Personally,
panethnicity is not a useful or appropriate response to racial lumping and
discrimination. Espiritu mentions in her book that the two most common
ethnicities people associate Asian-Americans with are either Chinese or
Japanese. It isn’t fair for other Asian ethnicities and cultures to be grouped
together with these two cultures, label it “panethnicity” and call it a day
because that term is “politically correct.” In my experience, when people
assume that I’m either Chinese or Japanese, I get upset. Instead of asking me
what ethnicity I am, they decide to lump me into a certain nationality.
As we
talked about in class, many Asian Americans are under represented in movies, TV
shows, and media in general. And if they are in movies or TV shows, Asian
Americans are characterized as just by their race, not their ethnicity. They
are just labeled as “Asian” instead of “Filipino,” “Vietnamese,” or “Cambodian.”
The following clip (starting from 1:35 to 1:50) is from the show Glee, when the two Asian students are called up by "Asian" and "other Asian." [I understand it's supposed to be funny, not going to lie, I laughed myself, but it suited the topic of discussion]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoo94KjK3LI
Barshen: Excellent points! Pan ethnicity has a way of being strategic, yet it may seem to flatten out ethnicity in the name of being politically correct. Ironically, as you note, it can act as a type of "lazy" misidentification -- using the term allows out- groups to be taken off the hook from actually learning to see people as individuals or based on their particular ethnicity. Perfect example from Glee, too.
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