Panethncity

Asian American Studies 60b Midterm Essay

Panethnicity and heterogeneity are related in the ways that they both are describing how the larger society views ethnic groups. Panethnicity is a term that describes how various ethnic groups are placed under one category, as if all the cultures were viewed as just one large culture. The term arose because of the democratic, linguistic, political, and cultural structural causes. Heterogeneity is a term that refers to the process in which identities are masked by a larger panethnic allegiance. It focuses more on the differences between each culture. Both terms can help one understand to some extent of how others view the Asian community, but it is apparent to me that heterogeneity can better describe the “Asian American”. Heterogeneity better describes the “Asian American” because there are so many ways that Asians can be described, instead of just one common word. Take for example, in Lisa Lowe’s article, “Heterogeniety, Hybridity, and Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences”, she states that “But from the perspectives from Asian Americans, we are perhaps even more different [than Europeans], more diverse, among ourselves...” (680). There are many different types of groups that Asians are a part of, and each culture has at least one aspect that is unique compared to the others in that same format of culture. Lowe also offers many different types of cultural examples as to why heterogeneity overpowers panethnicity when one is describing the “Asian American”. Yen Le Espiritu describes panethnicity in his essay, “Asian American Panethnicity”, and in his essay he discusses the politics surrounding Asian American panethnicity. He discusses the ideas about discrimination and histories of violence toward the Asian Americans so that they must pull together in a panethnic alliance to prevent more instances of violence and discrimination. To better clarify an understanding and the significance of both terms, a look at the Hmong, Filipino, and the Vietnamese cultures and their assimilations into the United States are good examples. The Hmong first came into the United States because they were forced to flee their villages in Laos because the Secret War that was occurring between the United States CIA and the Northern Vietnamese people. The Hmong was recruited by the United States to block off the Vietnamese because the United States was afraid that Laos was going to fall under the communist state. The Hmong were forced to flee Laos to Thailand, and then eventually, to the United States. When they resided in clumps of areas around the United States, some of them including Merced, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Fresno, California; they failed to assimilate into the modern United States culture. They decided to separate themselves against all other Asian-American groups in the United States because they wanted to keep to their own culture and maintain their daily rituals and lifestyle as much as they could. In Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the Hmong family tried the western medicine style and then eventually went back to their own natural medicine, which actually worked better. Although they lived in another culture, they still fought to do keep and practice their Hmong traditions. They remained to be heterogeneous as opposed to the other cultures present in the country at that time. Over time, some Hmong did branch off and assimilate into modern US culture, which is inevitable as they began to raise their children among the modern day culture. In the documentary, “The Split Horn”, it documents a Hmong family who moves to the United States and shows how some of the children drift away from their original culture and become assimilated into modern United States culture; some of them turned away from original Hmong religion and converted into Christianity, and one married an American girl instead of a Hmong girl. I think that many of the Hmong people who immigrate into the United States prefer to be identified in a more heterogeneous light because they are very different from the other cultures and would like to keep it that way. Other cultures also have that same mindset as the Hmong, like the Filipinos. The Filipinos, primarily the women, first migrated into the United States because of job opportunities that were given to them. The United States was in a large shortage of nurses during this time and they offered the Filipino women who were nurses to come to work in the country. The women came to the United States because a nursing job there represented upward mobility and more opportunities