Asian Representation Quotes

Why I am Passionate and Dedicated 1000% to producing and bringing my books Loving Summer, Bitter Frost, and other book series to the Screen is because these are the very books that I was cyber-bullied on. When confronted by bullies, you don't shy away, but you Fight Back. Many people have not read the books, but believe fake news and damaging slanders against them and me as a person because it was a marketing strategy used to sell my books' rival books. By bringing these very books to the screen, people can see how different my books are to theirs. Also, most of all, it is pretty darn fun and fierce for me, as a female Asian writer, director, and producer to bring these fan favorite books to screen.

Success in life is not just about professional success. It is personal success too. There is a trend in Asia and Asian American society for young women to not get married or not have children to get ahead professionally. That was the trend 10 years ago in the US. This is bad for society and a country's population growth. Women need to encouraged and supported for being able to have both a successful career and a successful personal and family life. That is why we need to see Asian American women who are both successful professionally and personally in the media and on screen. That is why I am out there in public as a wife and mother who is a self-made million-selling author and director who is in touch with my Asian heritage. Not because I crave the limelight, but because I want my daughter and nieces to see they can do it too. - Strong by Kailin Gow

The model minority myth is often used to separate Asian Americans from other people of color by using their perceived socioeconomic and academic success and docile nature to compare and contrast with black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. This divide-and-conquer technique serves to redirect struggle against oppressive White Supremacy to competition between Asian Americans and other people of color. The real animosity between some Asian Americans and other people of color that has been manufactured by the model minority myth prevents Asian Americans and non-Asian people of color from recognizing and organizing around shared experiences of labor exploitation, lack of government representation, lack of pop culture representation, cultural appropriation, and much more.

Representation matters. It matters that you sit in an audience and see yourself onstage. It matters that a company who sells to a multiethnic, multicultural world works to bring every voice in so that they consider as many perspectives as possible. Black, white, Latino, Asian, old, young, gay, straight, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, differently abled, plus-size, petite—everybody should be at your table. Everybody should be on your stage. Everybody should be on your staff. Everybody should be invited to your kid’s birthday party. Everybody should be welcome in your church. Everybody should be invited over for dinner. Every single woman you know and every single one you don’t could benefit from the truth that she is capable of something great. How is she ever going to believe that if nobody sets an example? How is she ever going to believe that if nobody cares enough to see it in her and speak the truth aloud?

Most Asian texts stipulate the real existence of intangible, invisible energies that download into material representation and affects. The Chinese have long referred to these energies as Ch’i, while the Ch’i disciplines advocate understanding and working with, not against, those superlative energies. Basic

If you go to an “Asian American and Pacific Islander” event, you’re not going to see Samoans, you’re not going to see Tongans, you’re not going to see Māori. We’re half of the acronym, but not even close to half the representation. The Indigenous story is always washed away by the immigrant story. Americans are proud to say that “we’re a nation of immigrants,” but that’s also saying “f*ck the Indigenous people.” We’re proud to be mixed in Hawaii, but we need to acknowledge that that comes at the price of Indigenous people. We can support each other, but there’s a difference between inclusion and erasure.

I think it's very dangerous to start censoring what authors should and shouldn't write." I open strong, and this gets some approving murmurs from the crowd. But I still see some skeptical faces, especially from the other Asians present, so I continue. "I'd hate to live in a world where we tell people what they should and shouldn't write based on the color of their skin. I mean, turn what you're saying around and see how it sounds. Can a Black writer not write a novel with a white protagonist? What about everyone who has written about World War Two, and never lived through it? You can critique a work on the grounds of literary quality, and its representations of history—sure. But I see no reason why I shouldn't tackle this subject if I'm willing to do the work. And as you can tell by the text, I did do the work. You can look up my bibliographies. You can do the fact- checking yourself. Meanwhile, I think writing is fundamentally an exercise in empathy. Reading lets us live in someone else's shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller. And as for the question of profit—I mean, should every writer who writes about dark things feel guilty about it? Should creatives not be paid for their work?

Kung Fu's process of individualization similarly takes part in this backlash as the representation of the social ills experienced by racial minorities is routinely disciplined and rechanneled to make the show palatable for mass consumption. Under this rubric, it is assumed that changing the hearts of individuals will automatically lead to changing society. To a post-1960s liberal audience who obviously felt sympathy toward the plight of racial minorities but who nevertheless were wary of certain measures taken by these groups toward self-determination and weary from extended conflict, this simple adage proved seductive. Indeed, for a great many Americans, post-Civil Rights race relations has transformed the United States into an unruly site with different groups vying for cultural, economic, and political resources. In this way, Kung Fu's Wild West setting—the uneven hand of justice, the social free-for-all, the generally inhospitable natural landscape—seemed to reflect the audience's view of their contemporary social environment. It also mirrored the overall impotence that Americans felt toward ameliorating the situation. Given such a scenario, individualizing racial oppression and other social inequities may have seemed like a final alternative. While this process of individualization is key in deciphering the show's political stance, the types of identifications the series forged between character and audience more substantively reveal its ideological commitments. Although Kung Fu's psychospiritualized vision was available to all of its audience members, one could argue that it was primarily framed as a commentary toward racial minorities and women who sought social change through means other than or in addition to inner transformation. It achieved this through a formulaic pattern of identifications.

