 Yeah, I mean, you know, guys, somebody who looks like some version of me or someone who's part me. Yeah. Will Asians ever have unity in America or is the group just way too big and diverse to ever be on the same page? Let's talk about it. Yeah, it is the month of May, which is AAPI Heritage Month as designated by the government. And this sparks a lot of think pieces. There's a really interesting one that came out on CNN written by Harmeet Khar called why some have mixed feelings about the terms Asian American and AAPI. And we're going to go through the history of Asians in Asia, a real quick history of the term AAPI in Asian American and then get into some takeaways. Of course, you guys know hot pop boys breaking down everything silly to serious. Andrew, I'm just saying this might be one of the best videos. If not the best video that you guys watch this month or topic or at least one of the most important videos you watch this month because this is about Asian unity in America. Okay, Andrew, we are going into Asian 101. We're talking about Asia right now. 4.6 billion people in the geography map of Asia and that is 60% of the world's population. However, this includes some people, Andrew, as far west as Turkey and Armenia and Iran, basically people who do not consider themselves Asian. Right. But these are all countries that actually compete in the Asia games. That's a sports competition. Right. Like Iran might play like Japan in like FIBA basketball. Yeah, so obviously the image that you have when you say an Asian, it's usually somebody of a Mongoloid features or possibly South Asian features. Andrew, ding, ding, ding, ding. There's a key word that you just said, Mongolian. You know why? Because a lot of people in the old days define like the East as like any area that Genghis Khan once conquered. Oh, that's a theory. Or at least I went through. Yeah, so any part that was originally part of the older Mongolian Empire is what a lot of people consider Asia. Which is like actually because back then that's when they were doing all the thinking. Well, I guess I'm assuming that if Genghis Khan did have a bunch of, you know, offspring in different parts of the world, then any part where any country wears offspring is that. It's distinctly enough, I believe that Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde did go as far as Turkey. Yeah, it's crazy. And by the way, also, this was also the term Asia was come up by a Greek guy, right? Yeah, Herododes, I'm not really sure. It was a Greek guy. Okay. So it was not like necessarily Asians that came up with the term Asian. And interestingly enough, Andrew, the country right to the East of Greece is Turkey. So maybe Herododes was just like, yeah, anything over here is Asia. Anything not part of Greece that way. But like you said, Andrew, most people in America, I'm not saying the UK, because the UK has a different designation for the term. When they're thinking of Asian, they're definitely not thinking of somebody all the way towards Turkey. They're probably thinking that the Asian look ends in the Himalayas, right? Yeah, probably something like that. And when we say ends in the Himalayas, we are mostly talking about Mongoloid people. Mongoloid people is a designation for anybody who looks like East Asian, Southeast Asian, and even Pacific Islander. Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, guys, somebody who looks like some version of me or someone who's part me. Yeah. And I guess on the furthest west, it would be Kazakhstan. And then on the furthest east, it would be Japan and then like all the way to Hawaii, right? And on the north, there's Siberia, Iceland, Greenland, Andrew, a lot of the Eskimos that live in Canada and Alaska. And interestingly enough, there is a hotspot of people who are genetically of Mongoloid descent in Brazil and Peru. That's crazy. I mean, I'm assuming it's because of the Barren Strait. They go down, they go through America and then they settle in South America. But you know, what's funny is that I don't know if there's not a lot of Mongolic people over in America because maybe America pushed out a lot of the Native Americans who are originally descendants of people from Siberia. Right. I mean, I guess, Andrew, would you say that a lot of people call Mongoloid Asians essentially like chinky Asians? Yeah, that's not the PC term to say it. I'm just saying I heard that so much in my life. Other terms I've heard are Asian Asian or very Asian. Like I've been called very Asian and Asian Asian in my lifetime. And I think if you look at anybody sort of on the fringes of this yellow Mongoloid map right now, there's like probably some mixing zones. For example, Northeast India, Andrew, is actually considered a Mongoloid zone. You know, there's a lot of Mongoloid blood and genetics around the world to be honest. So the article in CNN actually also focuses a lot on native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Actually, they are also considered Mongoloids, but of more Austronesian descent. Andrew, interestingly enough, guess where some Austronesian people come from to be theorized from? Taiwan, aka Formosa. Yeah, Hualien is a city in Taiwan where you can find theoretically, I'm not saying for sure, the origin of a lot of Pacific Islanders. David, not that we're trying to be super PC here, but for the people watching, is the term Mongoloid even very PC or is it just like people just use it? Yeah, I think people just use it because there's no other word. But yeah, it was also used, I believe, to describe people with Down syndrome in the West at one point. So I don't know, guys. Anyway, moving on, we are going to the other large group out of the Asian world, Andrew, which is the Daisy people. And Daisy people make up about 40% of Asia's population. Maybe 45 of you count the Himalayans, which are usually some mix of Mongoloid and South