Do you remember when you first realized race and ethnicity? Like many Asian Americans in this digital generation, race became increasingly important when I embraced the ways of AzN PrYdE (read: Asian Pride) and “came to age” in the Silicon Valley in which I was born and raised. In fact, this confusing period continually puzzles and yet fascinates me as I dedicated an entire honors thesis to this topic.
Online, I remember Jonny (Angel) Ngo’s “Got Rice?” image, which many of my friends used as an AIM buddy icon, or on their webpages hosted on Geocities, Angelfire, and Homestead. Of course, who hasn’t heard the song associated with it that sparked mixed reactions? While it flipped the script—making elements of East and Southeast Asian culture cool—it also captured the anger and frustration for many Asian American youths as a result of bullying or discrimination.
I was in 6th grade and that was my first time ever hearing an Asian American rap about having Asian pride. Like Vegeta in Dragonball Z, however, we’ve learned that with pride, there can also be arrogance and ignorance.
Offline, I saw my friends starting to adopt a unique style: stolen Honda and Acura emblems pinned on backpacks, Asian Pride pictures slapped onto binders, anime-style spiked hair for boys, dyed streaks for girls, Adidas shell toes, or Fila slippers with socks, Zum Speed t-shirts, among many others. Although they had pride in being Asian through appearance and lingo, many of them couldn’t speak their parents’ language or practice their traditions. Instead of returning to the homeland, it was about finding a place between Black and white America.
Before The Fast and the Furious, import tuning and racing culture had been popular among Asian American youths. You could say Asian American youths pioneered an alternative scene to the traditional hot rods and muscle cars. I naturally followed this trend and came to admire import cars as if Japanese car brands represented my identity. Through this subculture, Asian Americans young men claimed a part of the road as whites, Blacks, and Latin@s have had their lanes in America’s car culture; or rather, they finally claimed a part of the market in America’s consumer culture. Interestingly, UCLA Asian American Studies Department M.A. student Victoria Namkung has done some research in 2001 on this phenomenon in Orange County, CA where it began.
I also found my identity through the countless Asian American hip hop songs disseminated on AZNRAPS Dot Com, perhaps the first website and forum dedicated to Asian American hip hop. Users were not only listeners, but they were their own musicians and rappers sharing music online as it was becoming possible. Before they were famous, I remember seeing Jin and the Far East Movement featured on the front page and actively posting in the forums. A list of mp3s on a site slowly replaced the mixtape in the “mixtape scene” for those who had an upper-hand in the digital divide. Though I lack statistics, Asian Americans were and still are very visible online in comparison to their exposure (and accurate representation) in mainstream media.
Asian Pride holds a lot of significance in tracing the early efforts to define a uniquely Asian American diasporic culture. Young people (myself included) sought identity in superficiality, and in many ways “shedding ethnicity” along the way toward being an American consumer. In contrast, being a FOB (fresh off the boat) was considered uncool and antithetical. Asian Pride holds a lot of contradictions like any other “coming of age” story. Nonetheless, I am excited to see more research done on this period because it is an integral part to this Asian American generation that is growing up off-line as much as online.
via AALimeLight
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