Hard News: The meaning of a Banana
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OK, I've missed something somewhere... What is FOB? I thought it was Fall Out Boy, but although I can see calling someone after a vaguely emo band could be insulting, I wouldn't have called it racist...
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When I was at primary school 'Arab' was an abstract concept involving deserts & camels. 'Jew' was a derogatory term for someone who kept wanting a bit of your lunch. 'Chinese' was very exotic, and referred to sweet & sour wontons and chop suey.
Got me thinking about Ruth Park's autobiography of her early years, A Fence Around the Cuckoo. In depression-era Te Kuiti the universal pejorative, informed by World War 1 propaganda, was 'Hun'.
On account of his perceived overcharging, the local Chinese fruiterer was known as Ah Hun. -
FOB=Fresh Off Boat
Coconut!=Bounty Bar -
Who knows if I am officially qualified to comment, considering I am now 'European' (see change of address). But I always thought the name of the first conference was crappy.
To me, 'Banana' is still pejorative, because I actually have more mainlanders in my social network than a lot of NZ-borns do, and within our cultural language, it's pejorative - obviously so, as it's linguistically specific as 'bounty-bar'.
If people want to 'reclaim' the term, well, each to their own, but as we can see on the Skykiwi thread, it (the word, not the conference) hasn't actually helped bridge any gaps between Western born/'integrated' Chinese and new migrants/international students. The literal indication is that these Banana Conference people are 'white on the inside' and proud of it. So you can see why the mainland kids might take it as a statement of these 'Kiwi' Chinese being proud of having abandoned their heritage culture and turned white, rather than it being a positive statement about NZ-Chinese identity.
That's not the Banana-boosters' intention, but too bad. Identity is self-defined; but language doesn't exist in a vacuum... And if you want to actually acknowledge the importance or even existence of specific communities of concern to NZ-born Chinese identity, mainland Chinese migrants and students are the obvious place to start. It seems that 'Banana' starts off on the wrong foot, by dividing rather than uniting, if unintentionally.
So yeah, I still think it's a lame-o term to describe integrated or NZ-born Chinese. Except for the ones who really are bananas.
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To me, 'Banana' is still pejorative
Since it's two main references are to skin color it's not surprising people feel that way. It's not like there's only one yellow culture, or one white culture. And it's not like the color/ethnicity defines the culture anyway. Bagpipes set my teeth on edge.
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Identity is self-defined; but language doesn't exist in a vacuum.
another way to put that is; i choose my own identity, but my identity is worthless unless it has a group to support it.
so, che can claim to be whatever identity he wants. but, that claim is false unless che has people to recognise it.
the only person who thought idi amin was scottish was, you know, idi amin.
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The "Banana" label is pretty common, almost a little archaic even, I was talking to a buddy who lived in HK and Canada for 20 or 30 years and he used to hear it all the time. Then when he lived in the US "ABC" became the label of choice.
Go labels.
Speaking of which I tried explain the "NZ European" thing to some locals here and I got widely laughed at. Britain doesn't get such subtle distinctions it seems. It is all kind of moot tho, as now I call myself "White Other".
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as now I call myself "White Other".
I like that, it would have been quite an apt label for me in Japan.
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white other
Fantastic! Sounds like a title of some sort. Or code name. Brown Owl meet White Other.
Cheers
Y Tother.
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I know I shouldn't - cause this is grown up space and all - but.....
Y Tother
lol
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It is reflexive racism plain and simple. To be a racist you have to believe that races are different with a distinct way of thinking that is superior to others. The racist world view is in terms of skin tone that define a persons thoughts and actions.
Mind you, I like bagpipes.
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Mind you, I like bagpipes.
I think there is an academic case to be made for the superiority of the Scots. But only over their cousins south of the Tweed and it has nothing to do with skin colour or race.
Calvanism has its place.
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When my son was born in England my wife listed my race as "white - other" and wrote pakeha in the box. Lord knows what they thought of that in the statistics office.
I think I just used to refer to myself as white - british whenever the form asked the question.
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Now that's curious.
"Black" or "Yellow" would undoubtedly not be permitted as a description of nationality or race on any legal form-filling, so why is "White" (whether Other or not) considered acceptable?
My own race, incidentally, is Pinkish-Cream although none of my family speak Pinkish.
Bagpipes originated in Central Asia. They were economic migrants.
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I think I just used to refer to myself as white - british whenever the form asked the question
How about green-irish, use of colour to indicate religious heritage
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green-irish
my favoured state of intoxication.
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Is that also a hint as to the method of intoxication?
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No, more of an end state. The result of consuming something much darker in adequate quantities.
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Plainpalais, Geneva
Classy address!! All those lakefront cafes and the like.
I hope you get up into the mountains and see some of the Swiss (and French) countryside.
