This is a fantastic post; thank you for sharing it.
It is performance intended for consumption, it is a sign given to minorities to express their minority status. It is touting Chinese take-out (that isn't really Chinese) over your family's home cooking and tossing around fortune cookies (and those weren't actually Chinese either) and associating yourself with being "Chinese" (even though you aren't) because it made you more understandable, and calling your family's most important holiday Chinese New Year because it's a catch-phrase that everyone understands.
I'd not thought about it this way until recently (thanks to privilege) - and you are so right. I'm glad you wrote about this aspect, and for giving the term autoexoticism for the general concept. (yay new words!)
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Date: 2010-02-15 12:32 pm (UTC)It is performance intended for consumption, it is a sign given to minorities to express their minority status. It is touting Chinese take-out (that isn't really Chinese) over your family's home cooking and tossing around fortune cookies (and those weren't actually Chinese either) and associating yourself with being "Chinese" (even though you aren't) because it made you more understandable, and calling your family's most important holiday Chinese New Year because it's a catch-phrase that everyone understands.
I'd not thought about it this way until recently (thanks to privilege) - and you are so right. I'm glad you wrote about this aspect, and for giving the term autoexoticism for the general concept. (yay new words!)