 Boba Liberals, Intersectional Asians and Asian Nationalists. These are your three options. Welcome everybody to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. David, we got to tell everybody about these three emerging Asian American political identities that are coming about the last few years. You know, the rising of popularity just as the terms liberal and conservative mean things to people, these terms are on the rise. Right, but they're a little bit more specific. And just to give you a mainstream example to help you understand what is a political identity, the movie Black Panther was essentially about Martin Luther King Jr. versus Malcolm X. Right, and then of course, within the African American community, they also have Candace Owens and other people more on the conservative side. Those are people representing political ideologies that are really not known outside of that world. So just like for example, Andrew, the words KBBQ, Fuh, and Boba probably meant nothing to non-Asians 10 years ago. These terms right now do not mean anything to anybody outside of the Asian community, but they could in the future. Right, and not even all Asians are aware of these terms because I would say probably the majority of Asians, maybe 60, 65% are not really political. But the ones who are, which is maybe 15 to 20%, they know these terms. Yeah, and I would say the other 20% are aware of politics but not engaged. 60%, like you said, have no clue, but this 15%, they are locked in. We're talking about Reddit, blogs, articles, publications, Instagram. All right, so what we're gonna do is break down the definition for each of these three main identities and then at the end, we'll kind of talk about why we think Asians can never agree on anything. Guys, if you guys are excited about that video, hit that like button, check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys. Let's go. All right, first one we got to talk about is the main one. I think this is the most noticeable group. It's the big one that has had multiple articles written about them. They are the Boba liberal. The search engine optimization is crazy on this. I'm talking about Andrew, everything from grad school students to like people who are like 40, 50, 60 years old writing articles about what is a Boba liberal? Do they agree with Boba liberals? Are they against them? What is one? All right, I'm pretty sure everybody out there watching knows a Boba liberal if they aren't sort of one themselves but we all know them because they are people who probably follow the mainstream liberal left views with a slight Asian slant but it's always shrouded in consumerism and corporatism. And I would say the people who are more extreme on either side than the Boba liberal, both your intersectional Asians and your Asian nationalists both are mad at the Boba liberal. Because your Boba liberal is your average Asian that probably went to college, tried to get into the best college they could, got a corporate job and tried to rise the corporate ladder. They get really hyped about representation in movies in particular. Like crazy rich Asians, they went out for it. Yeah, I would say a representation, Andrew is a very particular subset of a Boba liberal but we'll get into that in another video, it gets you complicated. I mean, yes, it is true that I think a lot of Boba liberals themselves may not even define themselves as that because it is a slightly derogatory negative term that other people would use to describe Boba liberals for being, and this is the end quotes, sweet but lack of substance in their beliefs. Right, similar to Boba which has a high caloric content and very little nutritional value. That is a fact about Boba. These are Asians who work in the system, they work in corporate, they have money but they kind of just repost things on their Instagram and I get it, everybody does some version of this or at least repost something on their social media at some point but that's what Boba liberals are really known for. They're just known for just posting whatever the mainstream liberal views are. Right, and some people would accuse Boba liberals of living within the box of wokeness. They could be on this corner of the box, that corner of the box but whatever society has demarked as like the acceptable box that like have an opinion within, they're staying within that box. Just other groups would consider these people to have soft views. Yeah, and a lot of people say that they're like not trying to challenge capitalism or colonialism, they're not willing to defend the Asian community physically and they're not really willing to stick their neck out and jeopardize their career trajectory or arc to like stand for anything. Yeah, they basically still wanna live their nice, you know, middle to upper middle class facing lives. They wanna drink Boba, they want to go to Asian restaurants but ultimately, yeah, not do anything to actually change the world. Yeah, and I would say actually most Boba liberals under, they really like Boba guys. And by the way, I'm not, I'm friends with the owners of Boba guys. I like Boba guys, but I'm just saying like, that's just what they would drink. It's kind of the image that they have. It's kind of like Asians who wanna be like, oh man, I have like a white friend. I wanna show him something Asian, like here's this cool thing. Right, it feels like a coffee shop. It doesn't feel like a weird place where people are playing like gunshot games and like got purple hair. You like Asian stuff's cool, right? Yeah, and I would say that the Boba liberal, it's like really common for people because it's like a way to be pro Asian, but never really threaten anybody on this side or that side or whatever. All negativity