but you’ll pay for fucking RICE?!”) horrifying threats of haircuts (my hair was down to my knees, per my Father’s wishes) and general mayhem (I believe my sister went on a hunger strike), we talked my Father (and my very relieved Mother) out of such lunacy.
I’m not a fan, but I’m not talking out of my ass, either, despite what some here would love to believe. Austin, Dallas, THEN Houston…and that says it all.
“
You’re invited back? you’ve been here, what, 10 times, 20 times, get real. I live here, I have been to almost every nook and cranny of Houston, including hick areas. By and large, you’d be hard pressed to find some nicer people. Ever been to Richmond, outside Houston? People are so down to earth and nice there, regardless of your race. It was one of the first cities in the country to have a BLACK (gasp) mayor.
Seriously, you are not qualified to speak on Houston.
To the rest of the people here, defending Houston, like Abhi, I won’t say thank you, as you are not doing me a favor, and my loyalty for Houston is only so much as my belief that it is a welcoming and hospitable city. No city is perfect, but I will say the desi community here is very strong. We have two pretty much (tho off and on) Monday through Sunday desi radio stations. Several Indian theaters. We are building an “India House” that will have a library on India, performance hall, activity center, etc. etc. We received a 500 THOUSAND DOLLAR grant from the City of Houston for this. They gave us a VERY prime location for our Mahatma Gandhi statue, to which cities followed Houston (like Atlanta). We have our own little India, mainly Hillcroft and now up and coming in Sugar Land. The mayor of Sugar Land goes to Indian American family’s homes and private parties, weddings, etc. of community members. Click here for some pictures of the local events: http://www.indoamericanforum.org/photo-gallery.htm. We have many, many temples, mosques, and indian churches. We have a Pakistani councilman, a councilman married to an Indian woman, an Indian council man in Sugar Land, and various other south asians that hold political office in the greater Houston area.
Are some people racist? yes, of course, but by and large things are peaceful. We didn’t have any Dotbusters like NJ had, even though we have a very large presence of Desis in certain areas (Alief, Sugar Land i.e. Fort Bend, Jersey Village). Knock on wood. There were a couple of incidents of harassment after 9/11 to a friend of a friend’s turban wearing younger brother, who was in High School, but High School, kids are cruel, no matter if youre’ in New Delhi or Houston (Hazing, anyone?? Can it get worse than some schools in India?). Another Sikh said he was driving and a redneck in a truck spit on his car and cussed him out. I’ve had one experience where a white, middle aged guy told me to go back to my country, once. Once in 26 years.
Even though I have lived in Austin, confined to one area, probably much like your situation in Dallas, I won’t comment on Austin. Why? Because I have not been to North, North East, Northwest, South, Southeast, etc… I have not been to every part of Austin, nor do I have years of experience in Austin, so I won’t comment. I will say this, from MY 4 years of experiences, it is a hospitable, and very beautiful (like Abhi said) city. Likewise, you cannot comment on Houston, and probably not even Dallas if you have been confined to only one area. (Though from a relative who moved from Plano to Houston, things are much “better” here in terms of race relations).
When I say Houston is the South, I think there is a difference in interpretation. It seems that many on here think of the “South” as a bad thing. As a label that conjures up thoughts of the Jim Crow laws, segregation, slavery, conservative southern democrats of yesteryear, conservative republicans of today, hicks, rednecks, etc. That is one side. But there is another side of the “South” that many probably don’t realize. Southerner’s, by and large, are hospitable, kind, talkative, and simple folk. For you Indians, think Punjabis. A co-worker of mine, who recently moved from New York City, complained that “Wherever I go, people talk to me too much. How are you doing? Where are you from? etc. etc….” She said, “I just want to be able to go somewhere and get my stuff done and get out of there.” This is typical of the East Coast vs. Houston experience. But I, for one, think its a nice thing. So when I say Houston is definitely the South, it is, it is Southern in a good way.
By and large, you’d be hard pressed to find some nicer people.
yeah, you been to every nook & cranny of every city? how do you know houstonians are so nice in relative terms?
(yes, southerners are nicer than northerners, but also less competent, howz that a generalization for you?)
btw, do you south-brownz talk with that slow ass accent?
yes, southerners are nicer than northerners
Dude, aren’t you from Oregon? Daz a village pretending to be a state.
And you’re doing H-town no favors either with your tripe. Remind me to read that magnum opus the next time I can’t sleep– it’ll do the trick faster than Ambien, that’s for damned sure.
Also, REAL southerners (people from Mississippi, The Carolinas, Virginia) don’t feel the same way you do; my friends from those states consider Texas to be part of the Southwest.
Word. Seriously dude. Sepia Mutiny isn’t a blog about which city is cooler. Let’s put this dog to rest please. Else I’m about to start singing that song “I got ho’s in different area codes” just so the other cities in the U.S. feel included in this ridiculous conversation.