最近，知名美籍华裔教授吴华扬（Frank H. Wu）在自由派媒体《赫芬顿邮报》网站（Huffington Post）上发表了一篇文章，题目是：《关于新移民——给美国亚裔活动家的一封私信》(A Private Note to Asian American Activists About New Arrivals)，却在美国华人圈子掀起轩然大波。
这封公开的“私信”发于3月18日，吴华扬教授着重讨论了中国来美国的新移民和老一代亚裔美国人在理念上的严重分歧。关于这个问题他一直犹豫要不要说出来，但他发现，“消极等待只会让事情更糟”。以下为吴华扬《关于新移民——给美国亚裔活动家的一封私信》(A Private Note to Asian American Activists About New Arrivals)全文，网友一起来看看吧！（注，网友可以自行翻译）
知名美籍华裔教授吴华扬（左二）
A Private Note to Asian American Activists About New Arrivals
I write to you as my long-time friends, those who have fought not only for civil rights but also to include Asian Americans in all progressive causes.
I know from working alongside you that it has not been easy to persuade African Americans, Latinos, Jews, and others who have been dedicated to social justice that their principles extend to Asian immigrants and their American-born children and grandchildren. Some have been skeptical, others hostile. Yet I send you a note now to express a different concern. It is as sensitive if not more so, but it also is even more serious a potential barrier to your bridge building efforts. It could signal the end of the project altogether.
Here it is. The most recent set of newcomers from Asia, in particular those arriving from China, do not share our commitments. I implore you to reach out, to listen to them respectfully, and to try to persuade them. That requires that you — and I — not assume they need educating by us, as if we were self-appointed teachers, they permanently students. They will have none of that. They have experienced it enough.
Everywhere I encounter them, whether in suburban Southern California; the "Avenues” of western San Francisco; Silicon Valley; on the East Coast; or in communities that have developed seemingly overnight where there once were virtually no Asian faces to be seen, they complain. They are frustrated. I am familiar with the source of that sentiment: the literal historic exclusion and the tangible ongoing denial of equality.
But here is what worries me. While I have hesitated to call out the problem,waiting makes it worse. They seem to be as angry about Asian Americans, those who call themselves by that name and who are more assimilated, as they are about whites and blacks. They tell me so.
We do not represent them, We are not sympathetic to them. We have betrayed them. We cannot even communicate in the language they deem ours. One of the common words for “Mandarin” in Mandarin itself translates as “the national language” — though I am advised they’d prefer a dialect such as Toisan in any event.
The greatest ironies are always in the mirror image. To us, they are very Asian. To them, we are very American. We are not quite one another’s people. Waiting for the kids to grow up won’t work. (Yes, more than one of you has said that, only partly in jest.)
The truth is we are different. They come from an ascendent Asia. They can continue to maintain contacts with “the homeland,” thanks to technology.
They identify, as our forebears did, not as “Asian,” but by their
ethnicity, clan, province, religion, and circumstances. They are American on their own terms.
We are as foreign to them as they are to us, despite others telling us we all look alike. And they are aware of our condescension, even if we would deny it. As with other groups of every color and creed, those who settled, if only slightly earlier, invariably imply they are better than their country cousins. As much as the phrase is appropriated and ironic, even hip,there is a stigma to being “fresh off the boat.” Too much bling, not enough lining up in an orderly manner; nose-picking, spitting, bad driving, passive-aggressive conduct, and, let us hope, at least no dog-eating.
I do not doubt, and you have explained to me privately your concerns with which I do not disagree. Some of our cousins, distant kin who have shown up here, are alarming. They are bigots who do not care about democracy. They believe themselves to be better than other people of color, it hardly is worth pointing out since it is so obvious. They even suppose, not all that secretly, that they will surpass whites. They also might be corrupt albeit by our standards. There is no telling.
They are only starting to assert themselves. They do not claim disadvantage.
Just the opposite. They attack, as Asians are not stereotyped for doing. On issue after issue, ranging from diversity in higher education to “illegal” immigration to LGBT rights to police brutality to corporal
punishment to capital punishment, they are prepared to line up as a token Asian face on the other side of whatever protest you are organizing. Even on the environment, they feel persecuted for their taste for shark fin soup or exotic delicacies involving endangered species. And good for them. Their accent does not hold them back.
Be that as it may, I offer two reasons that are compelling enough. I am convinced anyway, to embrace them.
The first is what we say. We talk about how important it is to sustain
coalitions. We fought for a “seat at the table.” It would be wrong for us to be any less than wholeheartedly welcoming to those who look like us. We have to give them space too. We would be hypocrites otherwise. If we do not yield, we will be shoved aside. There is room for all, or so we ourselves proclaim.
The second is strategic. There are more of them than there are of us. They keep coming. The majority of Asian Americans are foreign-born, not native born. Immigration patterns ensure that this demographic balance of power will favor the former over the latter, at least for our lifetimes. If we do not win them over, or ally with them, they will overtake us numerically and render us irrelevant politically.
If Asian Americans want the concept of “Asian American” to last another generation, we must figure out how to engage with all who belong to an artificial, fragile category. The failure of the movement will be “on us,” to use the vernacular we must speak.
（完）