Hot Gway and Obama

Time Magazine wrote an article called “Does Obama Have an Asian Problem?” and as I read through this I realized how I felt both a sense of embarrassment as well as relief that some of the issues that it brought out. One part of me felt it like it was an airing of Asian America’s “dirty laundry.” What struck me was the question, “could it be that Asian Americans are not voting for him because he is black?” When I read that, I was caught off guard and not sure what to make of that question from a national publication. Perhaps race does play a part in the way we vote or want to see our leadership but I suspect that the Time article was trying to be provocative and not making a real investigative approach but rather it was a story looking for an issue rather vice versa.

But one quote that got me was this:

Alan Shum, 24, an analyst for an investment fund in New York City, cast his vote for Obama. But he also thinks his elders might have a problem doing the same. “Voting for a black candidate is just not something that would jump out at them,” he says. “Chinese people are really racist at times.” He points to the colloquial Chinese for “white” and “black,” which append both words with “devil.” “The vernacular tells you a little about something,” he says. “Chinese people can be very, very insular as a culture — very superior. We look down upon any race that isn’t Chinese.”

The proverbial “Hot Gway” (Black Ghost) or “Bot Gway” (White Ghost) that we Chinese use so casually. Tonight my wife and I ate at a Chinatown Vietnamese restaurant where an old couple with their daughter were arguing about voting and the father said in Chinese, “You gonna vote for a Hot Gway?” It caught me at an intersection of sadness and anger. In the day where this could be the most significant election we have digressed to these shallow differences. Yet, I remember a few months ago, I shared about the challenges facing many Asian American immigrants in Chinatown, a group of bible college students asked me about how they can best serve Asians (they were mostly black and latino students) and I had to be honest and tell them that perhaps, as an Asian community we were not ready for it because of our race issues towards other minorities. But to partner with an Asian American church, it would show them volumes about the radical call of the body of Christ to serve and love one another. Somehow, the air in the room just collapsed and I knew some of them were just stunned. But one girl spoke to me at the end and said “thank you. because when I was younger, I was in a school with a lot of Asians and they were worse to me than the white kids. Your honesty made me hope in Christ more and I am so thankful you didn’t give the ‘spiritual’ answer.”

I have a lot to move ahead on this issue. I serve at an Asian American church. Most of my 1600+ friends on facebook are Asian and I am convicted by my own sense of security in the familiar. But I also know that I cherish this distinctive of being Asian…while working out the implications of exclusivity that often haunt me. I grew up one block away from the projects and saw the cycle of housing project violence and still remember so many of those kids I grew up with running away from stray bullets, lure of pushing or taking blow. I see how much we as a church has made this “Africa” campaign for AIDS and poverty into a fetish of sorts. I have seen how as a church we don’t know how to deal with the “others” in our communities. When I see the Lower East Side, I see a challenge of so many worlds colliding and yet, I am scared of another lesson of culture I have to learn. But I know I must…not out of a drive towards a gospel correctness. But it is more about the awaiting of redemption of this area of brokenness.

I am not sure if Alan Shum is right, I don’t think we as Chinese want to be better than everyone else. I think it is more that we are scared of anything else and we want to keep things insular. To have our perpetual “keep out” sign, not so much for our superiority but rather with a sense of isolation.

Footnote: One interesting fact from the article is that Barack’s half sister is named Maya Soetoro-Ng and I found her vodcast here and it seems that she is married to an “Ng.” Her husband is Konrad Ng and they have a daughter named Suhaila (according to this article). Also I found this mixed bag of a website called “Asian Americans for Barack Obama.” It should be called C-list Celebrities or Nobodies for Obama. I am sorry but who are these people?