Up

Up is a great movie in every way. It manages to be mature and genuinely touching while not skimping on silly fun, and is of course delivered in beautiful Pixar animation. I’m still not sure anything can quite live up to the perfection that is The Incredibles, but it beats WALL-E by far.

And…one of the main protagonists is Asian. Even better, he just happens to be Asian; no stereotypes, no accents, or even any mention of cultural background. Russell is just an overweight, bit annoying all-American kid, a “Wilderness Explorer” preoccupied with earning his last merit badge. He’s even voiced by Japanese-American Jordan Nagai. I love it.

Interestingly enough, the trailer for The Princess and the Frog came before this film, which seemed to be of dubious racial sensitivity…

The Asian-American vote

It’s elections season!  This is going to be the rare post about politics, since I don’t want this to be that kind of blog.

Good ol’ Slate recently had an article about why we never hear about the Asian-American vote. Nothing I haven’t already considered before, but it does bring up some interesting points.

Aside from the obvious (few in total numbers, and even fewer eligible to vote), there’s the issue of heterogeneity. Unlike Latinos, we don’t even have a unified language, and Asians here tend to not go far back enough living in this country to have developed any party loyalties.

But…personally, I don’t see why this is all such a bad thing. I don’t feel the need for Asian-Americans to be “recognized” by the pollsters and campaigners and fellow citizens when it comes to elections. I do believe that the concept of “Asian-American” can be useful (that’s a whole future post, I think), but I don’t need to be lumped together into a bloc of voters.

I registered to vote as an Independent because I think the whole idea of a party system is destructive. It undermines individual thought (ironic in the USA, isn’t it?) by putting people in categories, so all people in said category can vote in the same predictable way.

So similarly, I don’t think there needs to be an “Asian-American vote.” Of course I think every Asian-American U.S. citizen should vote, but they can make their own decisions on how. I find this whole 80-20 Initiative — trying to get 80% of Asians to vote for one side or another — is bordering on offensive. If 80% of Asians really do feel one way or the other, fine, we should all vote that way. But artificially constructing a voting bloc just for the sake of creating a voting bloc? That’s completely ridiculous.

More Asian-Americans in politics would be nice, but I want that to be because they’re qualified people that their constituents voted for, not because a bunch of Asian-Americans wanted an Asian-American politician in office. (Sort of like the whole Hilary Clinton and feminists thing…) I’d like to point out that here in whitey-white Portland, Oregon, we have David Wu, the first Chinese-American member of the U.S. House of Representatives, now seeking his sixth term.

When I vote in November, it’ll be as my own, intelligent, whole self — which obviously includes being Asian-American but it’s far from the whole story.