Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Archive for the ‘Stereotype Analysis’ Category

If you’ve spent any amount of time in a classroom with young Asian people, you’re familiar with their penchant for spinning pens (interchangeably known as “pen flipping” or “pen twirling”). And, sooner or later, you’ve wondered what gives.

So, why do they love it so much and why are they so good at it? Even though other races engage in the practice, nobody comes close to matching Asian dedication and skill.

The Reasons Behind Asian Pen Spinning

1. Natural Extension of Chopstick Manipulation Skills

There’s no question that using thin, stick-like objects to pick up food, beginning in early childhood, predisposes Asian people to skillful manipulation of similar objects (e.g., pens and pencils). If you can use two sticks to grab a grain of rice, you can easily spin a single, shorter stick in intricate patterns.

2. Non-Threatening Form of Expression and Entertainment

Video games and pen spinning are things you can do at home without stressing out your smothering parents, and incurring their notorious wrath in the process. It’s not surprising Asians excel at both. But pen spinning has the added advantages of silence and portability (i.e., you can do it in class).

3. Asian Weapons Heritage

As with the Chopstick Hypothesis, traditional Asian weapons (e.g., nunchaku) also encourage every form of twirling and twisting of stick-objects.

4. Slender, Adroit Asian Fingers

The same physical feature that helps Asians become great piano players–and skilled detail-workers in Chinese factories–makes them master pen spinners in-the-making.

5. Spend a Lot of Time with Writing Utensils in Their Hands

Smothering parents are at the root of a lot of Asian behavior. Thanks again to their constant pressure–this time to get into one of the Historically Asian Colleges¹–kids spend a lot of time doing math homework, or at least pretending to. What else are you going to do with that idle time and mind?

¹ West of the Mississippi: one of the University of California campuses, especially Berkeley and Los Angeles (UCLA).

I’m always amused when someone is shocked or outraged by people just doing the things they’re predisposed to doing. Look, don’t get passive-aggressively mad at the intimidating black people sitting in front of you for talking through the whole movie. You should know better. Besides, if you’d actually stop and listen to them, you’d realize their commentary is enhancing whatever sorry movie you’re watching anyway.

A lot of us are convinced that we pick and choose everything we do. When, in reality, we can’t help but do some shit. Bring a White girl to a really good concert and try to get her to not “woo” and you’ll see what I mean.

Such is the case with IKEA furniture and Europeans.

For most of us, IKEA is a cheap-ass place to pick up planks of particle board, that we eventually assemble into disposable furniture by deciphering the hieroglyphics in the crappy instruction manual. Some of the stuff is so hilariously modern and abstract, that you buy it because it just looks interesting in the apartment you share with your 16 other roommates. But eventually, you get old–or rich–enough to leave the shit out on the sidewalk and get some real, adult furniture.

Europeans don’t see it that way. For them, an oversized red plastic bubble is a chair. So IKEA, for them, is a just another furniture store.

I learned this lesson a few years ago from these FOB Czech people I knew. They bragged, non-stop for like three weeks, about their “fancy new furniture” and how I had to come over and see it. When I finally did, their house looked like the IKEA showroom. Thinking they were playing some sort of strange Eastern European prank on me, I asked, with as-straight-a-face as I could muster: “is this from…IKEA?” They laughed in my face, and told me it was actually from some frou-frou European furniture store. But, guess what: It. Was. The. Same. Exact. Shit.

If that doesn’t convince you, read this story about a wealthy Icelandic couple that’s being sued for installing a “cheap IKEA kitchen” into a fancy apartment they rented (to the tune of 300,000 smackers) in a “swank hotel in New York.”

The lawsuit filed in Manhattan Wednesday alleges that Jon Asgeir Johannesson and his wife installed an “ugly” kitchen from the low-cost household furnishings store into the 16th-floor apartment at the Gramercy Park Hotel.

…the lawsuit claims the kitchen was unsuitable for such a luxurious home.

Whoever’s suing should have known better.

If you’re like me, you tune into the Winter Olympics to watch sports you wouldn’t otherwise know existed and then only think about every four years, when they’re suddenly all over your beautiful hi-def TV. “Curling” and “Skeleton” mean entirely different things in Los Angeles.

One such sport for me is Speed Skating. I never watch it, but when it’s on, I’m totally glued to it. And, all of a sudden—if you’re lucky enough to be watching it with me–I’m an “expert” that’s been “following it for years.”

This weekend, I was watching the Short Track Speed Skating 1500m finals, when I made an observation that I hadn’t really made before. A majority of the skaters were Asian. Alone, three of the six finalists were Korean. Even the Americans were half Asian. With Apolo Ohno (half-Japanese) and J.R. Celski (half-Filipino) representing the U.S. in the race, five out of six people on the track were at least part-Asian. That’s 83 percent–and seemed noteworthy.

Another Asian Sweep.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Asians seem to thrive on ice. Kristi Yamaguchi. Michelle Kwan. The list goes on.

So what gives? For obvious reasons, none of the broadcasters are going to point it out or, worse, try to explain it–even though it was begging for an explanation, and that explanation is quite simple.

At its core, ice skating is (very) skilled foot dragging. You’re basically shuffling your feet, but quickly and elaborately–and on skates. Sure, you lift your feet here and there, but not that much. And, for reasons we’ve explored before, Asians are absolute naturals at this.

