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Kelly H. Chong, Love Across Borders: Asian Americans, Race, and the Politics of Intermarriage and Family-Making, Routledge, 2021, 246 pgs.
As a single Asian man, I was once oversensitive about the topic of intermarriage involving Asians. Most people would imagine this as a couple consisting of a man of European heritage and a woman of Asian heritage, and indeed, that tends to be the most common pairing. But times have changed. I could accept that reality of life, and intermarriage has diverged in multiple ways beyond “a white man and an Asian woman”. Intrigued to understand the state of intermarriage in modern Asian American lives,I picked up this book.
Kelly H. Chong is the Chairperson of Sociology at the University of Kansas and published this book in 2020/21, having interviewed 100 Asian Americans from 2009 to 2016. All the interviewees grew up in the US, and most were in heterosexual marriages during the study. Almost a quarter of the interviewees were unmarried or had married someone of their own ethnicity.
There are two categories of intermarriage covered here, interracial and interethnic. Interracial marriage is between an Asian American and someone of different race, in most cases a White (the book capitalises the word) person. Interethnic marriage involves an Asian American couple of different ethnicities, such as a Chinese and a Vietnamese. A biracial Asian marrying a biracial Black person is categorised as interracial, while two mixed-race Asians marrying each other are categorized as interethnic.
The borders of the title refer to cultural rather than political borders, as the book does not focus much on immigrants. Intermarriage among migrants remains common, but Chong wants to look at Asian Americans who grew up in America, who were educated to see themselves as Americans, growing up with domestic support systems, and who, theoretically, had better chances of meeting a greater pool of interested Americans.
All the Familiar Troubles
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The interviewees were roughly in their late 30s and 40s during the study, which means they grew up in late 20th-century America and got married in the 2000s. The author knows all the toils a Asian children in America face. Parents who want you to marry your own kind. The feeling that you’re different in school, from your face to your lunchbox. Familiarity of home versus freedom of school. The feeling that everyone expects you to be a diligent student, no more and no less.
Asian Americans are tied to the “model minority” stereotype, which classifies them as the hardworking, rules abiding, and peace-loving non-White people, usually, in a racially dubious way, in contrast to Black or Latino minorities. Most social scientists see the model minority role as harmful, as it unfairly pegs Asian Americans to subservient roles, and preserves the status quo. Conservatives, meanwhile, argue that there is no conditioning. For them, Asian Americans simply study hard and work hard because they practice Asian values and traditions.
This duality of academic perception and public perception of American Americans (including among themselves) is the spirit of the book, as Chong discusses all the critical theories on whiteness and power imbalance, while her respondents share interesting stories from their lives and how their perspectives kept changing in different life stages.
The first Asian Americans were farm labourers in Hawaii and miners and railway labourers in the continental United States. The ban on Chinese migration in 1882 culminated in Japanese and Filipinos being excluded from citizenship from 1924. Interracial partnerships were socially shunned, even with threats of the citizenship of White women who married Asian men being cancelled.
This changed in 1945 when American soldiers began to return home with Asian brides, while the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1945 as a favour to America’s Kuomintang ally. Free migration into America was allowed in 1965, and by 2010 Asian Americans had made up 5.5% of the American population, mostly foreign-born, with the exception of Japanese Americans. By 1980, Asian Americans were involved in more interracial marriages than other races in America, but that declined in this century as more Asian Americans began to marry each other.
The image of Asian men changed from one of social scourge to docility and servility, due to a scarcity of Asian American women before the 1960s and the employment of Asian men as cooks, janitors, and domestic servants. Until the 2010s, many Asian American men and Asian American scholars lamented the portrayal of Asian American men as asexual nerds, the least masculine men in America.
On Interracial Marriage
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We start with those who have interracial partners, which in most cases means White Americans. Many of them grew up in White-dominated neighbourhoods and went to White-majority schools. They were aware that they ate different food, they looked different, and sometimes referred as “the Chinese girl/guy”.
