| What's big and what's new is how unwilling many new immigrants are to let go of their elegant languages, their fragrant foods, their ancient worship. We no longer need to cut off our tongues, our legs, or our pasts. Yesterday, I had dinner with an energetic Venezueleo, a funny Filipino, a grumpy Chinese, and an African American lady singing along to Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight (and her Pips). Music fell on us like a '60s soul-pop rainstorm. Infectious. Happy. I had dinner with these four folks -- four shades of brown, from rice chaff to rich chocolate -- but in truth, only I was eating. All the rest were working. And working real hard, too. Our bar man came to Milwaukee from Caracas; he came to the cafe right after his west-side software-programmer job. My Filipino bud works at another restaurant, early morning till mid-afternoon at a nice downtown Spaghetti shop. The Black sister lives in that neighborhood. Crabby old Mr. Hong Kong cooks and owns the place. I can't say what that grump slips into his mushroom, onion, and Swiss burgers, but ask anyone: His platters are our precious planet's best. Olympic gold. What I'm saying is, folks come for the man's short menu and his earnest employees, not his awful attitude. We talk: his fellas, their customers, and me. It's what you do in ethnic cafes; the same for Asian markets. Sure, we eat. Sure, we shop. But it's in these packed public places that we hear who's breaking whose heart. It's where we learn which elder auntie has a new grand baby. It's where we speculate on why that monster Tsunami showed up right after Christmas. It's a marketplace of ideas as much as of crispy bok choi, stinky tilapia, and award-winning cheeseburgers. We trade in the kind of data not picked up by U.S. Census bureaucrats or Migration Policy Institute wonks, clipboards under arms. All the same, our data is full of meaning. We talk, us guys. We dream, we sigh. We laugh out loud. We get to know what will finally make the news years from now. What we know This era's emigres are not like our boys from the recent past. Late 19th-century Chinese came to do the railroads. Men only. When the work was done, America was done with them. Chinese competition was too much for struggling labor unions and jealous small businesses, so the U.S. cut them off. This gave Filipino fellas their big chance, but soon enough they set off the same alarms; and America sent them packing, too. Japanese guys got the next shot, and -- to avoid the interracial monkey business our Filipino brothers couldn't resist -- they got to bring their wives. But just as Japantowns got vibrant all over the West, we got Pearl Harbor; and President Roosevelt marched our Nikkei cousins off to desolate prison camps. U.S. immigration laws remained unabashedly racist until the mid-'60s, excluding Black, Brown, and Yellow alike, which accounts for Asians being such a miniscule minority today. American immigration policy opened up only four decades ago. Most of our 1970s Asians were political refugees. Many of us left home with just a couple of cardboard boxes; all of us left in tears. There was no home to go back to. During the 1980s, Asians sailed east to west as economic migrants. Poverty at home was crushing; the money in America was promising. An essential part of our resettlement was our readiness to give up our native cultures. Immigrants are a practical crew. Adjusting ourselves, acculturating our children, assimilating our children's children -- we did these things willingly. Necessarily. We do nothing halfway. Educational excellence, economic success, they're what we're all about. And we did well. A glance at 2000 Census tables confirms it. "Asians" (Delhi U. Hindus to highland Hmong) even outdid White folks in university attendance and home ownership. What is changing Butt this new bunch, our current immigrant cafe crowd, is different. Markedly so. My buds at our burger shop are not as eager to "give it up." They are a cagier cohort. They're not as anxious to become, umm. Well, err -- how do I put this, without hurting feelings? Okay, here goes (deep breath): Newcomers nowadays no longer rush to get White. Whew, there you go. I said it. White. By "White," I don't mean "American." Tidak. That we are. For sure. True-blue. Flag-waving. Just count all those Viet Kieu West Pointers; check out the Wisconsin's Korean American Republicans; remember who wrote the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, to say nothing about us itchy krachang ready to jump at a chance to recite the U.S. Constitution. As if it were a popular hit-single love song. No, what's big and what's new is how unwilling many new immigrants are to let go of their elegant languages, their fragrant foods, their ancient worship, and especially their family's future. We no longer need to cut off our tongues, our legs, or our pasts. While the U.S. Census Bureau reports that our country has hit a new foreign-born high of 12 percent (between a quarter-and-half of some West Coast cities), those stats say nothing about my Venezuelan bud who shifts between Spanish and English as easily as I surf between CNN and Nick-at-Night. This guy thinks Chicago is a Caracas suburb. Our Filipino friend calls Davao, not Milwaukee, his home. This cafe crowd, including crabby old Mr. Hong Kong, a guy who knows more about transnational capital than Alan Greenspan, is brokering a new internationalism in America. Our America. And not a moment too soon. Our schools, our social services and our juvenile-justice systems are simply failing to find a way to reduce all our vibrant colors and energetic cultures into one monotonous mainstream. Jails are full. Internationally, America's monoculturalism translates into unilateralism, a global strategy that can last only as long as we can afford to clobber all those nonbelievers into line. A pretty thin line. No, better than aaall that jailing, better than all those awesome aircraft carrier task groups sailing under angry steam is a Chinese cheeseburger, an icy Dutch Heineken poured by a Latino dreamer, and a Filipino brother in Islam whose bright girls get schooled by strict Catholic sisters. That, we have to humbly insist, is America. Our America. Asian Wiz's expanding American lexicon bok choi (Guangdong dialect): Chinese cabbage Yum. high number of foreign-born: please see U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau report at http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-551.pdf funny Filipino, grumpy Chinese: White folks' anxieties about racial stereotyping notwithstanding, ethnic humor among Asians is normal, even healthy -- perhaps as a way of relieving age-old tensions among equally disempowered communities. Take a deep breath, dude. It's oh-kay. krachang (Indo patois): a regular guy. stinky tilapia (pan-Asian): a tough farm-raised fish we love to eat but hate to fry in our own kitchens. tidak (Malay and Bahasa): nope. U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act (acronym for Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (I'm not making this up.) The Bush Administration, Justice Department's point man for this post-9/11 legislation is Georgetown University Professor Viet D. Dinh (aka Dinh Dong Phung Viet -- diacritical marks omitted, with apologies). Viet Kieu (Viet): overseas Viet. |
| Immigrant cafe by Polo Catalani |
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| Atty. Ronault 'Polo"' Catalani |