Testing Patience: A response to SMH from an ‘Asian Automaton’

By Anonymous

White Australia needs to stop scapegoating Asian students and educate themselves instead.

As a person of Asian descent living in Sydney, there is a certain level of everyday racism that you can learn to tolerate day-to-day. When you’re drowning in pervasive racism it’s best not to panic. Just slowly, and calmly, wade your way through the bullshit. The longer you do it, the stronger your muscles get, the easier it is to hold your water.

Reading the Sydney Morning Herald’s outburst of racist paranoia over the “Asianisation” of Sydney schools today, however, made me stop and realise how truly exhausted I am, and have been for a long time. Because, despite her never having met me before, the person that Anna Broinowski is scapegoating in this article is me. I went to coaching school to pass an exam when I was 9 years old to enter an ‘Opportunity Class.’ Then at 11, I took another exam and I was enrolled into a selective high school. And yes, it was full of “Asians.”

Anna Broinowski has a lot of things to say to me in this article – actually she’s talking my ear off. She’s telling me that I’m not

naturally

gifted. That I am being oppressed by my overbearing mother, and yet, I somehow still love her because of some pathological perversion called “confucian filial piety.” (My mother is Japanese, but that doesn’t seem to matter – she’s Asian enough.) She’s very disappointed that my mother hasn’t learnt English after living in Australia for several decades. (Even though my mum grew up in poverty and didn’t have access to a “proper” education.) Oh, and to top it off, she’s telling me that I have a natural desire to cheat the system. But wait, she’s not all criticisms! She’s been kind enough to leave some sage advice for me: if I let go of all my hang-ups and just

believe

in Julian Assange then I will be saved! I will be “lively, individual, and thriving!”

Anna Broinowski is telling me all this, but, at the same time, as it always goes with our underhanded Australian racism, she’s also pretending I’m not listening. Her article is made to feed the prejudices of “Anglo” mothers who want a reason for their paranoia over things out of their control. As long as young Asian-Australian students are being silently force-fed their own innate inferiority then there’s no reason for her to fear that we might be affected by her words. That we might talk back. No, we’re supposed to agree with her because, look, the Australian way of life is how we’re meant to be. We should want to leave our Asian culture at the door and embrace a supposedly ‘universal’ understanding of human individuality and creativity that has been dislodged from any sense of Western historical or cultural specificity. Because that’s the best way for us all to live! And so what if it is Western? We live in Australia now, we need to act like real Australians!

Well, I can tell you what has been left out of this conversation, because it comes from the mouth of an Asian automaton who isn’t supposed to know how to write my own words or think my own thoughts. Let’s talk about self-esteem. The article argues that as a person of Asian descent my self-esteem is supposed to come from my ability to gain skills that can help me in an environment where I’ve been thrown in the deep end. If I’m lucky, and I can transcend my immigrant status of socio-economic and linguistic misery, then I can start to attain a higher-level source of self-esteem – “fun.” Surprisingly, my life doesn’t quite fit this neat cultural division. Looking back on my pre-pubescent years I developed my self-esteem, not from cheating the system, but from being outside of the system. Call it double-consciousness, to borrow a phrase from, W. E. B. DuBois:

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

As an Asian-Australian, knowing that I didn’t fit any particular mould of “Asian” or “Australian” helped me understand that I could be my own person. I’m not blinded to the belief that the world is, and must be, a certain way. I don’t hold the power so I’m not terrified of losing it to someone I haven’t even tried to understand. I have to understand to survive. As an Asian- Australian I don’t see things in black and white, I see irony, contradiction, hypocrisy. Especially when middle-class, white Australians tells me that they appreciate my culture’s contributions to their country… as long as I shut up and do what they say. No, my self-esteem comes from myself. My subversive subjectivity. My assertive agency.

Yes, most of the time kids don’t care about freeing their minds at school and it’s a shame. We should encourage children to feel as if they are creators in this world, rather than passive consumers. But after years of having my white selective school teachers split my learning up into an us vs them dichotomy, there is one thing that I can say with confidence. Your racism stops us from achieving this sense of agency, not our mothers.

So before you open your mouth and criticise, why don’t you open your own minds instead of worrying about ours.