AZN Pride

Everyone probably knows someone who is all about the whole "AZN" thing. You know who I'm talking about, that punk kid with a riced out car, tries to talk ghetto, listens to nothing but techno or trance, etc. Supposedly that's how Asians are supposed to be, and if you don't act like that then you're a sellout or "whitewashed." Cause that's how you show pride for your ethnic background, right? Get lots of traffic tickets for drag racing and annoy the crap out of everyone who's not hip with the scene.

As for me, I've never been called whitewashed or anything like that, which is good because I'm not. I actually have a lot of friends who fit those things I described, and they're actually pretty cool people, so not everyone with a lowered Honda and wRyTeZ LyKe DiS is that bad. But I've also never been a part of the AZN thing either, and never want to be.

Sure, most of my friends are Asian. But that's more because of how things worked out when I was little. My best friends happened to all be the kids of my mom and dad's friends. I went to an Asian church. At school, there were maybe 1 or 2 other Chinese kids in my class so you do the math. Like it or not, there is still racism in America, even among grade school kids and not only against Black people. But what I'm trying to say is that just having mostly Asian friends doesn't automatically mean you're running with the AZN crowd.

I even drive a Japanese car that has a few mods. But that doesn't make me A-Z-N either. I just did it cause I wanted my car to look, sound, and drive exactly the way I liked it to. I didn't do it to attract girls, drag race, or to top out my speedometer needle at 140 (even though I came pretty close once, in my pre-speedingtickets days, just to see if it was possible, before I chickened out and started to hit traffic when I got to low 130's). I don't think it's that bad to work on your car a lot and even soup it up a little. It's all a matter of doing it with some taste and discretion. For example, is it really necessary to have an exhaust the size of a garbage can, or for it to be loud enough to shake the neighborhood around you? Just get one that sounds and performs better (not neccessarily louder) than stock without making it look ugly and violate city noise ordinances. Spoilers can be way overdone too. They might make the car look a little better to a point, but some people cross that line and put metal-park bench looking things on their Honda Civic.

While I'm on the topic of Civics, yes, they are nice cars and all, but no matter what you do to it, it's still supposed to be a freakin economy car (excluding the SI maybe). Yes, it's well built and reliable enough to handle a lot of mods, but don't act like it's the best car ever. I hate those people who will be like "i engine swapped with a integra GSR into my EX, added intake headers exhaust, turbo kit, took out my back seat, blue bottle, +5 hp Greddy sticker, and I ate a BMW M5 for breakfast at the track the other day." Being faster than a M5 doesn't make it better. Just look at your car, dude, it's a rice mobile. Plus now you ain't got no back seat, dumbass.

Ok, well back to what I was trying to say about Asian pride. These kids all talk about it but what they do is more like Asian shame to me. When people think of Asians, I don't want them to think we are all a bunch of obnoxious ghetto wannabe posers tryin to act all bad and hating on all white people. I'd seriously rather people just think of us as being stingy, nerdy, and slanty-eyed.

Still, I take pride in being Chinese. I'm glad my mom and dad made me learn how to speak read and write it, because it doesn't matter if I was born in this country, if I'm a citizen, educated as an American, people will always see me first with black hair and chinky eyes so I better not think I'm white. Even though I don't scribble AZNPRYDE all over the place and go around running my mouth about Michael Chang and Michelle Kwan, I bet I appreciate being Asian just as much as anybody out there. There's no way I'd ever choose to be white or black over being Chinese, cause that's who I was born as and that's who I'm gonna die as. Not everything about Asians is great, not everything is great about white people or black people either.

Everyone should have some amount of pride in who they are. If you don't like the image your race portrays, don't join the crowd just to fit in, and definitely don't desert your heritage and hate on your own people, but do your best to make the people around you see that not everyone fits those negative stereotypes. For my part, I know I'm already a nerd so it will be hard for myself personally to convince others that not all Asians are math geeks. But maybe someday I'll be able to do something to help the world in some way, so people won't think all Asians are selfish, greedy, and opportunistic (see Cantonese-accented trade federation from Star Wars Episodes I and II). As one person among billions, I probably won't be able to change the whole world's perspective, but at least I should do my part to not make it more negative. Everyone else should try to do the same.