One's hobbies should not be under fire

Yellowworld.org is by far my favourite forum for APIA issues. The participants have always impressed me with their media vigilance. The place thrives due to a conscientiousness towards staying on topic without sacrificing the intellectual meanderings that come with the occasional tangent. Threads are split, merged, and moved with a grace that doesn't obstruct the flow of conversation. I only get confused at times because it's big, or at least casts the illusion of being big, and sometimes I forget to check to see if someone's replied to what I said two weeks ago in a thread buried underneath all the bumping around that's happened since then. So I generally stick to a few threads for a while before moving on.

In a choice corner recently, there's been a turn in the discussion on whitewashing around the idea that one's choice of hobbies should not be racialized. Just so that it doesn't appear like I'm paraphrasing an independent individual and then later putting words into her mouth (this is actually me), I'm going to quote myself from the thread:

There will be activities every now and then that people of colour have been doing, then white hipsters will 'discover' it. Suddenly it's considered cool because it's all about them.

And I'll add: I think hobbies should be treated as completely race-neutral in conversations about whitewashing. Identifying Asians as being whitewashed based on their hobbies is not only unreliable and counterproductive to APIA interests, but it legitimizes appropriation and implies an acceptance of white leadership in the process of defining what's cool. It doesn't have to be that way. At all.

By no way is referring to hobbies as 'race-neutral' meant to deny a hobby its origins, especially if said origins came from a marginalized group that struggled through and continues to struggle through attacks on their culture through forced assimilation or genocide. That would be disrespectful, and there's no need to help along the destructive effects of cultural appropriation. Instead I'm pointing out the logical folly in the branding of fellow Asian Americans with the label "whitewashed" on the basis of a hobby that wasn't even all that white to begin with but one that had been appropriated. And even if the hobby was all that white to begin with, one's participation does not denote one's political alignment.

At the same time, I acknowledge that there will always be exceptions. After all, wouldn't Amy Tan consider creative writing her hobby? But as far as most physical activities go, I can hardly see the cause for excitement.

I also realize that some people may measure whitewashedness based on not what an Asian-American does but what he or she doesn't do. They may scrutinize the absence of certain hobbies, hobbies normally associated with recent Asian immigrants. Then it's no longer about how white you are but how you're anything but fresh-off-the-boat. Not being a recent Asian immigrant myself, I wouldn't know how to call something like that other than simply Really Fucking Annoying. That outlook ignores the existence of recent Asian immigrants that cannot or never wanted to adopt the sports of choice favoured among other 'model minorities.'