Posted: June 24th, 2015

The Blasian Experience and the Multicultural Debate

Nowadays, America is a free land for people from different culture and no one reject others because of different background. Whenever two or more different cultures meet, it is a long term process for people to reject other culture and then accept other culture. Finally, these cultures mix with each other in order to create new blended culture. With these processes, there is a number of new cultures appearing in the American society such as Blasian. Blasian refers to a person of mixed Black and Asian ancestry and it is challenge for blasian to find their identity around the world. Many people from blended culture like blasian always realize which identity they are. Therefore, it is significant for American to develop their diversity by the multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is that the policy or process support the distinctive identities of the cultural group. Perspective from individual in America is keeping changing for relationship between African Americans and Japanese Americans from 1980s to 1990s. Also, it is important for people to respect other culture in the current.

With global economy developing constantly, the relationship between African American and Asian Americans had a big change during the 1980s. Due to globalization, Asian culture began to be popular in America during the 1980s.There were a lot of movies about Asian culture appearing in the market and people was interested with this new culture such as Kong Fu, food, and etc. According to the Last Dragon directed by Michael Schultz on 1985, the young African American named Leroy Green was seeking for the last level of “Master” and struggled with different enemies. Although this movie did not talk about Asian culture directly, there were a lot of plots revealing how popular Asian culture in that time. For example, Leroy Green really liked Asian Kong Fu star Bruce Lee and tried to find the final level of master. In addition, when Leroy Green had breakfast with his family, he had Asian breakfast with chopsticks and it was different way from his family. After movie, I thought that the relationship between African American and Asia American was changed positively. African American began to accept this totally different culture and Asia American like Japanese American also was developing their culture in the new situation. Nevertheless, it was terrible relationship between African American and Japanese during the 1950s. In the American Dream by Velina Hasu Houstonl, most African American in the 1950s was difficult to accept Japanese immigrant because of the World War II and different culture. Millions of American soldiers died in the World War II and family in America loss their family members. As a result, people in American could not accept Japanese immigrant during that time. Furthermore, there were a lot of conflict between African Americans and Japanese Americans. For instance, People in Japanese culture had many traditional manners such as greeting with apology. There was totally different understanding from African American and Japanese. African American would like to take apology because of their faults. However, taking apology in Japanese culture is just for politeness and sometimes it was not their faults. Due to different culture and background, most African American could not accept Japanese immigrant during the 1950s. Compared relationship with two different time era, there was a huge change between two different cultures. People had started to accept Balsian and multiculturalism. Therefore, I definitely think that it is a tolerated way to develop the diversity in the culture.

Developing multiculturalism is a significant platform to build connection between different cultures. In the article Racial Discourse and Black-Japanese Dynamics in Ishmeal Reed’s Japanese by Spring by Crystal Anderson, she figures out that Reed’s change the black-white dynamic onto the Japanese. Japanese and American black struggle for racial equality in America. And she thinks that Japanese culture and history reinforce the black-white racial paradigm in the American culture. Japanese immigrant and African American both are struggling for their equity on American. Building a good relationship between African American and Japanese Immigrant will help them close to their goal.