aside, I think Boba liberalism is a place for a lot of people to start, to even be political because it even is a political identity. This means that you even want to think about some things. So this is just my little defense of Boba liberals, although everything else that people say could be true. I mean, to come to their defense, they still are in the Asian American resource group at work. It's not like they're one of the people that's like opting out. Right, right. All right guys, moving on to a very, very critical group. The group who may have the most well formed opinions on their own political identity, we're talking about the intersectional Asians. Yeah, and I think these intersectional Asians are actually writers who typically majored in something like gender studies or something English or ethnic studies. Ethnic studies a lot. And just something that's not like corporate. I would say that Boba liberals were more like majoring in like business or maybe something like, not even really STEM, I would say more like marketing or something like that. Just something not fully, I could even see like law, but definitely not something necessarily hardcore, like mathematical or scientific, but these intersectional Asians for sure are like going the whole like liberal arts school route. Yeah, they would make it appear on their Twitters that their whole life is about politics. And they like the C words, David, what are the C words? Colonialism, capitalism, corporatism, colorism, communism. They will use these terms on their Twitter. They'll talk about things. They usually do understand like history, especially in Asia and different types of governments overall, they probably understand that a little bit better. Well, I think I do think they're educated or they've had time to educate themselves about a lot of things. Obviously the Boba liberals, when they're like climbing the corporate ladder and worrying about the 401k and matching and stuff like that, they just like super gloss over all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Instead of a Boba shop, David, where might they go? Free trade coffee shop or they would buy like loose leaf tea leaves from like an old grandma in Chinatown or something like that. Yeah, they also love the M words, Mao, Maoism, Marxism, you know, these are things that like, dude a lot of people out there do not use these terms in their everyday life. I would say that people would consider them potentially not always, but hipsters that live in like Williamsburg or Silver Lake. At least they've gone to Williamsburg and Silver Lake. Maybe they don't have residency there. A Boba liberal may view them as having extreme Marxism views. Right, and they're usually pretty hardcore on Twitter and stuff like that. I would say intersectional Asians are the ones that wrote the most articles about Boba liberals and Asian nationalists. Boba liberals, they're more just like living their life kind of unaware that they're a Boba liberal. Intersectional Asians are hyper aware of their intersectional Asian and then Asian nationalists, they're usually just on like Instagram comments or like Facebook. Well, that leads us to Asian nationalists. Let's talk about them guys. These are also known as second amendment Asians. These are people who essentially, the popularity has risen due to Asian hate. It's, they are kind of like a response to that where they're like, yo, we got to protect Asians physically at all costs. Right, I would say they have a lot of Instagram accounts possibly, you know, rooftop Asians or rooftop Koreans is a common term used by them to, you know, in terms of like how Asians need to defend themselves because obviously Asians do, and at least in the West get picked on a lot or at least in America. And it's not to say that other groups don't care about the Asian hate crimes, but the Asian nationalists, their solution to it is a lot more simple. It's just like fight back. Oh, fight fire with fire. I would more compare it. I don't think it's a perfect comparison and or two more of a Malcolm X approach. Yeah, probably, right? Yeah, and they're not as concerned. I mean, you could call them maybe a little bit more like on the conservative side or militant side or militant side or blue collar side where they're just like, man, hey, you guys got to get guns. Keep it simple. Protect your own. Stay away from these types of people. Yada, yada, yada. Yeah, so I think if you looked on a flow chart, Andrew, it's almost like Boba liberalism is here. And then if you draw like a shallow V, like you could split off the other two intersectional Asians into this category and then Asian nationalists on this category. And weirdly enough, I think you could draw like a dotted line at the bottom to connect the two because they're both thinking the one thing that even though they're opposing against each other, they're both thinking deeply about the issue. The bubble liberal is not thinking deeply about the issue. Yeah. And the issue is essentially being unhappy with or wanting to change, I guess, Asian's perceptions or the way the Asian American community runs specifically on a political level. So that's something that maybe they can all actually agree on, which most Asians cannot agree on something. But one, I think all groups do want the Asian hate crimes to stop and they are not happy with the current system on some level. They don't like the status quo. Maybe Boba liberals at least, they're the most happy with the system, but at least the other two are kind of like, yo, we would like to change things in some way. Right. And people often like shift between these three identities. I mean, you could be firmly like a staunch supporter of just one, but I think that