Asian. And basically, we're talking about India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. A lot of people don't understand how big these countries are in population. Not just India, first of all, which will overtake China's population, I think, this year. But Pakistan and Bangladesh, they each have, I think, respectively, like 120 and 170 million people just in population. Okay, so that's those are like your desi like brown countries. Not to mention Sri Lanka is contributing that to as well. But of course, those are the big three. Yeah. And the three different looks that you have, I guess, stereotypically or archetypically in the South Asian community are Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Iranian or ironic, which is like, I guess, descendants of people who originally came from Iran. This is the first YouTube video you've ever watched that use the word ironic. Yeah. And just like Mongoloids, Andrew, they had different levels. They had Siberian, East Asian, Taikadai, Austronesian and, you know, more levels once you break it down into the sub level. So long story short, Andrew, here is an ethnic map from like 130 years ago. And I did some research. I think this is roughly correct. I'm not saying it's 100% correct. Long story short, a bunch of people from this part of Western Europe, Andrew, whether they were French, Spanish, English speakers, conquered a lot of North America. So now we're living in North America as people from the East. And we are almost viewing ourselves in their terms. Right. Because probably like European men, specifically, they like probably made all the maps in the media for the past like couple hundred years. So obviously the map that we're looking at was probably made by a white guy of some sort. But and I'm saying, so we're going to be seeing the world through because we're Americanized people, especially like even us, right? Being born and raised in America. We can't help but see a lot of the world through a Western lens, right? However, I will know, David, that this has got to be the first 23 in me map. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Like I said, I don't know if this is a hundred out of a hundred, but you know, it was on Wikipedia. I feel like 23 in me probably is a little more accurate now. All right. So let us get to now the story of the Asians in America. Andrew, right now we're at 22 million people from Asia, from largely 20 different countries. Andrew, in the 1960s, the original term Asian American was developed to replace the word Oriental. And at that time in America, there was only Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Koreans here. Yeah, and that term Asian American was really pushed through by a lot of college students in the Bay Area from Berkeley. So the Bay Area obviously has like a long history of kind of like Asian activism. This is also during like the Yuri Kochiyama years where, you know, like very celebrating Yellow Peril supports Black Power. Even Bruce Lee was sort of, you know, I would say influenced by this. Everybody was listening to Muhammad Ali. This was the 1960s and 70s. People were protesting against the Vietnam War. And usually these kids were American educated, but they were the kids of blue collar immigrants, typically. But then something changed in 1965, which is fairly significant. Right. There was the Heart Seller Act. And after this, a bunch of different Asians from a bunch of different backgrounds and educational levels came. For example, a lot of Southeast Asians came after the wars in Southeast Asia. South Asians mostly came from India, top students from East Asia who were like elite, I guess, academic, had elite academic grades were able to come to America and study on scholarship or pay their way to be the first immigrants. Yeah, basically the Heart Seller Act like basically opened the doors for a lot more Asian immigrants. And here's the thing, the post 1965 immigrants, they were not necessarily thinking the same as the Yuri Kochiyama Yellow Peril Supports Black Power. I don't think they were against them, but they were just like thinking about completely different concerns. Well, they were essentially your immigrant fobs that are coming here for a better life to get educated or establish a better life. And that's all they were concerned with. They were not really on the activism wave. I mean, the activism wave definitely comes when you have had time to be in America for probably a generation already and then you start to think about it when you're kind of made it past like the just survival stage. And Andrew, this is not the end, though, of the Yellow Peril Supports Black Power phase because they all came together again in 1982 due to the murder of Vincent Chin. But it's true that these new people who kept coming after 1965, they weren't necessarily putting all their time and their effort and their focus into the same things that this group was. Yeah, there's this really, really good book called The Loneliest American by Jay Caspian King. I read the entire book. I thought it was amazing and it talks a lot about this. And it basically also talks about how like it's very hard for Asians of different generation and migration waves and different classes to come together and actually think alike. Even if they're from the same country of origin, sometimes it's very difficult for them to align. Yeah, not everybody who even speaks Mandarin or even just Cantonese with each other are even on the same page about things. So in the very late 1970s, but pretty much the 1980s to the 1990s, Andrew, the government put together the official AAPI banner. So basically this was Asians of both Mongoloid and Daisy Descend plus native Hawaiians slash Pacific Islanders all in one group. They have to check the same box on the census. Yeah, well technically, yes, they are all from the continent of Asia and everybody