And yet, against their parents’ advice, many of the interviewed women preferred White boys in school. Some put it down to individual attraction. Chong noted that Korean Americans tended to avoid Korean because of their patriarchal attitudes, a pattern she also noticed among Latina Americans who shun Latino men. Asian men, meanwhile, also tended to prefer White girls in school, but thought that they were “out of their league”.
A major change happened at university level, where it became easy to find other Asian students. And yet, many found disappointment. Many thought that other Asians, especially those in Asian clubs, were too cliquey and insular. Those who attempted to socialise with both White and Asian friends thought that they were living a double life. Encountering more Asians in university also didn’t change the interviewees’ negative feelings about other Asians, and eventually they felt more comfortable to connect with other Asians after work, where Asian professional connections and associations were useful.
The respondents in this group dated White Americans and got married and had children. Another interesting thing happened, as they taught their biracial children Asian culture and identity. The respondents said while they remembered that they were Asians throughout their lives, their children might need a firmer identity as Americans who were partly White.
There are other more practical reasons. Knowledge of an Asian language is a plus point in both a flourishing Asia-Pacific and modern America, where identity politics is important. White parent often think their own culture is “bland”, and that it’s a delight to have a child who eats with chopsticks and celebrates Lunar New Year.
The burden of introducing Asian culture falls to the Asian parent, while the White parent introduces American culture like TV shows, American snacks, and White etiquette. Citing psychologist Maria Root, Chong sees that White mothers are also on the defensive, as society sees that if they have a non-White partner, their mixed-race children may be subject to racial prejudice.
On Interethnic Marriage
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Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal had reported on the rising endogamy rate among Asian Americans in 2012, a phenomenon that had started by the late 2000s. While many Asian Americans who marry White Americans grew up in White neighbourhoods, many Asian Americans in the second group grew up in Asian or diverse neighbourhoods. Their parents saw Asian Americans of different ethnicities as fellow Asians, and sometimes prefer their children marry fellow Asians with similar values rather than marry White Americans, whose faithfulness and commitment they distrust.
By the 1990s, many neighbourhoods in Hawaii and California were dominated by Asians, and the youth saw each other as Asians, united by their experiences of racism and all the cool stuff from Asia —bubble tea, anime, and imported Japanese cars. In school boys and girls thought they didn’t measure up to White girls (respectively as romantic interest and competitor), and they were the ones who joined Asian clubs in university.
Again, while many said that love just happened, they also admitted factors that influenced their decision. An interethnic partner was a good compromise to avoid people of the shared culture (Korean women mentioned this point again to avoid Korean men), and many said that their parents were happy that they would have Asian in-laws instead of non-Asian ones. Some also worried about having a biracial child who would be shunned by both communities.
Having It Easier Now
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Asian Americans are aware of the perils of the dating world from their youth. Asian girls know they are fetishised. Asian men know they cannot compete with White and Black boys for height, confidence, and athleticism. They strategise to the point of being defensive about their Asian identity or overcompensating their assertiveness. The interviewees are in the winners’ club, those who completed the stages from dating to parenthood. They’ve played their Asian attributes of ambition, diligence, and family-oriented values well.
Global pop culture in the last ten years also worked well for them. Soft masculinity represented by Korean boybands and Asian actors. More representation in media, including award-winning performers and artists. Despite some negativity on social media, Chong finds out that in general Asian men and women don’t mind their peers and relatives—let alone Asian celebrities—marrying someone outside their ethnicity.
Life is good for the 100 Asians featured here but Chong is more pessimistic about race relations in America. Does interracial marriage do anything to challenge white supremacy in America? Will Asian Americans stand up for the marginalised? Does the very term Asian American, which was coined by pro-Black activists in the 1960s, now stand for assimilation, or what she prefers to call subordinate incorporation, instead of solidarity?
Her perspectives are standard academic perspectives, while the Asian American couples she interviewed also have beautiful insights into their own lives, from growing up to now growing up new generations of Americans. This book is a critical celebration of Asian American love.
How to cite: Rustan, Mario. “It’s Only Love: Kelly H. Chong’s Love Across Borders.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 14 Oct. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/10/14/love-across-borders.
Mario Rustan is a writer and reviewer living in Bandung, Indonesia. [All contributions by Mario Rustan.]
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