Page 21 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

INTRODUCTION

Poles, and Jews turned out to distinguish themselves more from the WASPS than
expected, as reflected pointedly in a 1972 book entitled The Rise of the Unmeltable
Ethnics (Novak 1972). A similar process took place in Australia, where incidentally
mass European immigration only began in the late 1940s, at least half a century
later than in the USA. At the same time, those previously excluded from national
belonging on the grounds of their ‘race’ – for example, black descendants of African
slaves in the USA and indigenous Aboriginal people in Australia – were at the
forefront of the struggle against racial discrimination and for their social, political
and cultural rights. In this ferment, any ideal or illusion of national-cultural
homogeneity – for which assimilation was thought to be a perfect mechanism –
could no longer be sustained. This process of unravelling was further accelerated
when the number of non-western, postcolonial migrants throughout Western
countries reached a critical mass.
Afro-Caribbeans, South Asians and other former members of the Empire had
started to enter Britain in the 1950s, resulting in substantial populations of what
are now called ‘Blacks and Asians’ in that country. Similar postcolonial migrations
have changed the make-up of other former colonial powers such as France and
the Netherlands. In European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, the
demand for cheap labour led them to import so-called ‘guest workers’ from
the peripheries of Europe such as Turkey and North Africa, many of whom have
become, several decades on, permanent residents with growing families. From the
mid-1960s onwards, New World countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia
progressively removed their racially discriminatory immigration laws, opening their
doors for non-whites, many of whom are from Asian countries. The end of the
Vietnam War propelled the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Indochinese
refugees, most of whom were given permission to start a new life in diverse parts
of the West. All these developments have massively altered the population make-
up of most Western countries: in no way could all these migrants, with all their
different languages, cultures, and looks, be absorbed into the dominant culture
without changing the latter irrevocably. Assimilation was dead. All these countries
– the wealthiest, most developed and powerful countries in the world – are today,
whether they officially acknowledge it or not, ‘multicultural states’ (Bennett 1998):
they all have to deal with the question of how to manage the difference and diversity
within their borders – as migrants from all corners of the globe continue to seek
entry precisely in a bid to get their share of Western prosperity.
It is in this de facto multiracial and multicultural West that the politics of ‘identity’
– which, after all, can only be enunciated in a world of difference – has acquired
an unprecedented currency. It was in the 1980s, when I was still living in Europe,
that my own notional Asianness had started to haunt me, as it were. In a social
atmosphere in which ‘who you are’ – in terms of gender, sexual orientation,
ethnicity or race – became an increasingly prominent pretext and motive for political
association and cultural self-assertion, it became inescapable for me to ‘declare
my interest’, so to speak. More and more people had begun to enquire about my
background. Despite my perfect Dutch and my assimilated lifestyle, people

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