Obama and Asian America

Connecting Barack Obama to Asian Americans is a somewhat unexpected task, considering Obama’s racial significance as a president is primarily placed on his African roots. In Jeff Yang’s case, this is the goal of his controversial article titled “Could Obama be the first Asian-American president?” In this article, Yang connects Obama to Asian America in a number of ways. Warner Todd Huston summarizes a few of these connections in an article claiming Yang’s conclusion is unfounded; these points include that Obama was born in Hawaii (the only Asian-majority state), lived in Jakarta for a few years, has an Asian American half-sister and brother-in-law, and he hired a legislative director of Chinese descent. Huston summarizes only a paragraph of Yang’s points, leaving out Yang’s specific arguments about Obama’s sense of alienation as a child and his parent’s stances on guilt and hard work which are shared by many Asian American’s parents. Yang also connects Asian Americans to Obama through several supposedly shared character attributes: moderation, humility, patience. Ironically, a quote from Obama’s elected Asian-American, Chris Lu, sums up the true meaning behind Yang’s article: “People see in him [Obama] the qualities they want to see”. For those of us not content to consider Obama simply as a symbol of a nation, not a symbol of race, apparently we are fortunate in having a president whose background is ambiguous enough to be open to any sort of generalized conclusion, as in Jeff Yang’s article. Although I find Huston’s response to Yang’s article unnecessarily vituperative, I confess that Yang’s argument seems to grasp at straws for its own sake.

After viewing Obama’s inauguration, I am able to further consider his relation to Asian America. A multitude of races were present for his ceremony; in fact, while watching MSNBC, I noticed that every shot that focused on three or less individuals in the crowd included minority groups (this means that any time the camera only centered on one person, they were non-white). Drawing from this observation, I believe that Obama received a plethora of varied cultural support (considering that he is the first president from a minority race, this is no surprise); at the same time, I believe MSNBC wanted to heavily emphasize the significance of Obama’s election as the first African American president. The various cultures present for the inauguration support Jeff Yang’s argument that Obama is an icon for any group to project their beliefs, hopes, and dreams onto. Judging from the inauguration, however, it is clear to me that Obama is no more Asian American than he is Latin American or white. Obama made many blatant statements regarding his identity chiefly as African American, as did several speakers during the ceremony (it was pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr. III was present, perhaps for obvious reasons related to race). That being said, there was no direct representation of Asian America from Obama or other contributors, aside from their relationship as minority cultures in America. The only obvious Asian American present on the inaugural stand at any point was Yo-Yo Ma, which brings us to briefly consider the music of the inauguration.

The music played during the procession of the inauguration was mostly nationalistic march music played by military ensembles. Most of the pieces were likely traditional for the ceremony, and had little to no direct relation to Obama. After a few initial speeches, Aretha Franklin came forward to sing “My Country Tis of Thee”. The tune itself is a traditional nationalistic song for America. Aretha Franklin is also symbolic, treasured as a historic American artist and as a point of pride for African American artists as well. Again, any conception of Obama’s relationship to Asian America is bested by his apparent pride in the African American tradition. Later in the ceremony, a four-piece ensemble came forward to play a John Williams arrangement titled “Air and Simple Gifts”. The ensemble featured a Caucasian piano player (a female artist), a Caucasian violinist, an African American clarinetist, and Yo-Yo Ma, a famous Asian American cellist. The arrangement was based on “Simple Gifts”, another nationalistic, race-ambiguous piece of music. To me, the fact that Yo-Yo Ma was chosen to play cello is no more significant than the fact that John Williams arranged the composition. Both of these individuals are modern celebrities in the world of music; if you asked someone with little musical exposure to name a modern cellist or composer, you would be hard pressed to get a different name. Still, the variety in race and gender of the ensemble may well be intentional and indicative of Obama’s desire to bring together the various races that live in the U.S.

Jeff Yang convinced me that he is able to relate to Obama as an Asian American, not that Obama is the first Asian American president. I view the title of his article as intentionally controversial and misleading. Obama himself seems most focused on his African American ancestry, but at the same time, this is secondary to his position as a symbol for all people within our nation. The musical content itself may draw from European musical ideals (consider the instrumentation of the Williams piece, or the history of many of the tunes we take for granted as American nationalist pieces), but in a modern context, this is certainly subservient to their role as memorable pieces of “American” patriotic music. Yo-Yo Ma’s appearance could be taken as some sort of acknowledgement of Asian American culture, but Yo-Yo Ma himself would likely disagree, as his first priority is to deliver the music, not to fulfill someone’s cultural construction fantasies (this is based on Mina Yang’s description of some of his beliefs in “East Meets West”). I cannot help but conclude by pointing out that making cultural claims towards Obama and his inauguration come off as self-serving; that is, they seem to place the unbiased position of the president’s role as secondary to petty issues of cultural claims.