Am I a Twinkie or a banana? ‘Cause I’m not Fresh off the Boat

PHOTO VIA iSTOCK

What do a Twinkie and a banana have in common? OK, there is the fact that the delectable cake originally boasted a banana-crème filling and both are yellow on the outside and white on the inside.

Like an Asian-American!

Well, some – mostly the ones who are more Westernized in culture, speech and dress, not those who still look, talk and dress like Asians in Asia. We’ll get to them soon.

“Twinkie” even made it into Urban Dictionary, a Web guide to slang words and phrases:
“An Asian person who is either adopted or living in a white community. Hence, yellow on the outside and white on the inside.”
Or, the definition that works for the purpose of this entry:
“Someone who is Asian that acts more like a white person than an Asian person.”

Eddie Kim, a 20-year-old Korean-American junior at the University of Illinois, backs these definitions with his own: “Someone more accustomed to the American culture.”

If Twinkies, bananas – even whitewashed — describe the more assimilated Asian-Americans who speak without noticeable accents and sport American clothing trends, then FOBs, or “Fresh off the Boats” are the more-ethnic men and women who retain their cultural traits.

Kim defines the FOB as, “someone, probably like an immigrant student who came from Korea, who can’t speak English fluently and usually hangs out with other FOBs.”

Anyone offended by all this?

First of all, I don’t see myself represented in these terms. I’m a Korean-American, born and raised in the States, but I’m not a Twinkie. I converse quite comfortably with adults in Korean. I also regularly crave Korean food – the more pungent the better. But I’m not a FOB either. I’d definitely feel out of place in Korea, where my textbook Korean and L.A. tan would be awkwardly conspicuous.

And I’ve a hunch I’m not the only Asian-American 20-something who feels this way. Are we the bicultural norm? Or, should we coin a term for ourselves? Something that conjures up images of yellow blended with white? Scrambled eggs? Buttered popcorn?

Kim says he and his friends, self-proclaimed Twinkies, use these terms mostly in jest and entirely among themselves. And he says even out of jest, he wouldn’t find them offensive.

But the deeper issue at hand is our inclination to create labels, which, intentional or not, creates a social hierarchy among Asian-Americans. And for every person in the room who gets the joke, I’d imagine there’s another one who doesn’t.

Karen Pyke is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside. She and Tran Dang co-published “FOB” and “Whitewashed”: Identity and Internalized Racism Among Second Generation Asian-Americans in 2003.

Whoa. Racism?

Definitely. Pyke and Dang conducted 184 in-depth interviews with grown children of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants to explore how they use terms such as “FOB” and “whitewashed” to emerge superior to others by casting fellow Asian-Americans as either “too ethnic” or “too assimilated.”

What they observed was that Asian-Americans devise these terms and give them definitions to differentiate themselves from an otherwise homogeneous group of foreigners. And in so doing, Pyke and Tran suggest that it fuels the internalization of the white mainstream’s racial biases.

“You see this over and over and over,” Pyke said of the phenomenon of an “oppressed group” responding to stereotypes. She added that she was shocked to see how frequently and oftentimes glibly these terms were used in her conversations with respondents.

“It’s an assumption that people of color are good at resisting racism,” she said.

Pyke and Tran found the sentiments ran both ways. Some respondents discredited fellow Asian-Americans who perpetuated negative stereotypes of Asians, while others discredited those who tried to merge into the white mainstream.

So the real culprit, according to the study, is the “tenacity of racism,” which causes Asian-Americans and other racial minorities to perpetuate the notion that some assimilation is desirable but complete assimilation is unattainable. Put simply, it makes one a wannabe or a sellout.

And although the study revealed that few respondents found the use of such terms derogatory among themselves, it makes me think twice before I call an acquaintance a Twinkie or my exchange student roommate in New York a FOB.

“Hey, I want you to meet my Twinkie friend.” It’s also pretty tacky.

And after all, wouldn’t using these to identify every Asian-American on the block give fair license to use other disparaging, potentially more harmful racial labels?