No one gets more practice, in their daily life, at dragging their feet than Asian people. It’s not surprising they’ve perfected it to world-champion levels.

A lot of bad-ass shit that starts on the mean streets of the ethnic world, dies a slow death in the suburban cul-de-sacs of the mainstream. By the time young-ish white girls start doing it, you know the fangs on the tiger have been filed down to rounded nubs. Then, one day, you hear it coming out of a middle-aged lady’s mouth on an idiotic sitcom and you know it’s all over.

I’ve seen this process repeated with Swiss-clockwork precision on tons of urban, ethnic (often black) language and practices including: Snoop Dogg lingo (fo’ shizzle),” talk to the hand,” “no they didn’t,” the raise the roof palms-up gesture, the cabbage patch dance, corn rows, etc.

A recent casualty to this trend has been the distended-lip, kissy face pioneered by Latino men all over the world to discretely point to things without using their hands or, similarly, by black men to express intrigue or curiosity.

Cuba Gooding demonstrates his intrigue and curiosity.

But a deadly cocktail of digital cameras, picture texts, and social networking has rendered the once-useful gesture into the over-abused, default pose for lame self portraits (accompanied by the raised, extended arm toward the camera) or a generic, catch-all “cutesy” face for party-atmosphere group shots.

Aw, djeah, boy-ee. Don't be frontin'. Keep it real, like me.

So, it’s with great regret that I bid goodbye to the mighty kissy face. For decades, you served us well, my old friend.

Even though everyone has surely noticed it by now, nobody has been able to conclusively determine why an overwhelming majority of Asian people, especially girls, routinely drag their feet when walking.

Asian shuffling is unmistakable indoors, but often still audible outside—especially with groups, and the more egregious individual cases. It’s not confined to any particular age group, though it seems to be more common in the Northern Asians (Koreans, Chinese, Japanese) than in the Southeast Asians (e.g., Filipinos).

Unsatisfied with the few speculative hypotheses that exist on this subject, I resolved to come up with a better explanation for this phenomenon. This is the product of that “research.”

Three Theories for Asian Shuffling

1. Active minds. Lazy bodies.

The human body has a finite number of resources. In Asian people, many of those resources are dedicated to the higher faculties, the brain functions—working out math problems, reaching new heights in online gaming, stressing out about your parents’ ever-smothering pressures. With the mind working overtime, the body gets fewer resources.

2. Collectively tired from working so hard, being so pressured.

School all day, after-school tutoring, piano lessons, violin lessons, Calculus homework, helping out at the family business—those things all add up. And when you’re that tired, things like a deliberate, heel-to-toe gait go by the wayside.

3. Weird walking habits from years of wearing slippers, or tube socks, in the house.

I knew an Asian guy in junior high school that stepped on the backs of all of his shoes to make them, functionally, into slippers. It didn’t matter what kind of shoe it was, or how expensive they were, he wore them all like a pair of house shoes. Remarkably, he could play several sports like that and never have a shoe slip off.

If you’ve ever worn slippers, you know there’s a specific way to walk in them. It’s a forward-leaning “foot drag and shuffle.” You still lift your feet, but not as much. There’s always a little contact with the floor. This is very different than walking around in flip-flops (previously known as “thongs,” until the G-string mysteriously appropriated the name). With flip-flops, you have the aid of the toe-thong, which turns your motion into more of a “lift and slap.” This is why White Girls don’t drag their feet.

I’m sure this guy I knew, like many Asian people, wore slippers in the house. In fact, he was so used to it, that he felt compelled to replicate it outside of his home. Asian people with less of this impulse, wear their shoes normally on the outside. But, years and years of wearing slippers in the house—and unwittingly practicing the “foot drag and shuffle”—make walking any other way inconvenient, if not impossible.

A few weeks ago, this screen capture hit the internet like gangbusters. It inspired a wide range of reactions from “no way” to “oh snap.” The big question was whether it was legitimate racist programming embedded deep in the shag of the Google search algorithm or just another clever Photoshop hoax.

Oh snap.

We may never know the truth—since Google reportedly fixed the problem shortly after word got out. But the whole controversy got me thinking about ethnic people’s unique relationship to their cars—especially in our urban centers. For reasons that remain largely a mystery to most, ethnic youth seem to have a special fondness for after-market parts and accessories. If someone stole your car, and kept it, a reasonably keen eye could discern the degree and hue of ethnicity of the perpetrator, simply from the “modifications” you found on the car. Cars, it seems, can tell you quite a bit about a person—if you know what to look for.

Too fast, too furious.

Hollywood capitalized on the ethnic car phenomenon with the Fast and Furious franchise, featuring a largely ambiguously-ethnic cast, including the king of that group—Vin Diesel. I still haven’t succeeded at sitting all the way through any of the installments, but word has it that they devoted an entire one (Tokyo Drift) to Asian people. Dave Chappelle famously addressed Latinos’ fondness for animal prints in his Lost Episodes. And every other hip-hop video catalogs black people’s undying love for the mighty Escalade.

I’ve realized that we can potentially learn a lot by paying a little more attention to what people are driving. The first in the series: the Volkwagon Jetta.