Melissa, while I am no fan of that Boston based rag and I think that much of the premise of Kotter's editorial is flawed, she's re-hashing an old 'idea' and she writes poorly, there is some merit in discussing the hyphenated American thing.Consider it from this perspective, to the extent that one is an *****-American, then it might be argued or construed that this person has an affinity (loyalty?) to both the "*****" and the 'American' part of their identity. Now there is nothing wrong with that per se, but doesn't it also seem that if their 'loyalty' is divided that their 'stake' in citizenship is (or could be considered) less 'solid' than that of a 'regular' American? I am African American. Now for myself, I have been to Africa and I can tell you that I am NOT African. First, there is no cultural norm that could be said to be 'African' since there are many, many different cultures. You would have to pick 'one' to be part of and then most African Americans would discover how 'not' whatever they picked they were. I would hazard to guess that this is also true for many Asian Americans (if born and raised here) and especially true as the time between their ancestors first 'being here' and now increases. I would also be willing to bet that if they went to wherever in Asia they might want to call the ancestoral home, they would discover just how 'non-****' they were too.Often in my travels, both here and abroad, I get a bit pissed when someone notes that when I describe myself as "American", they are shocked and dismayed when I arrive and they see I am Black. They act like I 'lied' to them - this little vignette regularly occurs when dealing with Asian Americans too. Ihe 'expectation' is that IF a person is 'American' then they are also 'white'. A little over 1/3 of the nation should resent that idea. I also believe that operating in the subtext of this 'concept' (*****-Americanism) is the idea that those hyphenated types are sort of 'quasi-Americans' - American-lite. They aren't the 'real deal' so they have to 'ask' for rights and the like and those 'real' (read 'white') Americans have to decide to give 'em those rights; out of being good sports and all. Frankly I say 'fuck that!' - I get the rights because I am an Ameerican, just like you!So anti-discrimination legislation isn't some 'assistance' that the majority population is giving us minorities, it is the way that the laws of OUR country are SUPPOSED to operate. Like football, if you are offsides at the snap, you get penalized and the other team 'gets yardage. You don't like the other team getting those yards? Stop being offsides. 'Rights' legislation targetted for minorities aren't 'helping us out', it is 'ceasing to fuck up' monitoring for the 'majority'.So maybe if you (and others in the same hyphenated boat) began to say "I'm American" you can start creating the mental frame that you 'own the place' just like them (whites) and that's all there is to it. By the way, just as annoying as 'where are you from' is having people come up to you and they start talking 'Yo brother. Wassup?' like some reject from a beer commercial ASSUMING that in order to talk to a Black person they have to shift into 'cool-ese' or some 'ebonics-lite' lingo. I have to restrain myself from 'calling somebody outside their name' if they start off with 'Brother...'Oh, and I love the '...and you are so articulate' crap all the time. I am a college graduate, what the hell do they expect?? And this crap comes from all directions - even some of the hyphenated ones.I make it a point to NOT ask 'where are you from' unless all I want to know is 'where did you live before you lived here' - meaning the place the convo is happening?

Thank you very much Melissa for bringing the Asian Boston magazine to my attention. I think I will return to Singapore and start an American Caucasian Singapore magazine and show all scantily clad white American women to begin with. Perhaps my cousin who is an editor in a newspaper can join me in this venture.

So, Melissa, I have a question for you. Why is your name Melissa? Really? How? And by golly, WHY IN THE WORLD DO YOU HAVE SUCH A LILLY-WHITE NAME?

BT - My name is Melissa because that's what my parents named me. Maybe like many Asian parents, my parents wanted to give me name that would help me fit in better in American society. Or maybe it's because they lived in a former British colony. Or maybe they just liked the sound of it. Or perhaps the year I was born, it was a popular name for girls. Or maybe they had a close friend named Melissa whom I am named after.Your name is Bryan. Is your name not “white,” then? What makes a name white?A Questioner - glad to see you writing in again. I agree that there's a lot of Asian Americans who say "American" to mean "white." This is a pet peeve of mind and I am constantly reminding people, "Hey, you're American too. If you mean white say white."As to this "American-lite" you bring up, I see what you're saying. People have so many different ways of identifying. I feel very much American but I identify as Asian American because I want to emphasize the commonalities between myself and other people of Asian descent in this country. It's a political thing, to express what we have in common when we are all so different. As Jeff Probt, the host of "Survivor" just discovered, “When you start talking to a person from Asia, you realize -- Wow! They have all different backgrounds!" and "they don't necessarily get along." (These are real quotes.)

While I am dismayed by the hypersexualizing and exoticising of women of any nationality. I am more so dismayed at Melissa's ignorant attitude and her disregard for human curiosity. Why should it be loathed that a man of european decent would be curious about cultures and customs far removed from his own experiences? If he views these cultures and customs as inferior it is another concern all together, but to hate curiosity about something different is simply atrocious. As an anthropologist who makes his living studying different cultural practices and elucidating the commonality of the human experience in combat against racist eurocentric explanations, I find your comment disheartening. Without a healthy curiosity about diffent cultural practices the world would be unbearbly xenophobic and racism would be even more rampant than it is now. Let's remember not to throw the baby out with the bathwater here!

