#DWP

The first thought I need get out is how satisfying the party scene was in Dear White People.

Spoiler alert.

Spoiler alert.

I guess I already spoiled something.

Spoiler alert.

The minute Lionel pushed the speakers off the stage my mind inverted with dopamine as it does when I daydream about setting fire to kimono halloween costumes and the phrase “honorary Whites.”  This was the scene I didn’t know I’d been looking for as I walked into the Arclight.  This was the moment I mulled over as I got into my car and drove home through the cluster that is Hollywood on a friday night.

And as I made that drive I laid out my autopsy.  Writer Justin Simien’s approach to the story, a complex throwback in which no one can claim to wholly “do the right thing,” allows us to live out the fantasy of confronting racism while armed with the words and the people to kick ass.  Not only is Sam armed with rad ideology, comfortable in firm action, and laced on point (Coco throws out a Lisa Bonet joke, and to be real this movie is going to be replacing A Different World in my Cosby headcanon), but she has backup in the form of her house and organizing community.

Armed with those tools, she is able to cut down the son of the school president in two minutes and expose underlying racism in the click of a mouse.  It’s beautiful, it’s simple in its complexity, and all and all it is satisfying.  It’s the movie we’ve all wanted to see.

So as an Asian American who has always kept an eye on Asian American media and discourse, I am left with the logical next question: What would the Asian American “Dear White People” look like?

Now before we go anywhere, we can never compare weights.  The burdens held by Black folks are very different than the burdens held by Asian American folks.  Our histories of oppression, struggle, and “privileges” have intersected, but have existed in very different arenas.

So as I pulled into Koreatown off the 101, thinking through what we would say to White people, what questions we would ask of ourselves, and how logistically we would even start the movie, it occurred to me that before we can get to “Dear White People” we would need to start with “Dear Asian America.”

The creation of “Asian American,” as a term, is credited to Prof. Yuji Ichioka.  The word has been adopted for many contexts and uses, but it was first coined as a self-determined identifier in a political and communal sense.

This term, while great as shorthand, is inadequate to address the full breadth of our community.  Asia, as a concept, only exists in the eyes of the Western gaze; our homelands do not traditionally recognize that some 50 countries have a link beyond an arbitrary continental border.  So when we discuss “Asian America” (not even to introduce the “Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian” communities which are often haphazardly and shamelessly appended by Asian American non-profits as a funding tactic) we are talking about a relatively absurd designation.

So where does that leave us then?  Why even consider the term “Asian America” as useful?

When we are able to accept the limits of “Asian America,” this is when we are able to likewise build with our fellow explorers.  If we can understand that this cage we have built as a defense mechanism can serve as an organizing —and ultimately empowerment— tool, we can find ways to advocate for our own communities, work toward our shared hopes, and use the tools we have built individually to collectively push speakers from stages and take down the system that has cornered us all in.

In thinking about “Dear White People,” if our community is to continue analyzing our complicated relationship to Whiteness (a conversation we have been going in circles on since we immigrated), like the BSU slackjawing past Sam and her White boyfriend, we too need to be open about our dysfunction and willing to dialogue amongst ourselves.

Like a good Tumblr takedown, the party scene was satisfying beyond compare as it expressed a common element of confrontation that so many of us, publicly or not, fantasize for ourselves.  Will there be an Asian American “Dear White People?” Perhaps it is being made right now.  Perhaps it has already been made.  But above all, I hope there is conversation leading us towards open, direct, community-wide dialogue about what we mean when we claim “Asian America.”

As impossible as that may seem.