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well i get fed up with the racism my kids & myself face for not being "indian" enuf. i consider myself to be a kiwi who happens to have been born in india. the latter had nothing to do with me, so i don't see why i should have to embrace indian culture if i don't want to.
my children are born here. the only link they have with india is that they have relatives living there so go to visit them now and then. i'm not bringing my kids up to be "indian", although they have plenty of exposure to indian culture. i leave it to them to choose what aspects of nz or indian culture they want to take up, and try to keep my personal views to myself, so that i don't influence their choices too much. can't say i'm always successful, but i do try!
but i hate how some indians will treat us as inferior because we choose not to follow their cultural norms. it's not like i've broken any laws, ffs, and i would have thought that those people would at least respect the fact that i have thought deeply about who i want to be, and have made informed choices based on my own ethics and values.
but i hate it most when i see my kids being treated that way. i hate it when they are pressured to conform to practices or values that have little relevance or meaning to them, simply because it's supposed to be part of their heritage.
well as far as i'm concerned, culture is a living and changing thing; traditions were put in place for a reason and if that reason is no longer valid, then the tradition isn't either. and everyone has the right to rebel. our heritage is what we choose it to be, and mine is mostly kiwi, with a bit of indian when i feel like it. i think my cooking explains me best - a bizarre mix of east & west that somehow comes out tasting ok!
ok, rant over.
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well as far as i'm concerned, culture is a living and changing thing; traditions were put in place for a reason and if that reason is no longer valid, then the tradition isn't either. and everyone has the right to rebel.
bravo, anjum, bravo. Be it ethnic, national, family, or personal, I believe the very definition of culture is that it is dynamic and everchanging.
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i get fed up with the racism my kids & myself face for not being "indian" enuf.
Okay, back to the subject then will you! To me, the fundamental strategic error of the attempt to reclaim 'banana' is that: although Liu Shueng says it was a label that 'other people' called us, it was only a label that *other Chinese people* called us. So that's not really 'other people' is it? And weren't our annoying aunties in the home country the least of our problems anyway? Although 'more Chinese than thou' types can be annoying (I'm probably one of them at times) as can 'more Indian than thou' types, are they the primary source of racism experienced by those groups in the West? Reclaiming actual slurs like 'Chink' or 'Invader' would be a much closer parallel to 'Queer', 'N:(gger', 'hori', 'bitch' etc, but I guess that would be a less safe name for a conference.
I can only cope with the 'Bananas' in the conference name as an overtly ironic title, sort of like calling a conference for String Theorists within a Physics Department: "The Conference for those people in our department who are actually not Physicists, just dope-smoking Philosophers, and we don't like them either. So a good thing they're off on their own."
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although Liu Shueng says it was a label that 'other people' called us, it was only a label that *other Chinese people* called us. So that's not really 'other people' is it?
Not if you consider yourself to be Chinese. But if you are actually a Banana, then they are an 'other people'. Either way they are being rude, you said so yourself earlier. But I've heard the term from many a non-asian (it's not reserved only for Chinese IMHO), to describe their friends who grew up here. The only difference in usage is that it's not meant unkindly by the non-asians. So it's sort of the opposite of N>(gga, which seems only allowable from a member of the group. Bounty Bar or Potato seems more akin.
And no, of course the Banana-sayers are not a major source of oppression, since they are almost always a minority with little influence. That's what they're bitter about, why they're saying Banana.
I personally find it an amusing term, it springs to mind whenever I see my Japanese mechanic eating a meat pie. But the one time I hinted at it he giggled and said "No, meat pie is nice, but Holden still total shit".
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but i hate how some indians will treat us as inferior because we choose not to follow their cultural norms.
Because, after all, the norms of a culture should be followed uncritically. You should treat Dalits like shit and your wive should immolate herself if you die before her[1], and I should be kicking the shit out of anyone who has the surname of Campbell or is English. I mean, the world would be a better place, right?
(And, in the grand scheme of things, there's something ironic about, say, mainland Han Chinese complaining about opression; more often the guilty party than the victim given a longer view of history.)
[1] Yes, yes, I'm mocking a specific set of Indian traditions that don't apply to many of the various cultural groups from the subcontinet.
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When I talked to Mr Brown in Singapore recently, we got onto the conference, and he expected he was going to find it interesting because he wasn't used to thinking about being Chinese: it was just life.
(Although I did have a taxi driver who seemed extremely aware of being Malaysian, and assiduously pointed out all the places the Malays got to first.)
Which might explain the slightly hectoring tone of some of the SkyKiwi comments. When you do got somewhere where you're the other, it's inevitable that ideas about identity are going to be cast in sharper focus.
We (as it says on the census form) European New Zealanders usually do that when we pop "home" to Britain. Even though we're not all that different, we get an increased sense of not actually being European. Well I did, anyway.
How 'bout you, Tze Ming? When you're in China, do you feel more or less Chinese?
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