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11 Rethinking Assimilation The Paradox of “Model Minority” and “Perpetual Foreigner” Mr. Leung, 73, worked as a cook in various restaurants in New York’s Chinatown for thirty-some years after arriving penniless from Hong Kong in the early 1960s. Now retired, Mr. Leung is reaping the benefits of his lifelong hard work and sacrifices—all five of his children have degrees from Ivy League colleges, hold professional jobs, own their own homes in middle-class suburbs, are happily married with children, and, most importantly, contribute cash support on a monthly basis for his (and his wife’s) retirement. Now he and his wife live with one of his children in a New Jersey suburb, and he travels by train daily to Chinatown to play mahjong in his family association building. Mr. Leung still cannot speak English, but he knows his way around and feels comfortable and settled. He says that America is home and his children are his social security.1 Drs. Li and Xia arrived in the United States to attend graduate school in the mid-1980s. Now Li is a senior scientist at a federal government research institute, while Xia runs her consulting firm in Washington, D.C. The couple lives in a beautiful suburban home with two schoolage children. They speak flawless English, albeit with a slight accent, and do the“American thing”in their leisure time—hanging out with friends at bars or restaurants after work, going to the theater, movies, or ballgames, bicycling and river-rafting in the summer, and skiing in the winter. They vote in local and national elections and volunteer their time for their children’s school’s PTA and neighborhood events. One way in which they differ from their suburban neighbors is that they helped establish a suburban Chinese-language school and actively participate in it. Xia says [in Chinese], “Saturday [when the Chinese school is in session] is the day I very much look forward to. That’s when I can speak Chinese, crack some Chinese jokes, and share some nostalgic feelings about the good old days, or bad old days, rather. It’s sort of like going to church.”2 Congressman David Wu emigrated from Taiwan with his family in 1961, at age six. He has lived the American dream and become the first person of Chinese descent ever elected to Congress. In May 2001 222 / Chapter 11 he was invited by Asian American employees of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) to give a speech to celebrate Asian American Heritage Month. He and some of his Asian American staff members were not allowed into the DoE building even after presenting their congressional ID. They were repeatedly asked about their citizenship and country of origin. They were told that this was standard DoE procedure and that congressional ID is not a reliable document. A congressman of Italian descent went to the DoE the next day with the same ID. No questions were asked.3 T hese vignettes are suggestive of the varied nature of assimilation in American life. Is Leung assimilated? Arguably not. He still cannot speak English after several decades of living in the United States, and his social life has continued to be confined to Chinatown, even after he has retired into a white middle-class suburb. However, he has raised his five children to be quintessential Americans who are also practicing the longstanding Chinese tradition of supporting their elderly parents. Are Li and Xia assimilated? Arguably yes. But after they have made it by all observable measures—English proficiency, college education, professional occupation , suburban residence, Western lifestyle, and civic participation—they find themselves taking the initiative to return to the ethnic community. Is Congressman David Wu assimilated? Yes, but . . . He has made it via the normative path like other Americans, but also on the strength of his family support , and he gave up a lucrative legal career for public service because he wants to “make a real difference in the real lives of real people.”4 His fellow Oregonians have trusted his words and elected him to five terms as their representative in Congress. Yet he cannot escape the stereotype of his ethnic group as perpetual “foreigners.” Of course, we could easily pick another set of vignettes that tell different stories. For example, an immigrant worker has worked hard all his life, but is unable to move his family out of the inner-city enclave and out of poverty. Or a teenage immigrant drops...

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