Jae-Hyup Lee - Dynamics of Ethnic Identity: Three Asian American Communities in Philadelphia

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ASIAN AMERICANS

RECONCEPTUALIZING CULTURE, HISTORY, POLITICS

edited by
FRANKLIN NG
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY,
FRESNO

A GARLAND SERIES

Asian Americans: Reconceptualizing Culture, History, Politics

Franklin Ng, series editor

The Political Participation
of Asian Americans: Voting
Behavior in Southern
California
Pei-te Lien

The Sikh Diaspora:
Tradition and Change in an
Immigrant Community
Michael Angelo

Claiming Chinese Identity
Elionne L.W. Belden

Transnational Aspects of
Iu-Mien Refugee Identity
Jeffery L. MacDonald

Caring for Cambodian
Americans: A Multi
disciplinary Resource for the
Helping Professions
Sharon K. Ratliff

Imagining the Filipino
American Diaspora:
Transnational Relations,
Identities, and Communities
Jonathan Y. Okamura

Mothering, Education, and
Ethnicity: The Transforma
tion of Japanese American
Culture
Susan Matoba Adler

Dynamics of Ethnic Identity:
Three Asian American Com
munities in Philadelphia
Jae-Hyup Lee

Dynamics of Ethnic Identity

Three Asian American Communities in Philadelphia

Jae-Hyup Lee

Copyright 1998 Jae-Hyup Lee
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lee, Jae-Hyup, 1966
Dynamics of ethnic identity: three Asian American communities in Philadelphia / Jae-Hyup Lee.
p. cm. (Asian Americans)
Revision of authors thesis (Ph. D.)University of Pennsylvania, 1994.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-3118-5 (alk. paper)
1. Asian AmericansPennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaEthnic identity. 2. Korean AmericansPennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaEthnic identity. 3. Chinese AmericansPennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaEthnic identity. 4. Vietnamese AmericansPennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaEthnic identity. 5. Philadelphia (Pa.)Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series.
F158.9.O6L44 1998
305.895073dc21

98-27455

To Jisuk

Contents

1. i
2. ii
3. xii

Guide

This book began in 1993 as a doctoral dissertation. Melvyn Hammarberg, my thesis advisor, took earlier interest in the publication of my work. Without his generosity and encouragement, this book would not have been possible.

Numerous individuals helped me with this book in all the stages. My training in the Department of American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania as well as in the Department of Anthropology at Seoul National University have set an important foundation for this research. Special thanks are due to Professors Margaret Mills, Jean Wu, Murray Murphey, Robert Schuyler, Kyung-Soo Chun, Sang-Bok Han, Kwang-Ok Kim, Kwang-Kyu Lee, Mun-Woong Lee, and Hahn-Sok Wang. At Northwestern University School of Law, Anthony D'Amato, Kenneth Abbott, Carole Silver, and Brian Williams helped broaden my perspective and develop a legal mind. I was also fortunate to have young Asian American attorneys as friends. I thank Simon Wong, Johann Lee, Joonmoo Lee, and Kyungwon Lee, who shared interests in my work and provided constant emotional support.

My deepest appreciation is credited to all of my informants in the Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese American communities in Philadelphia for their kind cooperation which made my fieldwork so enjoyable and rewarding. I wish to express gratitude to Mr. Thomas Morton, Mr. Woon-Kin Chin, and Ms. My-Nhat Tran at Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations for assisting entry to different Asian American communities. I am grateful to number of peers who provided me valuable insights and constructive comments on earlier versions of this book: Beverly Butcher, Ellen Somekawa, Elise An, and Yuh Jiyeon. Dr. Bong Hak Hyun, Dr. Hie-Won Hann and reviewers and editors at Garland Publishing Inc. also provided thoughtful suggestions and expertise as I began the task of revision for publication.

I am indebted to a number of institutions for research opportunities and financial support: the University of Pennsylvania for the William Penn Fellowship from 1989 to 1994; the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies for the exhibition project on Philadelphia Korean Americans from 1990 to 1991; and the Fabian/Baber Communications, Inc. for the film project on a Korean American family during the summer of 1993. Finally, the Department of English and the Graduate School of International Area Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies provided important support. I especially thank my colleague, Dr. Alec Gordon, for his helpful comments.

Respectful appreciation is devoted to my parents who instilled in me the importance of education and have given emotional support when they were most needed. I also thank my brother and sister for their love and generosity.

I dedicate this book to my wife Jisuk Woo. I was fortunate to gain her intellectual support and companionship in such critical years of my life as a scholar and as a person. She has been a devoted friend and an outstanding critic since we first met at the University of Pennsylvania as graduate students. Although we took different intellectual paths and went to different law schools afterwards, we have finally become a family. It is hard to imagine writing this book without her very special kind of help. This book is hers as well.

JAE-HYUP LEE

Seoul, Korea

Dynamics of Ethnic Identity

Introduction

On a brief visit to Korea in 1990 after a year of graduate work in the United States, I visited one of my former professors. Upon hearing that I was studying Korean Americans, he said, "You didn't go all the way to America to study Koreans, did you?" To many Koreans and to some Americans as well, his question seems to be a valid one. Koreans living in a geographic area known as America are viewed by outsiders like my Korean professor as not being culturally legitimate Americans whether or not they are legally Americanssince they have not been portrayed so. To these outsiders, America as a cultural entity is a hybrid of European civilization, thus to study American society or culture, one must start looking at "the Americans"the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

I was not able to defend my position against my former professor at that time. My image of America and what it should look like, namely, that the American civilization started on the arrival of the early European explorers some 500 years ago, were not radically different from his. As an anthropologist, I came to the United States to learn about American society as an other culture. I expected America to be distinctively foreign and different from my Asian background. And indeed, Korean American experiences looked too familiar, and I positioned these Korean American experiences as a minor, or slightly insignificant one for explaining American social structure. I wanted to find an American cultural entity which I believed existed somewhere out there.

Then I started to realize that the white European majority and other racial and ethnic minorities have played equally critical roles in shaping American society. What we have in American history is a relationship between different racial and ethnic groups across time and in different social contexts. As a matter of fact, it is minority and ethnic experiences that can clearly illuminate the critical social relationships and the hidden organizing principles in American society. It was thus on the basis of this understanding that I decided to conduct research on Asian Americans because Asian American experiences can illustrate the interaction between the central concepts of American civilization such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

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