Shah Journal 5/16 - Leigh Bagood

Shah’s respondents in chapter six “conveyed a strong desire to maintain ethnic distinctiveness through the preservation of particular aspects of Laotian culture.” This desire for ethnic distinctiveness is something that I think all Asians experience in response to the dominant discourse of grouping all Asians into the same racialized category. I think this is an interesting way to think about how Asian-American culture is established for different Asian cultures. It’s clear that a huge part of culture for any group of Americans of Asian descent is the preservation of cultural markers in private and public spheres, whether it be within the family or through social gatherings. Shah mentions that this contributes to the perception that “ethnic” culture represents the “original” culture that is imported which I agree with. But the reason this occurs is because much of preserving “original” culture is a response to U.S. racial discourse which erases the distinctiveness of these cultures. I think the way Asian-American culture forms is deeply political in that each Asian group exerts their individual, unique heritages to challenge de facto systems that marginalize them. As a Filipino-American, I see this as allowing my identity to be fluid. Although I find myself assimilating into American culture, I also incorporate parts of my ethnic identity into my everyday life. For me, though, there is no binary between my ethnicity and nationality as living my culture occurs naturally. My identity is just what it is in the context of my current perceptions and how I am navigating through society.