Skip to content

1 Comment

  1. Fred Thornton
    November 19, 2021 @ 11:25 am

    The truly Progressive folks would gain a lot if they could (somehow) talk their fauxLiberal shock troops into making one small change that would make a very large difference in how things play through. What change? Get them to say “American of Asia” rather than “Asian Americans.”

    Why? Because “Americans of Asia” says those peoples chose to be American, their choice, a matter of personal freedom. Saying “Asian Americans” says they are Asian people who live on the North American continent, by assumption in the United States of America. And again, why? Because in the English language it is convention to put the more important descriptor, the more pertinent and powerful adjective, at the beginning of the structure.

    This is a very, very big deal when the focus of the dialog is the subject of integration and synthesis. To say “American of Asia” says the objective is to augment and enlarge what it is to be American (a singular definition and very much a work in progress) while saying “Asian American” says the objective is to dilute into nonexistence the concept of American by merging it into the ancient multicultural structures found on the Asian continent. The order the two words appear in is a subtle thing of immense power when considered against the context of the language in service.

    Of course, this isn’t likely to happen.

    The fauxLiberal are very fond of their “identity politics”, and with good cause. A defining characteristic of the fauxLiberal is that at the individual level the vast majority of them are seeking a balm and an anesthetic for the acute insecure discomfort created by the limitations of attempting an individual personality based on a collective social definition. They, more than anyone else, cannot allow discrimination and bias to become relics of the past. Without those forces in play and empowered they’d have nowhere to find people to provide the company that misery always craves. The most basic definition of what it is to be an “American” (derived from any heritage on the planet) is totally lethal to their chosen form of self identity.

Watchman, what of the night?