Covering_ The Hidden Assault on American Civil Rights - Kenji Yoshino [54]
But then I become puzzled. I could, with minor revisions, sign my name to this list. This suggests I have covered my own Asian-American identity as much as I have covered my gay one. Yet these two forms of covering feel different. I regret covering my gay identity—refusing Paul’s extended hand or abstaining from gay activism. Contemplating my racial covering behaviors incites no such self-recrimination. It strikes me that I, like Liu, am an “accidental Asian”—someone who only “happens to be” Asian.
I believe this country is in the grip of white supremacy as it is in the grip of heteronormativity. So why is it I am so comfortable covering my Asian identity? Is it because Asians are more accepted than gays? Is it because I have always had a place to elaborate my racial self? Is it because racial covering does not feel like a response based on fear?
Like many of my colleagues, I sometimes teach seminars to puzzle through problems. A student once posted a mock course description titled “Law and Me,” spoofing the golden thread of narcissism that ravels through our pedagogy. As a student, though, I always welcomed engagements in which the professor was willing to risk transformation. So I teach a seminar to explore the relationship between assimilation and discrimination across race, sex, orientation, and religion.
I give my twelve students Liu’s list. Julie, an Asian-American woman, says she is struck by the grammar of the sentences. She points out that each sentence begins with the word “I,” that each takes Liu as its subject and not as its object, and that each is declarative and unhedged by qualifiers. This sense of agency, she continues, extends to content—“I am a member of several exclusive institutions,” “I expect my voice to be heard.” But then she notes this power comes at a price. She says these statements can be paired like contracts—“If you let me into ‘the inner sanctums of political power,’ I will not be ‘too ethnic.’ ” “If you let me be a ‘producer of the culture,’ I will ‘not mind how white television casts are.’ ” This, she says, is the deal—if you want to be central, assimilate to the white norm.
I ask the class what they think of this bargain. Jean, also an Asian-American woman, takes Liu to task for being a “banana,” an Asian who is yellow on the outside but white on the inside. She thinks Liu is in denial, as she cannot imagine any self-respecting minority could remain untroubled by the whiteness of television. This comment engenders a murmur of disagreement. She retorts that we need not speculate about whether denial is occurring, as Liu says on the list that he has never been a victim of blatant discrimination, but says elsewhere in the book that he grew up being called “chink.” She says it bothers her that he thinks any form of English could be “unaccented,” and that she thinks of him as an Uncle Tom.
I look at Jean more closely. She has taken a class with me before, in which she said almost nothing, and turned in a perfect exam. What startles me is the passion in her voice. In this class, she will begin a paper, which will later be published. The paper argues that Asian-Americans occupy a kind of closet, in which attributes associated with our culture must be muted in the public sphere. Actors who have made it into the mainstream—such as Keanu Reeves or Dean Cain—closet their racial difference in their very bodies, downplaying their Asian ancestry. Other prominent Asian-Americans, like Liu, cabin their ethnicity in the private spaces of their homes. I read her paper as a primer on Asian covering, and I am startled at how closely it describes my own experience.
Like Robin Shahar, Jean kindles my conscience. I still find many items on Liu’s list—the gourmet greens, the suede shoes, the expectation my voice will be heard—unproblematic. Others look more suspect when I revisit them. I realize I accept