Where are you really from? Asian Americans and the perpetual foreigner syndrome

Most people don't see the slippery slope leading from governments and companies to nations and peoples and then to races and cultures; it is a swift slide from an overseas group to an American individual by way of the catch-all phrase "you people," as in, "if you people hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor ..." The distinction of United States citizenship, seemingly all-important, is blurred away. It is as easy now as it was a century ago to find diatribes about the Chinese government or Japanese companies that speak in terms of China or Japan as monoliths or that conclude "the Chinese are a military threat" or "the Japanese are an economic threat." The further proclamations that "the Chinese are belligerent" or "the Japanese are devious" don't have a clear stopping point.

During the peak of Japanese economic gains, when in 1989, the Mitsubishi conglomerate bought Rockefeller Center, politicians and pundits took it as a dire sign that the soul of America was for sale. In 1992, opponents almost blocked the sale of the Seattle Mariners baseball team to the founder of Japanese game-maker Nintendo, who wanted to save the franchise for the city and forestall its move to a larger market. In contrast to the fallout from Japan-bashing, there were no such concerns about the British and Dutch companies that owned more U.S. properties than the Japanese even during the latter's buying frenzy, nor in 1998 when the German Daimler conglomerate, makers of Mercedes Benz, merged with Chrysler, effectively taking it over. (Showing the pointlessness of asking about the nationality of international conglomerates, Daimler and Chrysler both owned part of Mitsubishi.)

The original points that critics make about the handful of totalitarian leaders of the Chinese Communist Party or a few top business executives in a Japanese industry may be well founded and even persuasive, but they are generalized beyond all reason. Whether by intention or through carelessness, an anti-Asian outlook appears to encompass Asian immigrants and even Asian Americans. Those who exclaim, "But we don't mean Chinese Americans or Japanese Americans," should realize that others do, and it is as difficult for people to distinguish between the two positions as it is easy to clarify what is meant. Such precision would weaken the rhetoric: it is more emphatic to exclaim "the Chinese" and "the Japanese" than to talk about the Chinese government or Japanese companies, but it also is dangerous and wrong.

The confusion of Asians and Asian Americans springs from rules that would prohibit Asians from ever becoming Asian Americans. The racial conception of citizenship they reinforced has a long lineage.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Over time, the legislation was extended to create an Asiatic-barred zone. Asian immigrants were not allowed, with only a few exceptions--many came illegally, masquerading as the "paper sons" of individuals who were already legally present; they were "sons" only on paper and not in reality. Asian residents were prevented from becoming naturalized citizens, because they could not meet the prerequisite of being a "free white person." University of California at Davis law professor Bill Ong Hing has said of these immigration policies: "It's no accident that the Statue of Liberty faces Europe and has her back to Asia and Latin America."