The Accidental Asian

In chapter three of The Accidental Asian: Note of a Native Speaker, I am presented profoundly to Liu’s elution of systematic categorizing system. If in the previous chapters, Liu spends time talking about the Chinese expectation as well as his own identity, in this chapter, he discusses the Asian American race in general. According to him, race is an outcome of self-love, on a par with sin. His emphasis of different peoples rather than the common traits in page 72 is strongly proving that race looks at the covering and backgrounds of people. To Liu, race is also a struggle, which is not only about inherent skin color, but also the domination of others. For example, Liu explains that non-white discrimination gives us a twist of discourse race,

“To celebrate race is to nourish it, to sustain it”, those words are from the author, which leave a deep impression on me about the way the racial group of people develop race themselves. Next, Liu continues supporting his theory by giving an example of gay culture. He states that in order to be a normal person, a real gay culture is not displaying. But then the homosexual oppose against the mainstream assimilation. They begin celebrating their subculture as a drastic victory. However, it is a tragedy, and draws to identity politics, in which people of a particular social background form and celebrate their own exclusive political viewpoints or cultures; and consequently, they are alienated from the standard culture. The identity politics is a dominated tool to generalize all the people’s views and indirectly force them to return to a hideaway, in the homosexual community, it is called homophobia. From Liu’s explanation, as a reader, I strongly disagree with the idea of identity politics in the gay culture. I am not saying that the homosexual need to take pride in themselves in public, but to receive respect from other people. Opinion oppression is even crueler than discrimination; it suppresses the natural development of personality, behavior, and psychology. If you are limited to grown and

Before reading this chapter, I simply assume that racism is the distinguishing of characteristic specific to one particular race. But in chapter three, the author shapes my view of racial discrimination. It is your fault to create racism, not the other people’s. He explains the collectivity of the ethnic minority groups. The ethnic groups from Asia accidentally discard their uniqueness, and assimilate their identities with the other Asians. Or sometimes, they get rid of their own customs and fuse themselves with the mythologies by the white. By discussing the other cause of racism, Eric Liu has opened my mind and drawn me into a new direction of thinking about the social issue. From this chapter, I am not only learning more about racism, but also about the ethnic people’s psychology: they are pressed down too much by stereotypes, and consequently, they will see them as the universal truth. And at the end of this chapter, I am also impressed that Liu advocates the Asian students to get involved in improving their political view. However, after imploring them to be conscious of the world’s news, the Asian students focus on each other, tell tales, and have different conversations. And afterwards, Liu is still Asian by accident, feeling pigeon-holed among the Asian