Craig, I am not disregarding human curiosity. I am just tired of being treated like a foreigner in my own country and being asked “Where I’m from.” The answer to that question, btw, is Texas. But this is not what people usually want to know. They want to know what my ancestry is. That’s fine. If that’s what you want to know, then ask me the correct question. Ask me what my ancestry is, or what my ethnic background is. Do not ask me where I’m from, which implies that I do not belong here.

I'm sorry but I was not clear in directing my comment. I was not adressing people asking about your descent, but was instead adressing your comment towards Asian Boston Magazine (which is an enthocentic rag). Your statement was "You know what else bugs me? People who find Asian culture and peoples mysterious. Like the guy who started Asian Boston magazine, who is not Asian." I was replying to what seems to be anger directed against everday peoples' curiosity about the cultures of Asia, in general.

Craig, I don't think Melissa was out of line the magazine publisher's comment,"There's a mystique about it that I can't figure out, that I don't want to figure out because I always want it to be there."I don't have a problem with people who are genuinely curious, but I've found people to be looking for justifications for their opinions as often as they are trying to have their conceptions broken. Thsi guy doesn't seem concerned with even asking the questions to begin with.Also to Craig- are you as dismayed by the hypersexualizing and exoticizing of women of any ethnicity or do are you just bother when it's along nationalist lines? Given that Ballou is recruiting his models in social settings, I'm going to guess that they are all Americans.

Let's not get caught up on semantics, I was implying nationality of descent (of the women being exoticised and hyper-sexualized), not de-facto nationality.And as I said Asian Boston magazine is an ethnocentric rag, not a rigoruos asian studies or cultural anthropology journal.But as an everday person Leo Ballou, cannot be expected to have sophisticated opinions fostered through years of graduate work. The man it seems does not know how to think, largely. But, then again, its through this sort of curiousity (Ballou's ignorant and largely false opinions of the cultures of asia) that social change can occur, once the door to inquery is open a dialectic starts and with the proper imparts from his interlocutors, a more true understanding of the cultures of asia is gained and his old way of thinking and his related exoticising and hyper-sexualizing is diminished.

Craig, I find it your lowered expectations of the everyday person's ability to understand sophisticated opinions rather troubling. Very few people have the option of years of graduate work into daily problems and it would be saddening to think that it would take as long for those sophisticated opinions to reach general education as it did for something like calculus to get taught in junior high. That would basically put us on track for racial understanding in about 2200 CE, but only for those who have completed high school.The question of nationality v. ethnicity is pretty central to this discussion- it's really not a matter of semantics. As long as "American" equals "Of European descent", those concepts should be differentiated carefully. Words are a primary conduit of information and understanding therefore changing language should not be ignored as a method of increasing awareness. Indeed, no propaganda would really work without these basic building blocks.

The sad part is actually with the current incarnation of the american education. Why indeed should it be that years of graduate work are necessary to gain sufficient knowledge about social constuction, deconstruction, and cultural relativism. If these issues were incorporated at earlier levels of education then, most likely, everday people would not publish and perpetuate offensive ethnocentric material such as Asian Boston.It does seem that in the cultural logic of american epistemology words such as nationality do seem to only refer those of western european descent as a default. But in this case I was refering to nationality of descent instead of citizenship. I am sorry for not double checking my post earlier and I apologize for any missgivings.The internet seems to create shadow dialogues of missinterpretation, as so much of each message's meaning is lost in transition and reinterpretation.

The sad part is actually with the current incarnation of the american education system. Why indeed should it be that years of graduate work are necessary to gain sufficient knowledge about social constuction, deconstruction, and cultural relativism (really not as complicated as calc)? If these issues were incorporated at earlier levels of education then, most likely, everday people would not publish and perpetuate offensive ethnocentric material such as Asian Boston.It does seem that in the cultural logic of american epistemology words such as nationality do seem to refer to those of western european descent as a default. But in this case I was refering to nationality of descent instead of citizenship. I am sorry for not double checking my post earlier and I apologize for any missgivings.The internet seems to create shadow dialogues of missinterpretation, as so much of each message's meaning is lost in transition and reinterpretation.

Craig, I agree with you that curiosity is vital to communication and opening dialogue about cultures and race. Fear of the other or of differences leads to many, many problems. However, if you will review the quote from AsianBoston's publisher, you will see that not only does he have a preconceived and stereotypical notion of Asians (they are mysterious) but that he prefers to keep this preconceived notion. My comment is not directed at every day people with healthy curiosities about other cultures. My comment is about a man, who while good-willed, seems to think of the community he is providing a magazine for in exotic, stereotyped ways.