Tallying the High Cost of Fitting in With American Society

“What does it take,” asks Helen Zia in the introduction to “Asian American Dreams,” “to become American?”

To a nation of new and former immigrants where every ethnic and racial group has at one point or another been an outsider, this is a tantalizing query. For although the focus of Zia’s study is the Asian American community, one people’s experience, if viewed fairly, can serve as a framework for others.

Herself a first-generation Chinese American, Zia is quick to point out that the Asian American community is by no means a uniform or even united group, that historical rivalries and cultural differences have left the people of various Asian nations with little more in common than the color of their skin and a history of being ignored, exploited and abused by other Americans. Even second- and third-generation Asian Americans, claims Zia, stand out in the eyes of this nation as different, untrustworthy, not quite one of us.

From 1806, when the first ship-load of Chinese men was brought to the New World as indentured servants, to 1965 (and thereafter), when Congress abolished the immigration quota system of preference for whites--thereby releasing the tide of a new generation of Asian immigrants--Asian Americans have made enormous contributions to the country.

In return, Zia observes, they have been slaughtered and starved, demonized and marginalized. They have given their lives to build the transcontinental railroad only to find that they were not allowed to ride it, served with valor in World War II only to learn that their families were interned in camps back in the U.S., worked 18-hour days at family-owned businesses in L.A.’s Koreatown only to find their livelihood burned to the ground by angry mobs of African Americans and Latinos during the riots of 1992.

Through it all they have preserved their ideals of family and community, their resilience and their belief in success through education and hard work--”all-American” values for which, ironically, other Americans resent and distrust them.

Hence Zia’s opening question. Her answer, however, is less satisfactory and strikes a surprisingly hostile and confrontational tone. Assuming her reader is unreceptive and condescending, she offers up a mass of unnecessary detail, circumvents difficult issues and manages to bury the heart of her message.

Concerned about how the rest of America will use the information she provides, she presents Asians in a light so positive and free from scars, so one-sided as to undermine the objectivity and, therefore, the validity of her argument. Race becomes the paramount--often the only--factor in the history of Asian Americans and the main reason they have been exploited, held back or overlooked.

Why haven’t Asian Americans become better integrated within the American system? According to Zia, until recently the laws of this country barred them, solely on the basis of their race, from being full participants. Here, she ignores the time it takes for most immigrants to establish themselves in this country and gain the financial security necessary to participate in the political process. Poverty, language barriers and a fear of being noticed and therefore retaliated against--more than laws--often keep immigrants from demanding their rightful place in society.

Indeed, the issues facing Asian Americans--cultural stereotypes, economic exploitation, social injustice--are universal to all immigrants not just in America, but elsewhere in the world. Even within racially homogeneous groups, economic power, rather than race, has historically determined a people’s fate. Thus white plantation owners in America imported not just Asian and African, but also white indentured servants. Conversely, the Chinese indentured servants of Zia’s history were sold to American plantation owners not by the white man, but by wealthy Chinese slave owners.

Once on U.S. soil, Asians and immigrants of all colors and races have had to decide whether, in pursuing the American dream, they must relinquish their own identity.

The truth, however, is that as much as any ethnic group wishes to fit in, they also wish to preserve their own culture; that in a diverse, often rootless society such as ours, traditional values are worth keeping.

Perhaps, then, the question to ask is: What do we gain, and how much are we willing to lose, in order to become American?