\nIf you send two kids to two different “learn your 2nd generation ass about your Asian culture!” afterschool programs will they even learn the same thing? At least Christians share the Bible.
American race categories are crazy man. What exactly does the grandkid of a guy from Tokyo share with the daughter of a guy from Islamabad? Nothing at all, why are you putting them in the same box?
Well I mean the schools aren’t “Asian” in a general sense, they at least pitch themselves in different languages and orthographies, but even as specific cultures go, it’s not like there’s an agreed curriculum for “being Cambodian"\u2026 is there?
Isn’t "making up a unified cultural identity” pretty much what nations do around the time they start being nations?
What would the American curriculum be?
American History, for starters, and there’s a fuckton of ground to cover. American letters - Twain, Whitman, Hemingway, Woolf, Merrill, Plath, etc; same goes for visual arts. Dances - square dancing, most obviously, but also certain types of ballroom dancing; traditional cuisine, such as Thanksgiving meals. The rules to American sports - baseball, basketball, American football. School structures. Greek life.
Think of the quotidian.
Uh, okay, but is that really a parallel with these Asian-culture programs? Are those kids reading classical literature and playing idiomatic sports after school until their parents pick them up? I’m sure holidays are commemorated in a “hey, today is a thing you should know about” way, but you’d think they leave the full rituals for families to celebrate.
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