sometimes people are, could even be like a mix. Yeah. I want to say about these three, they all have some merit. Listen, like Boba liberals, that's kind of like your mainstream person. That's most people, you know, can get into that. You mean most Asians that have went to college and work at a Fortune 500 company or auxiliary industry. And intersectional Asians, some people might say, man, you guys take it too deep. Like you guys want too much change. You want to take down the system, y'all. Socialists, Marxists, whatever. And I think obviously within each tribe or group or whatever, there's still a spectrum, right? There's different like extremities or intensities. And a lot of people would criticize the intersectional Asians as well. You guys don't want to even rise into some type of power to actually make a change. You guys want to make a change from this kind of like activist zone. Yeah. It's sort of like, I would say the biggest argument. I will go into the biggest arguments against each one, I guess. I would say that Boba liberals, people say that they just want to feel better about being Asian because they know being Asian is like a minority in the West, but they're not really willing to stick their neck out to affect any real change. They don't want to be uncomfortable. Right. They still want to remain hyper corporatists or capitalists, right? They want to do a backstroke in a pool full of Boba milk tea. Yeah. Maybe tarot, jasmine. I would say the intersectional Asians, they do think deeply, and I think they do read a lot of books, but maybe there's some disconnect between their understanding of the philosophies and actually how they translate with human nature and the pre-built system at hand. Because it's almost like environmentalists flying somewhere for an environmental conference, but if we're being hyper intersectional, even that airplane ride you took was releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. So it's like everything we do really, if you fart, it releases CO2. If Boba liberals are mainstream, intersectional Asians, one word to describe them, two other people would be like fringe. Yeah. And I think, I do think one thing about the intersectional Asians, sometimes it's like they're taking verbiage that they're learning from the West and applying it strictly to the Asian world, which I don't think there's a one-to-one comparison. There is some apples to oranges situations where you just like, you just can't take this thing that happened in America and then be like, oh yeah, that's how it is in the Asian community. Because we are, I don't know, it's pretty different. It's a pretty separate community. And of course, you're AZN nationalists that are more like, dude, we gotta fight fire with fire. They're coming at us 100. We gotta come back 100 or even 150 percent. You know, I think that that is a more simple, specifically male, more like masculinity-driven response, could edge over into toxic masculinity. So it's like, but I get where that's coming from as a man. I would say they see themselves as effective, but I do think it is more short-term. Yeah. And it could be divisive. Yeah. And they're not thinking about like the long-form picture, which could be like give and take and compromise and things like that. So I guess, David, I mean, listen, we're not here to tell anybody what to be. I think a lot of people out there can relate a little bit to all of them, perhaps. And you can be a mix of all three, by the way. There are people who are extremely this, extremely this and extremely this, or maybe it's more of a triangle because it's not really like a flat plane, you know, plotted in the middle. Yeah. I don't think they're as directly oppositional as people make it seem. People make it seem like, oh, either you're like a pure defensive player like Pat Beverly, or you're like a pure offensive player like Trey Young, but then theoretically there are players that like Jordan led the league in scoring and was like, I think defensive player in the year one year. You know what I mean? Like you could be, have all your metrics up to some extent. I don't think they're as directly oppositional political identities as they would view them. Okay. I want to, you guys leave it in the comments down below which one, based on our definitions, do you guys relate to more? Or if we miss certain parts of the definition, you guys let us know. We try to sum it up as simple as we could. However, by the way, I don't think we identify as like any of these ourselves. So that's why we kind of have this outside perspective. There's a little bit of all three that I understand, you know, but I want to talk about real quick. And I got some reasons why I don't think Asians can ever agree on anything. And so confusing being Asian, which is a huge umbrella in America. Yeah. I mean, you would say some people, they're looking at these three identities like I don't want to pick any of these. Yeah. Maybe they look on people, maybe make up your own. Is there a new one? Let us know in the comments down below. You know, Andrew Yang started a third party, so he's trying to do his own thing. Right, right, right. I think Andrew Yang is, and I do agree with some of the stuff he's saying, do I question, you know, the ability to execute it in the real world? But like some of the stuff he's saying about like, Asians should stand for just retooling the system, which is kind of like, instead of saying it's 8 p.m. or 8 a.m., I'm just like the watchmaker that's focused on fixing the gears to tell the time accurately. And maybe the time is like 1 p.m. Maybe it's neither. The clock is broken and we just want to fix it. And whatever time it ends up telling and whatever time it is, it's that time. Yeah, I