As I was reading Laotian Teacher, Karmadiva’s post of “Why should we put up with racial discrimination,” which referred to an old article back in 2000 of “John McCain’s racist remark very troubling” On his campaign, Sen. John McCain told reporters, “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” … Contrary to McCain’s attempt to narrowly define “gook” to mean only his “sadistic” captors, this term has historically been used to describe all Asians.

There’re many good questions raised in her post, her very word “However, since it is targeting Asians, it is no big deal? Where is our “Al Sharpton” ? Who is going to stand up for the Asian America population? Just because we do not protest everything does not mean that we do not care how we are treated. As a member of the Asian community I find it unfair and disappointing that our feelings are not being considered and our opinions are not being heard. Are Asians underrepresented? Are we still invisible? Do people see us as a stepping stone? Do we give this impression that we are too accepting? Are we too nice? Are we indifferent?”

I know exactly what she is talking about and a lot of it has to do with how we perceived ourselves as well, just like I’m Laotian, I’m proud to tell people this, even though we might be one of the poorest countries, but really, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, that’s who I am. As for my blog, I can easily pass for a Thai blogger, obviously I wrote more about Thai because it’s mostly translated articles from Thai magazines, but I choose not to, I’m not ashamed of who I am, I kind of like the sound to it on the Internet that I’m a Laotian blogger, it’s a nice ring, in my opinion.

Sadly some Laotians don’t like to consider themselves Laotians, especially the ones that were born here. I knew of a young man that’s making a name for himself, his mom is part Thai, but was born in Laos, she considered herself Thai, even though she came to the US as a Laotian refugee, just like me, what’s wrong with telling people that you’re Laotian, that you’re a refugee, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, but that’s her choice in life and I think his mom’s mentality rubbed off on him, if you were to ask him, he is an American, and if were to ask for his nationality, then he is Thai. I believe this was what he told numerous magazines that interviewed him. Where is this thinking coming from, his parents, why Thai? Obviously ashamed to be Laotian is all I can think of.

I guess sometimes I don’t know how to react to people when they tell me that they’re American, when they obviously looked Asian. Just like the lady that made a comment on one of my posts that I wrote at LaoVoices, her very word, “And BTW, this was written by an American….. “, first thing that came to mind for most of us was that she is a white person, call me racist if you like; since I’m familiar with their organization and checked their staffs before writing about them, I knew she is Asian. Like in this case, what’d you think of an Asian person that wouldn’t even acknowledge that she’s Asian? She might be correct in the sense that she lives in America, and that she is an American citizen, but not politically correct in the sense that I think she should identify herself a bit more, such as Chinese American, Korean American, or Japanese American, etc.

If someone was to ask me of what I am, and my replied to them was, “I’m American”, the reaction that I’d get would be a confusing expression on their face, and they’d say, “No, I mean, what nationality are you?”, then I would say, “I’m Laotian”, but why go through the trouble of saying all that, what’s wrong with telling people that you’re Laotian to begin with. There might be an argument that what about the ones that were born here in the US or mixed, okay, then you’re Laotian American, would you be ashamed to tell people that your parents are Laotians, if not, then you shouldn’t be ashamed to tell people that you’re Laotian American, or American Born Laotian (ABL), just like some of my Chinese friends called themselves ABC, American Born Chinese.

I think Asians are represented well in Colleges, Universities, and offices (well paid job) in big cities, but where are their voices? My thought on this is that we’ve so many nationality, and not necessary identifying with one another. Just like some of the Hmong don’t like Laotians because of personal experiences and here we’re from the same country, Laos. One of my brother in-laws, he considered himself Chinese, and would feel insulted if we ever call him Vietnamese. He is one of the nicest people and you just can’t help but to love him, but he’s got his own personal reason and I’m not sure as to why he feels this way, his whole family feel the same way. Why did I think he is Vietnamese, he’s born in Vietnam, can speak the language, left the country during war time, came to the US as a Vietnamese refugee, but it’d be such an insult if we’d say that he is Vietnamese, and I can’t say that he likes Vietnamese, for many obvious reasons, he wouldn’t even tell people that he’s from Vietnam.

As for Americans, most of us must have heard this before, “All you Asians look alike”, do we feel insulted, I would assume some would, but as for me I don’t feel insulted because I can forgive ignorance, maybe we all look alike to them, but to say this to other group, you can bet that you’d hear things about it; most of us don’t get upset because we don’t carry chip on our shoulder or is it because some of us are Buddhist and were taught to walk the middle path in life.

So where’s our voice, we don’t seem to have a lot, and maybe because we want to be liked, and want to belong and to complaint about things would only draw attention to ourselves, or maybe the ones that have voice don’t considered themselves Asians anymore, because they’re Americans.