If we consider this official or elite multiculturalism as an ideological state apparatus we can see it as a device for constructing and ascribing political subjectivities and agencies for those who are seen as legitimate and full citizens and others who are peripheral to this in many senses. There is in this process an element of racialized ethnicization, which whitens North Americans of European origins and blackens or darkens their 'others' by the same stroke. This is integral to Canadian class and cultural formation and distribution of political entitlement. The old and established colonial/racist discourses of tradition and modernity, civilization and savagery, are the conceptual devices of the construction and ascription of these racialized ethnicities. It is through these 'conceptual practices of power' (Smith, 1990) that South Asians living in Canada, for example, can be reified as hindu or muslim, in short as religious identities.....We need to repeat that there is nothing natural or primordial about cultural identities - religious or otherwise - and their projection as political agencies. In this multiculturalism serves as a collection of cultural categories for ruling or administering, claiming their representational status as direct emanations of social ontologies. This allows multiculturalism to serve as an ideology, both in the sense of a body of content, claiming that 'we' or 'they' are this or that kind of cultural identities, as well as an epistemological device for occluding the organization of the social....an interpellating device which segments the nation's cultural and political space as well as its labour market into ethnic communities....Defined thus, third world or non-white peoples living in Canada become organized into competitive entities with respect to each other. They are perceived to have no commonality, except that they are seen as, or self-appellate as, being essentially religious, traditional or pre-modern, and thus civilizationally backward. This type of conceptualization of political and social subjectivity or agency allows for no cross-border affiliation or formation, as for example does the concept of class.

Although the hyperreal operates as its own type of reality, this does not mean that its provenance is divorced from the material conditions in which we live. The fact that the images that the media project can be readily identified as "representations," rather than the truth of the matter, works to further mask the political, social, and cultural interests involved. At the same time, these images have the force of reality and serve as a conduit of meaning. No doubt, viewers can recognize the Arab terrorists in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies (1994) as fictional characters ("It's just a movie!"), but these images undoubtedly reinforce, if not substantially inform, American viewers' notions of Islam and the U.S.-Middle East conflict.

This network of power relations is not only internationally informed but also configured according to interests within the national borders of the United States. Through the figure of the nonsexual, solitary Oriental Monk, Asian religiosity and spirituality are made palatable—psychologically, socially, and politically—for dominant culture consumption. Hence, the Monk as signifier serves as a way for Americans to manage Asian American religious communities by re-presenting Asian spiritual heritages in a specific way—that is, by reinforcing certain comforting assumptions and presenting the Other in a manner that is recognizable and acceptable. The role of the Oriental Monk as a popular representation and Virtual Orientalism as its milieu, therefore, has important implications for the American engagement with Asian religions and for Asian American self-understanding.

aesthetic representation is not an analogue for the material positions, means, or resources of those populations.

Yet the notion that Hokkaido and Okinawa constitute “internal colonies” stems from an ex post facto axiom naturalizing these territories as part of Japan proper, a practice cultural studies scholar Michele Mason characterizes as ranking territories under a “hierarchy of colonial authenticity.

Michelle touches on various incidents of racism and alienation throughout her life, and discusses both idealizing whiteness and fearing that she is not Korean enough. What does this reveal about the complications of growing up mixed-race and with Asian heritage in America? How does it compare to Asian American representation and access to opportunities today?

This collection consists of the following pieces: COGNITIVE SCIENCE 1. The Embodied Cognition View 2. On Flanagan's Ideas On Dreams and Ahead: An Attempt To Locate Dreaming Phenomenon Under The Superclass Of Consciousness 3. "The Pragmatics of Cartoons: The Interaction of Bystander Humorosity vs. Agent-Patient Humorosity." 4. Integrationist School or on 'Rethinking Language'. 5. On Steven Pinker's 'Language Instinct' or Some Remarks on Evolutionary Psycholinguistics 6. On the (Im)Possibility of Psychotherapist Computer Programs: An Investigation within the Realm of Epistemology 7. Thai Language: A Brief Typology. ART NARRATIVES 8. Armenians As Ingroups in William Saroyan's Stories from the Framework of the Theory of Social Representations: A Social Psychological Inquiry. 9. A Critique of The Stories By South East Asian Writing Awardees 10. Mulholland Drive: Another impasse for the American film industry. 11. On 'About Schmidt' 12. On Black spirituals. 13. The possibility of an African American poetry.

Some of the most interesting works of ‘Asian American Literature’ thrive in the world of indie publishing and micro presses, where you will find our authors experimenting, prolific, testifying, refusing to conform to any single ‘Asian American’ canonical representation or well-behaved institutional standards.