think that's a very interesting. Maybe a Lee Kuan Yew hyper-pragmatic thing. It's very difficult for people to be that though because it sounds kind of too intellectual. And it's less emotional. But I think there's a couple of things that come to mind real quick and we're gonna end off the video like this and I'll just spend like half a minute talking about it. Where it's like, obviously a lot of different, there's a lot of different Asians. We're not a monolith. They come from all different original countries, motherlands with different governments and different situations. You mean how they came over? Dude, there's refugees, people coming from war, people not coming from war, people coming for economic growth, people coming for education. Completely different, right? Well, some people came just because their family had liquidity, was able to invest a bunch of money and that's why they're here. There's no literally like political narrative about being indebted or not indebted that they're in. Because Asians in America does not mean one single thing. It literally just means the Asians who are in America. And they could have been a refugee that turned into a student that came in that got adopted or sponsored by a different family and then became this or yeah, a rich kid who's just got plopped here on a parachute. Yeah, and you know what's really weird is like when Asians get to America, it's like, of course, when we're growing up, at least for our age range, like 30, right? You're gonna get the Jackie Chan Bruce Lee, right? And for girls, you're gonna get Lucy Lu and whoever else that people have compared you to. But literally you're coaching at home about political identity could be everything from like nothing to like incredibly strong from your parents and your environment. So it's like, it's weird because there's parts of Asian America that are very cohesive, like shared experiences. And then there's parts that are literally so coached from your parents. And it's not like everybody's parents think the same. People's parents wouldn't even be friends with each other if they're from like different places. Even different cities in China won't even be friends with each other. So it's like, that is the aspect that is wildly different. And I think that that's what informs us. And going off of that last point, guys, we have to remember that a lot of Asians in America, actually the majority over 50% are foreign born. They're technically immigrants. So I'm saying it's not like other groups, you know, where maybe they have a lower percentage of immigrants and then everybody else is like a second, third, fourth, 10th, whatever the 15th generation American. Guys, we're talking about literally most of us are first generation immigrants, literally like they just came here and then like kids of that. So it's a very interesting mix for Asians. So you have to understand we're dealing with our parents and their ideologies and their beliefs from over the motherland. And then growing up in America and we have our political beliefs. So we even disagree with our parents or our brothers and sisters in the same family. It's very, very crazy. It's possible that there's three kids in a family. I mean, it's not fully, highly likely, but it's possible that one is the Asian nationals, one is a bubble liberal, and one is an intersectional Asian, just depending on like who they hung out with in college or like whatever major or whatever subreddits they spend time in. Guys, it's a very interesting conversation. And I really compare it to this, man. I think that it's really interesting that some Asian Americans were almost like a Dell PC. So you're already like formed, like everything is done. You know, you can't really upgrade a Dell. Like everything set is one package. Other people are like half built. So it's like, okay, I get to still pick my GPU and like maybe a motherboard or my monitor or at least my tower. And then other people, they're like building themselves from scratch. That's a good point. Guys, if your family was not political at all and did not influence or color your political identity, possibly it just depends on your friends that you grew up with, that's it. Yeah, and then some people have this weird like catalytic experience driven by whatever reason where they like deconstructed whatever their parents or their environment gave them and like rebuilt it from scratch. But I think that's less likely. I think humans are more geared towards expediency and convenience. So whatever, if we're given a half PC tower, we're going to roll with those components. And that's like religious, political beliefs. I mean, as you guys know, Andrew, a lot of political beliefs and religious beliefs based off studies, like over half of it is just determined by what you were born into. Yeah. Hey, listen, you can identify with one of these, all of them, none of them. You let us know in the comments down below. But I do think they argue with each other. Yes. Specifically the intersectional Asians and the ASEAN nationalists. They are different, but you have to know which piece of which one you might more agree with. You know, it's possible, but just to let you guys know, these are the three main rising Asian American political identities. Hey, David, maybe it just goes to show. Asians are developing in America. We actually have our own political identities. David, 15 years ago, these didn't exist. Man, progress is a slow process. All right, everybody, please. Thank you so much for watching the Hop Hop Boys. We're just here to further the discussion. I'm sure the comments section is going to be very, very interesting. We look forward to it. Keep it civil, keep it helpful. And until next time, we out. Peace.