Ms. Understanding [p.2]

Here, you are in a little bit of a pickle: in addition to the family issue, you also have the generational, cultural and hierarchical issues to overcome. Culturally, your mom will more often than not believe she knows what is best, and since you will forever be her baby, her need to guide and dictate will outweigh her ability to let you go.

I know, you’ve seen panoplies of mother-daughter relationships where Mom respects Daughter and heated discussions end with hugs and mutual promises to do better. But, since most of us do not live in Lifetime Television for Women episodes, the reality is that, and this is especially true of Asian families, raising your voice in disagreement with your mother will be construed as disrespect which will simply further the chasm of misunderstanding between you two.

If you believe you’ve tried all that you can to understand your mother’s point of view and you’ve conveyed to her your need to be treated fairly, and she still treats you like a red-headed stepchild, then you need to quit. Ease the transition by finding yourself a worthy replacement and break the news to her. Yes, relations will be as warm as the Clintons’ marital bed, and your guilt will consume you for a while, but after you’ve finally extricated yourself from an unhealthy business arrangement you’ll find the real relationship worth staying for.

Dear Ms. Understanding,
I’m a full-blooded White American—some would call me a Cracker—and I want to know if you think it’s that weird for me to like Asian things. My friends and family think it is. I just prefer Asian women to other ethnicities, Asian music to American music and Asian food rocks. At some point, I also want to learn Chinese and maybe Thai. So do you think my love for Asian things is weird too? Cracker-Jack

Dear Cracker-Jack,
Things I find weird: people who run in front of butt-goring bulls for the sake of “tradition,” women who wear Bebe track suits with full make-up to the gym and think they’re fooling people into believing they’re really there to, you know, work out, and people who tote around little puppies no larger than lunch. Seriously? Do you feel cool when your trembling, little, confused canine pees inside your over-priced, mass-produced, just-as-good-as-counterfeit Louis Vuitton? I mean, really.

So by my measurement of outre behavior, your affinity for all things Asian doesn’t really register as something that would stone me out of my gourd. I’m more interested in the reason behind your proclivity than your proclivity itself.

For example, if you simply prefer the lighter taste of Asian cuisine to the heavier taste of American food, then that’s a logical basis for the declaration of your preference. However, if you were to say that because you enjoy Asian food and because you’d rather get jiggy with a Lynda Trang Ñaøi cover than The Black Eyed Peas, that you therefore prefer Asian women to our occidental counterparts, then you wouldn’t necessarily be labeled weird, but you would be considered a fraud.

The point is announcing that you like something simply because it belongs to an ethnicity isn’t convincing. In fact, it’s kind of, sort of, well, asinine. Like what you like, learn what you wanna learn, but do it because it truly fulfills something inside of you, not just because it would be a cool thing to claim. You follow?