has agreed that that is the continent of Asia. Whoever made that map, the Greek guy who came up with the word Asia, everybody rolled with it and was like, Yeah, well, Herodotus, I don't know. You think kind of sticks. Yeah, I guess everything's Asian, huh? Let's keep it in the year 2000. They add additional bubble for native Hawaiian Pacific Islander that is separate from Asian, but for the most part, the government treats the voting blocks, whether it's on the left or the right as essentially one group. So Andrew, now we are here in 2023 and it hasn't changed that much from the year 1990. And basically this is what a hard meets article is about. Some people are unhappy and people's unhappiness at the broadness of the term, perhaps the East Asian dominance of the term or the over focus or the over focus that some people believe on middle to upper middle class issues has led to the creation of new acronyms such as A-A-N-H-P-I, which is Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians of Pacific Islanders or a PETA, which is Asian Pacific Islander, Daisy American. A PETA, a PETA sounds funny. Yeah, because that's what you want to order at the restaurant. I mean, this is a trend right now, right? Because groups that feel underrepresented, maybe their voice is like it's too small or they feel like A-A-P-I didn't include their moniker, they're going to want representation. And that's why all these different government entities actually have different names. Yeah, don't always say this, man. Like, you know, I'm from a huge group, Chinese, like billions of people on earth. So we're not really like ever in danger of not getting some version of representation. But I understand that a lot of people from smaller groups, they want it, you know? And I think right now we're just kind of in this stage where we're just figuring things out where every identity that is marginalized or not heard about as much, even no matter, even if they make up a small percentage, they're trying to be heard and they're trying to be noticed. And that's fair, but we're also just trying to figure it out. And it is kind of complicated. Right, because there's like eight acronyms now. Yeah, so I guess it is just tough. I mean, in this Asian-Americans, we should include like lower middle class, middle class and rich people right in it. So long story short, a lot of people are saying we need disaggregation. So in need groups with very specific needs that only impact their subgroup can get help. We've talked about this before on the channel. Disaggregation is important, but it's very difficult, right? Because even some groups, the lion is bird. You could be a Hmong person from Laos. You could be a Hmong person from Vietnam. You could be a Hmong person from China. I mean, disaggregation in short, for example, it'd be like not just clumping Asians income as one thing, but it would separate Asians by like different types of Asians because different types of Asians tend to have, you know, different traits about them or different pathways that they made over here. A similar experience, right? But Andrew, how deep into the minutia do you get? Because me and you know, even in the Kanto world, there's HK Kanto, Toisan, Hakka, Chiu Zhou, Chiu Zhou from Vietnam, Chiu Zhou from Cambodia. It gets like super complicated. I guess you go as specific as you, as the funding will let you go and as- Can you imagine the government census people being like, hey, Gagi Nang? You go as specific as you can and as it's useful. Somebody said it's not about disaggregation only. It's about having more detailed data collection, identifying specific groups and each subgroup, like even more questions that are more detailed about the way people are living their lives. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that, yeah. I mean, there's so many different minorities in America. We're definitely trying to figure it out. And we're just talking about the Asian group, by the way. We're not even including in this conversation right now. We're not even talking about other ethnicities in America. Yeah, for example, somebody said in upper middle class, Taiwanese American might care a lot about representation in media in Hollywood and Asians being enter, Asians being able to enter the executive level in corporations, whereas Pacific Islanders may care more about healthcare and criminal justice. I guess typically you're just, yeah. I mean, those are the generalities. However, Andrew, despite all the differences in socioeconomic status, country of origin, immigration wave, income level, there are some things that bond all Asians together, right? And this is the positive aspect. And I do think that for the most part, most people want to be bonded by positive stuff, even as shallow as it may be, maybe sometimes food or the Oscars or movies or things like this. But let's talk about them. For example, somebody said Asians divided by looks, united by math. All right, not all, of course, I have to step in and say not all Asians really care about math, but that is a defining trait. Andrew, when our dad was in his PhD program, a lot of his friends were Indians from India. I consider anybody who feels disappointed when they score a 95 on an algebra test, my fellow Asian. That's funny because that's almost like a bonding experience. Like even if you're not Asian at all, but if you cry and getting a 95, there's like something to relate to that. You're like kind of Asian. Yeah, you're just acting Asian right now. But somebody, this one's even more universal. Somebody said Asians divided by looks, but united by flying flip flops or wearing flip flops. Here are some main things that unite, I would say pretty much all Asians. Rice, sandals, bowing, and martial arts. Now this, these four things do stretch pretty far. Yeah, I would say noodles too, to be honest. I mean, they're eating rice, Biryani