This photograph, which shows a young man with his bike in Los Angeles Koreatown, caught my attention yesterday not for the subject in the foreground but for what it shows in the background. The subject is standing in front of the Saehan Bank tower in Koreatown, and to the left you can see the BBCN Bank building.
Both Saehan and BBCN are Korean American banks headquartered in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. The fact that both have huge office towers along Wilshire Boulevard, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, really speaks to Korean American buying power and the size of their ethnic economy.
Of course, the (literal) stature of the community’s banks is not necessarily indicative of a uniform Korean success story. According to the 2011 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, 12% of Korean Americans are living in poverty, which is on par with the national average and above the percentage of whites in poverty (9%). Furthermore, South Korea is among the top 10 countries of origin for undocumented migrants in the United States.
All the gifts in the world cannot make up for a parent’s absence. Photo by Angela Sabas (Flickr/Creative Commons).
Imagine being a child who only sees her parents in person every few years. That’s the reality for children of migrant workers all over the world, from the Philippines to China to Mexico. While the money and gifts their parents send back may improve their material conditions, growing up in separated families leads to social problems and emotional distress.
Technologies like cheap phone calls and Skype keep parents and children connected, but even the best technology is not the same as being there in person. Parents working abroad or in faraway domestic cities can’t engage in much of the physical and emotional labor we associate with parenting. They can’t cook for their kids, patch up their boo-boos, or hug and kiss them. As the girl interviewed near the end of the Al Jazeera clip above says, “All we have is a cell phone to take care of us.”
The New York Times published an article yesterday about Chinese automakers “quietly build[ing] a Detroit presence.” The framing seems to suggest the arrival of the yellow peril: the Chinese are creeping up behind Americans’ backs and stealing our prized auto industry.
Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.
Then again, the fact that the Chinese auto companies learned from Japanese companies’ mistakes and felt the need to keep a low profile reflects a fear that they would be perceived as such!
As businesses sprout up with little fanfare, Chinese companies seem to be trying to avoid the type of public opposition experienced by the Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda in the 1980s, when the sudden influx of foreign cars competing head-on with cars from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler was perceived as a threat to American jobs.
What I found most interesting was a short paragraph near the end of the article that doesn’t have anything to do with automakers at all.
Frank Chiu was an engineer for an auto supply company when he saw the growing number of Chinese professionals entering the industry and saw an opportunity. He left his job to open a Chinese grocery store in Canton, Mich, a bedroom community not far from Ford headquarters.
“The timing was very good for this type of business,” said Mr. Chiu, whose store features Chinese delicacies like chicken feet, snow fungus and pork uterus.
Does every story about a Chinese grocery have to list a bunch of “weird” foods? Something tells me news stories in China about Wal-Mart or Kroger don’t say that these stores feature “American delicacies like processed cheese food, cinnamon rolls and ketchup.” Susan Andrus argues that it’s the word “delicacies” here that makes the whole sentence so othering:
On one hand, it provides a little journalistic “color” to the story, meaning it’s interesting. On the other hand, it adds color. And by that I mean it radicalizes and exoticizes a group of people. It helps to create an “other.”
I noted specifically that the phrase “Chinese delicacies” seems to provide most of the exoticizing effect. When do we really use the word “delicacies?” It’s a word we specifically use to describe the “weird” foods, the foods that are unusual or foreign. This single word exoticizes, but the effect is doubled when combined with “Chinese.”
