fobulous
may 17, 2002
a lil while ago, i received that email entitled something like "what kind of asian are you?". and i remembered going down that list and looking at all the different categories and saying "nope" "nope" "nope, that's not me" until i got to the very last category, entitled "fobulous". i read the description and sure enough, i was closest to that. and then i thought to myself, it's funny how someone thought of using the word "fob" in another word and making it a more positive terminology instead of the negative one that i've always associated it with.
then a few days ago, amabelle, used the term "fob" in one of her entries (unaware of the negative association to the term mind you) which resulted into a heated discussion on her comments section. somewhere along the line, what i was trying to say, got misunderstood, misdirected, misregistered by some folks. needless to say, some of those people who don't know me nor where i stand on the topic (which i've spoken of many times on this site: here, here, here) got my point of view on this topic all wrong.
being born overseas but raised in the US (longer than most of these young kids have been alive) caused an imbalance in my cultural identity. since i started kindergarten with the rest of the other kids my age (regardless of ethnicity), i really never was the target of being called a "fob" (meaning fresh of the boat/plane/bus/train/whatever) and instead am ashamedly one of the perpetrators in using that derogative term onto others in my youth.
but i was torn and i knew it was wrong, even in my youth because i *wasn't* really an ABC (american born chinese) because technically, i wasn't born in the US. i felt terribly bad for these new immigrants because they were being constantly picked on by both asians and non-asians alike. but at the same time, as a kid, the last thing you want to be is lumped together with this group of outcasts right? peer pressure is a powerful drug. i still recall my group of friends, who were all caucasian, saying to me, "winnie, we don't see you like them. you're like us. americans." at the time, it validated my being as an american and i felt safe to not be tagged a "fob". but still, i was an immigrant just like the others and just because i've been here longer, doesn't necessarily make me better. but i still kept referring to those new kids as "fobs" even though i knew it was wrong.
when i began school here in my town, it was predominantly white. there were hispanics and asian americans as well but no recent immigrants. it wasn't until much later that we began to receive an influx of chinese, vietnamese, koreans, japanese with very unusual names that i've never heard of before. how come they weren't like me with an english name?
it wasn't until junior high and high school when i began to migrate to another group, mainly of asian americans because as you grow up, you seem to bond with those who have more similarities rather than differences. by then, more and more people moved into my neighborhood and it was great to find friends who had the same background as me. but even then, our cliquey asian-american group called that "other" group of asians "fobs" because we were not like them. them and us. that's always been the defining social factor in people's lives right?
in high school and then later in college, i began associating with more and more recent immigrants and finding out how much i had in common with them and their life stories. and then i realized how fascinated i was with everyone's background and how the complexities of being immersed in multiple cultures has on one's life. during my late teens and early twenties, even now, i like to hear about people's pasts, their parents during the early years in the states, the obstacles they all came up against for being a new immigrant and so on.
perhaps i became more open minded not only because of age and wisdom but also because when i returned to hong kong for the first time in 11 years, at the age of 16, i got ridiculed, criticized and chastised for being such an "ABC". i remember the taxi driver making fun of my "sing song" cantonese and the many "aunties" who cold heartedly kept on talking about me to my face in the third person, as if i wasn't there, going on about how this "jook sing" (cantonese slang for someone caught between two cultures -- literally, a bamboo stalk closed on both ends) was such a shame to the chinese since i didn't seem to be chinese anymore. it was then that i thought about all the recent immigrants in the US and how they were treated with degradation by people who looked like them, ate like them, and often times spoke the same language as them at home. i could imagine their pain when they woke up for school and when they were in class, during lunch, on the schoolbus, anywhere where they were subject to be "left out".
it took me a long time to get to that point of enlightenment. instead of standing up for my own people, i built up walls where they cannot trespass. i sided with "the enemy" (for lack of a better term) and made fun of them when i should have been more compassionate. i would have been the perfect liason between them and my non-asian classmates but instead, i held them off. i suppose though as kids, we don't analyze things like this until it's too late and we can't turn back the clock.
this is not to say that i didn't experience outright racism and prejudice because i have. and sometimes, i was even on the receiving end of being "tagged" a label by recent immigrants here in the states as well -- "banana, twinkie, white-washed". bottom line, we live in an era where people are more conscious of asians. we live in an era where there are positive asian role models to look up to now. we live in an era far different than when i was a child in 1975. but yet, labels still exist.
someone on amabelle's comment section mentioned that the term "fob" can never be used in a positive light. then what about coining the word "fobulous"? if fobulous means someone who can still speak their native language with fluency as well as english in equal fluency, then that certainly sounds like me. or should we call ourselves bi-cultural instead? i think it's our job to educate people and to choose our words with care to reflect our beliefs. there will always be labels and even if you or i choose not to use it, there will be others who will. at least being conscientious of other's feelings by not slapping on a stereotype is a start and at least you can do that.
[sidenote: coincidentally, luckykat has chosen to write on the same topic too. go read her experience as a fobulous chick. *alike, we great minds are* ;)]