and Pulao. They're eating rice pretty far out there. Yeah. Right? They do have rice dishes. I mean, 90% of the world's rice consumption and production is in Asia. So clearly, as much as a meme it is, it's real. It is a big part of the Asian diet, yeah. Somebody said we also go through like similar experiences in America. You know, whether you're East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander, basically you may be like not part of the American mainstream, right? And some people may point that out to you. For example, Indians got targeted after 9-11 because people associate the visual appearance with, and it's not right either way, but like they associate the appearance of Indians with Middle Eastern people. And Russell Peters actually had a really funny joke about this back in the day. And remember, we grew up in a town with a lot of Sikh people and they kind of got it bad after 9-11. Oh, no. They were constantly getting searched at the airport. Even if you talk to a lot of Sikh people out here or anywhere, they'll say that, you know, I do know some Sikh people who were wearing a turban or their fathers were wearing turban at the time and then they decided to not wear them anymore, right? And some more fit in and not scare people or creep people out. Even though obviously people got it wrong. It's not the turban. It's a different thing. It's a fundamental. It's crazy. Anyways, obviously more recently due to COVID, I guess people who are considered Chinese passing probably have felt some level of racism after COVID whether it happened to them, somebody they know or somebody in the organization that they're with or they just saw it on media. I mean, you can imagine this, my Filipino friend who only looks at most maybe an eighth Chinese. He used to, and this was far before COVID. He would get called like Bruce Lee and like Chinaman, right? And so he got called a chink before. Yeah, but he doesn't, he's like Ilocano too. He just doesn't even look Chinese, but obviously he like looks Asian. So I think like that's where they got it from. So I can only imagine obviously after COVID things got a lot worse. Another CNN article that's sort of tied in with this one was an interview with Jay Caspi and Kang and basically he was even more stressing the class imbalance in the Asian narrative. Basically saying that just the upper middle class Asians have all of their concerns attended to and lower middle class and Asians in poverty basically people act like they're invisible. All right, David, so before we get into the solutions or possible suggestions or our overall takeaways, here are some other terms that people can use. Some of these are just for fun guys by the way, but I came up with a few. And I think that these are really interesting because according to the study only 16% of Asian Americans identify as a generalized Asian whereas 84% of Asians identify more closely with their specific country of origin. So only 16% are like, yo, just call me Asian. I don't want to be. And then that's also partially because the majority of Asians living in America are born in that country. But I can see somebody who's like multi-generational mixed up over time doesn't speak either of their parents or grandparents languages more identifying with a general identity. Andrew, what about the most technical recommendation that everybody go by their cardinal direction on a compass? East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Central Asian, Pacific Islander? I actually don't think this is that bad. I think that there are common bonds between the East Asians and Southeast Asians. There's still like somewhat of the Sinosphere and there is a lot of relatability on many levels. But yes, I guess you could break it up that way. There's also this term Asian American. I'm a proponent of bringing Asian back. I love bringing Asian back guys. If you follow Jackfruit, Nexshark, Asiwa Attitude, subtle Asian traits. If you like to make jokes about Kevin Wins and Jenny Trans. If you live that life too, you're a little Asian. What about ASN? ASN is almost like a little bit less subculture tinted version of Asian, right? You guys let me know in the comments down below. Those are your yappies. They're one of ours. I just made this one up. Orientalese. That's not going to be a popular one. I'm not saying it is, but Oriental by definition. Before, you know, you take the negative connotation out of it. It just means to be from Asia. Yeah. But you know what's interesting, Andrew, is that the West is so far West that what they consider East has shifted over time because at one point, a Persian rug that may have been influenced by influences from the Silk Road was considered an Oriental rug. But then a China man is clearly also Oriental. And a China man's rug is also an Oriental rug. And so is this one from Persia from Iran. All right, dude. Some other words we got is Boba Americans. I don't know who's really going to call themselves that Eastern people. That's like pretty vague. People of the East. Again, anybody passed Greece, I guess, or anybody passed if you want to say, I guess Uzbekistan, maybe. People 500 years would have been like the Mongol hordes, the hordes from the East. But it is true when you think of Eastern like mines and Eastern religions. Obviously, Buddhism, Buddha comes from like Nepal, India area, right, spread into East Asia. So I guess it didn't really go Westward, it went East. Yeah, that's kind of one thing that I know. I guess Asians, I guess Chinese were like, oh yeah, Buddha. I kind of like his stuff, man. We should go spread it. And then there's also yellow people and yellow and brown are not bad. If you're going to separate because I still think a lot of Southeast Asians are kind of like a tin of yellow, maybe tannish yellow, right? But but yeah, I mean yellow brown. What about golden? I hear this one a lot nowadays because obviously people want to be more empowered because yellow people could associate that with jaundice or whatever. I'm not about this golden people, man. I think it is so arrogant of us to name ourselves after the most precious metal in the world, okay? Well, everybody else got to be a color. We get to be golden. I think it's a little bit arrogant. It's a little cocky. I like it. I don't know. I could I could see your point too. I'm the golden people. Oh, so you're worth more than me. I don't know. And what about Mongoloid or Dravidian or like Daisy? Like, you know what I mean? Like this is the specific. I'm with it, man. If these are the scientific terms, I'm with Mongoloid. That's funny to me. