“Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life” – Chapter 10: Tales of an Asiatic Geek Girl
Mimi Nguyen
This chapter from the Technicolor book is an interesting one. There is a strong use of identity politics made by Nguyen, which is something I can definitely say I typically do not enjoy reading. I usually don’t like to start off posts so negatively, but I think my inquisition can rectify that . Identity politics only take someone so far. I could easily make this post about how I am an Asian-American woman as well, and then everything would fit into the liberal box at university.
But that’s not what I am going to do. In the spirit of Nguyen’s impulse to go against norms, here I write this week’s post. The quote I will be zeroing in on today pulls on the idea of Asian women fitting into popular discourse:
“…investigating the thousands of feminist sites and listings yielded little in the way of links or resources for women of color, let alone asian america women…there’s little intersection anywhere.”
Nguyen, 183
I will focus on the idea of intersection. She’s right. There is little intersection of many liberal movements of today’s age – the pro-choice movement, the environmentalist movement, the anti-gun movement, the feminist movement etc. All of those movements are predominantly white. I think it seems this way because there are many white people in these movements that feel that they have to apologize for being white, and so they do so very loudly, much to people like my dismay. The reason other races don’t usually scream this much is because there is an automatic (illogical and wrong) assumption that if you aren’t white, you’re liberal.
To add my own perspective, many people often assume that I hold political beliefs that align with a progressive agenda. As some of you can probably tell just from being in class with me over the past month (yes, it has only been a month…I can’t believe it either), that is simply not the case. As a sidenote, this connects to the part of the reading where Nguyen says that she has to hunt for people who
“…aren’t afraid to ‘confess’ to feminist or radical sentiments.”
184
Often, I feel as though I have to “come out” as conservative in a similar way that people who identify as Queer come out. It’s actually more “radical” to come out as a conservative or traditionalist these days than to come out as Queer, but I digress. (Don’t get me wrong, I am glad society is more accepting, but at the same time…it’s a conditional acceptance.)
So my question for this week is this: Do you think it is actually radical anymore to come out as a strong, lesbian feminist? If yes, what do you think Nguyen adds to the discourse and do you think it helps or hurts the progressive ideology? If no, I would agree, but I would just ask that you explain why (to your comfort level).
A second question because I think the post warrants it: Do you think identity politics erases individuality? (Last week we talked about how every individual has a unique story, so I’m hinting that identity politics might make many people look the same.)
May you experience love and light!
Shameless plug: Check out my latest blog post on my personal blog bc my writer’s block was finally lifted, and I felt like I needed to share that because I was talking to Dr. Sawyer and Matt about it last time! www.amusingwriter.blog/surrender
Theresa
Caritas et Lux 
I think these are great questions to think about! I think that it continues to be radical as long as we live in a society that condemns women for expressing their sexuality, even though, yes, more people do come out publicly, there are still areas within the U.S where gay women are vulnerable, like Nguyen they are viciously attacked online because they dare break this illusion of a heteronormative culture. In other parts of the world, its even more radical and dangerous. This also ties in to the idea “abstract citizenship,” in terms of saying they should hide their sexual orientation, but to add on just because they are publicly coming out doesn’t mean that’s all that they are yet people only focus on this one identity. One of the problems of “abstract citizenship” is that if you do share your identity, one that doesn’t fit into the dominant cultural identity, people react as if we are doing it to bring attention to ourselves, which isn’t really the case. Mimi Nguyen is saying that she’s Asian American and she has a story too, but people focus on the Asian American and close their ears and eyes to the actual bulk of her story. I think this ties in to your second question; Do you think identity politics erases individuality? Other people try to erase your individuality once you give your identity politics, through stereotypes and through other ways but that doesn’t mean it actually does erase your individuality. Because of this I think identity politics add to individuality. For example, I identify as a woman. That is only one word that describes me, but it adds something and the more identities I take on they tell you a little more about me, that in turn helps me as I tell my own story and share my own experiences, but it’s important that I be allowed to tell my story. They sort of serves as “supporting characters,” I like to think of it as a web, with my name in the middle, if this makes sense. I think we are sometimes afraid of labels or identity politics and I feel like that is the core of Mimi Nguyen’s essay. Abstract citizenship makes us feel that we should erase or hide our identity politics because not doing so breaks the illusion of a dominant white culture. This idea of being “colorblind” erases individuality more than identity politics. In reality we should be able to say what our identities are without it creating conflict, if you read Mimi’s work and all you can think about is her Asian American identity, that shows a problem within society and not her, she’s not sharing this identity to cause mayhem but she should be allowed to share it nonetheless.
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