Well, here I am again, sitting at my computer and writing to God knows who... Whoever you are, I hope you're enjoying this...

Anyway, I was looking at my cousin's webpage, and I read about some of her thoughts on racism and culturalism. I mean, really... what do these words mean? Couldn't these two words be mistaken for each other, or even interchanged? I guess it could depending upon how you look at things. I've been lucky in my dealings with racism. I haven't personally come up against anything like that. I went to Bellarmine College Preparatory, and when I was there, my class seemed pretty well integrated. I know with me and my friends, we were friends with all different types of people.

My cousin spoke about how she grew up in the American culture. Most of her friends are white. I grew up with my cousin within the American culture. We went to school together from preschool all the way until eighth grade. During high school, she went to an all girls school while I went to an all guys school. We both grew up as products of the American Society. I know I grew away from my Vietnamese heritage. As a child, I used to be relatively fluent in Vietnamese. Now, I'm pretty shaky. Not that I really want to grow away from it, but I have. Now, my cousin is at UC Berkeley and she's taking courses in Vietnamese. I have no such option here at Santa Clara. When she started writing about culturalism on her webpage (which you'll jes have to look at if you're interested in what she said), it sparked a thought in my mind. I've been thinking about culturalism off and on when I was in the thinking mood, but I've never really put my thoughts together. So, I figured that now is a good time as any to do it.

Have you noticed how asians seem to stick together? The same with black people. (I think that African-American is too PC a term to use. I never liked PC terms. It makes everyone seem like they're being too elitist.) I never understood it. When black people fought for equal rights, they fought for the integration of people. They fought against the idea of "Separate, but equal." And I agree with that. Being equal, I think, implies an interaction between societies. Yet, now, I see some black people attempting to pull away again. They're attempting to centralize into groups of purely black people. Now, I don't think that this is wrong if you're looking for cultural history, but it is possible to take this too far.

From what I've seen, however, asians seem to do the same thing, only to a greater degree. I've seen a lot of elitism within the asian culture. My friends have told me about how people have looked down upon them because of the way the act. One Vietnamese friend said that another Vietnamese person had called her "white-washed," merely because she has grown up in the American culture without retaining all of her Vietnamese culture. I don't understand such... snobbery. That's the closest word I can think of that matches the idea. I was born in America. I grew up trying to walk the line between the Vietnamese culture within my house and the American culture without. I am the product of my environment, and I am myself. I should be judged for who I am, not what I should or should not represent. When someone who was born in Vietnam comes up to me and tells me that I'm wrong to be who I am, that I'm "white-washed," I don't feel anger. I don't feel sadness, or resignation. I merely look at the person, smile, and leave them to their ignorant ways.

Like I said, I guess I'm lucky. All through high school, I never ran into anything like this. My friends were a mixture of all types of people. Then again, my main friends ended up being pretty much all white and asian. But I didn't deny contact with any one else. I didn't look down upon them (unless they were real jerks, but a jerk's a jerk, regardless of race). In college, however, it's different. I see the beginnings of segregation. I remember a few of the asian clubs I've seen. Here at Santa Clara, they're open to any one, asian or not, but few in the club are not asian. Elsewhere, such as at Berkeley, my cousin has come across people who look down on her merely because she doesn't have a lot of asian friends. As if the mere fact that she is asian means that she must have all asian friends, and those who don't are merely a shadow of what they should be. What they should be. What a phrase. I remember a Vietnamese girl who really liked her boyfriend, yet at the same time, actually looked down on him because he "wasn't truly Vietnamese." He was "all he should be." I guess it wasn't enough that he was himself. He had to be an entire country for her.

The asian ideal. The intelligent asian, plays piano and/or violin, total intellectual with little interests beyond that realm. The asian stereotype. Years earlier, people would give their lives to pull away from stereotypes, and now, people fight for them. They revel in them. They raise them to new heights. Such is the way of life. People fight for what they want, only to throw it away the moment they forget its value, the moment they forget what price they paid to gain it.

Well, that's all I want to say for right now. Looking back, I guess it kinda rambles on a little bit. Hehe... not quite the cohesive piece of work I intended to write, but... oh well. This is how it came out. Until next time, then. Guten Nacht.