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that that is like spelling it out, right? Just on a phenotype. Like that's a very 23 and me term. Um, Andrew, let's just get into our takeaways. I'm sure we could go through comments and stuff forever. Um, Jake Casby and Kang actually in his interview, he said that he thinks it's unrealistic to expect true solidarity from the majority of the population because most people are just like thinking about their world, right? And what's useful to them, but he thinks that a few a small group of very influential people that lead Asians will be very Pan-Asian even while acknowledging differences and that would be massively influential. Yeah. I think it is starting to happen. Um, I think the whole like different, but together motto is kind of working because I do think no one's saying like, Oh, Indians are the same as Chinese people, but there are a lot of bonds that we have and it's like, you know, we can we can align and why do you think that um, he's very skeptical that the mass average person will do the homework on everybody? Like, you know what I mean? Why do you think that the average person doesn't do their homework and study all Asian countries history? You know, not just they're one of their parents or their grandparents, because me and you, we kind of study everything. Yeah, but most people are not that curious. Obviously, I think we have an incentive. This is what we were always into. And now it's kind of like part of our job. Um, but also we enjoy it, but I'm saying like a lot of people don't have an incentive because uh, obtaining that type of information is not really going to help them in their everyday life because most people just want to learn the things that are going to impact their everyday life, making money, having fun, living life, finding love, building family, building friendships. That's it. I actually, I agree with you. I see what you're saying on a surface level, but I think if Asians actually all ate each other's food and watched at least a 10 to 20 minute jump geography now YouTube video, I just think people would feel different look like subconsciously about each other. I get you guys, there's a lot of material on the internet. Not only are there a lot of famous comedians of every ethnicity, uh, there are even mong Brian Yang, check out Brian Yang. He's a mom committee, but I'm saying there's also like there's just a lot of right food videos. I think to be honest, watching someone like migrationology, Mark Wiens, just go to all these different spots and try each other's foods, whether or not you're ever going to try whether or not you think it actually looks delicious. Just seeing it visually, you're like, oh, that's interesting. Okay, cool. I think one thing I would like to see is the people with the resources. Just try to amplify and boost the voices and especially the strong edifying stories. I think that one thing that a lot of rich Asians need to realize because if you know how Asia works, it's like kind of pretty hierarchical. People don't really think there's anything worth knowing from the poor Asians, right? Yeah, I would say that that's a very common richer Asian mindset. Yeah. And I do think that a lot of like poor Asians basically buy into that structure because a lot of the structure was an Asian because a lot of but a lot of Asians have like this achievement minded mindset where it's like, oh, if they're rich, then they achieved and we should like respect them or like, oh, okay, I'll just let them make the decisions because they're like the rich people. So that's kind of like how a lot of Asians think. Right. I mean, it is to be honest, probably a carryover from the dynastic imperial system. But anyway, guys, I think that we just listed out like pretty much the facts of, you know, why people are different. They do come from different religions. They do have different cuisines. They do have different cultures. But like you said, I think if we do the work to understand each other and respect each other and at least like one to five things from every culture in Asia, let's just extend it all the way to Turkey. Why not? You know what I mean? Or, or, you know, keep it all the way to Pakistan at least Central Asia, Kazakhstan, you know? Yeah, I think that that would be really useful. Yeah, I think that you got to watch at least food videos of everybody's culture. Yeah, learn a little bit about the people and the geography and then I don't know. Try to try to laugh. Laugh with them. Jokes, comedy, go to learn some pigeon. Hey, if you watch their movies too, because there's a lot of good movies out there that movies always is great. Soft power. And shout out to the Samoans. What up, Oose? Yeah. All right, guys. Thank you so much for watching, guys. We're about to end it right there. Let us know in the comments down below what you guys think about all this. How can Asians be more united? Or is it just a foregone conclusion? Well, I don't really think so. But you let me know in the comments down below. Guys, happy Asian American Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian Heritage Month. All right, until next time, we out. Peace.