Vietnam, like other smaller countries in the region, gained a platform to articulate new national ideals that challenge common representations of poverty in the Global South and the latter’s oppressed relation to the West;

In Britain and other White-majority countries, only White people can be racist because only White people have control over systems of power in this country. Black, Asian and minoritised people do not have control over any systems of power that could result in all White people being discriminated against. Whilst a Person of Colour can make negative statements about White people that reference the colour of their skin, this is not racism asit is not accompanied by a racist system of power. It exists simply as an 'incident' of racialised prejudice and has no real impact on White people other than, perhaps to trigger White fragility in those who hear or read it.

Why should the gross “under-representation” of Asian Americans in professional basketball be a “gap” to be closed, if Asian Americans do not have nearly as much interest in that sport as black Americans have? Why should the “under-representation” of women in chess clubs or men in nursing be a gap to be closed? The process goal of preventing biased decision-making from arbitrarily closing off opportunities is an understandable goal. Creating a tableau to match the preconceptions of a vision is something very different.

Discussions of South Asians in exclusively or predominantly white classrooms are likely to dwell upon such so-called cultural characteristics as being “traditional,” “religious,” and “patriarchal.” These characteristics are not unique to what is labeled South Asian culture. Religion plays a significant role in the lives of some white North Americans, but religiosity is not deemed an ethnic characteristic of this group. In contrast, religion is constructed as a core trait defining South Asian identity. This representation ignores the reality that many South Asians are either not religious or practice religion in other ways.

Strange as it may seem — and irrational as it would be in a more logical system of world diplomacy — the dollar glut is what finances America’s global military build-up. It forces foreign central banks to bear the costs of America’s expanding military empire. The result is a new form of taxation without representation. Keeping international reserves in dollars means recycling dollar inflows to buy U.S. Treasury bills — U.S. government debt issued largely to finance the military spending that has been a driving force in the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit since the Korean War broke out in 1950. [...] “China National Offshore Oil Corporation go home” is the motto when foreign governments try to use their sovereign wealth funds (central bank departments trying to figure out what to do with their dollar glut) to make direct investments in American industry, as happened when China’s national oil company sought to buy Unocal in 2005.[...] So Europeans and Asians see U.S. companies pumping more dollars into their economies not only to buy their exports (in excess of providing them with goods and services in return), not only to buy their companies and commanding heights of privatized public enterprises (without giving them reciprocal rights to buy important U.S. companies), and not only to buy foreign stocks, bonds and real estate. The U.S. media neglect to mention that the U.S. Government spends hundreds of billions of dollars abroad — not only in the Near East for direct combat, but to build military bases to encircle the rest of the world, and to install radar systems, guided missile systems and other forms of military coercion, including the “color revolutions” that have been funded all around the former Soviet Union.

Although political representation by racial quota is the effect of government policy, it is not yet respectable to call for it explicitly. When President Bill Clinton tried to appoint Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights her appointment failed, in part because of Miss Guinier’s advocacy of representation by race. In her view, if blacks were 13 percent of the US population, 13 percent of seats in Congress should be set aside for them. It does not cause much comment, however, when the Democratic Party applies this thinking to its selection of delegates to presidential conventions. Each state party files an affirmative action plan with the national party, and many states set quotas. For the 2008 Democratic Convention, California mandated an over-representation of non-white delegates. Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics were only 4.6, 5.2, and 21.1 percent, respectively, of the Democratic electorate, but had to be 16, 9, and 26 percent of the delegates. Other states had similar quotas. Procedures of this kind do lead to diversity of delegates but suggest that race is more important than policy. Perhaps it is. In Cincinnati, where blacks are 40 to 45 percent of the population, Mayor Charlie Luken complained that the interests of blacks and whites seemed so permanently in conflict that “race gets injected into every discussion as a result.” In other words, any issue can become racial. In 2004, the Georgia legislature passed a bill to stop fraud by requiring voters to show a state-issued ID at the polls. People without drivers’ licenses could apply for an ID for a nominal fee. Black legislators felt so strongly that this was an attempt to limit the black vote that they did not merely vote against the law; practically the entire black delegation stormed out of the Capitol when the measure passed over their objections. In 2009, when Congress voted a stimulus bill to get the economy out of recession, some governors considered refusing some federal funds because there were too many strings attached. Jim Clyburn, a black South Carolina congressman and House Majority Whip, complained that rejecting any funding would be a “slap in the face of African-Americans.” Race divides Cook County, Illinois, which contains Chicago. In 2007, when the black president of the county board, Todd Stroger, could not get his budget passed, his floor leader William Beavers-also black—complained that it was “because he’s black.” He said there was only one real question: 'Who’s gonna control the county—white or black—that’s all this is.

Akio snorts. “A white guy who uses ancient Chinese mysticism?” “It is a touch problematic,” I say. “There could be more Asian representation.” Or just some. One, really. One Asian superhero. It doesn’t seem too much to ask.