5/22 tues

As we can see, the impacts of this Pan-Asian American subculture consist of both the positives and negatives. Just to name a few, import racing has served as a resistance against the western hegemonic notion of masculinity and the model minority myth; and secondly, it allows Asian males to claim an authentic culture of masculinity in American society. However, this subculture did come at the expense of many people within the Pan-Asian communities such as the objectification of young Asian females, which justifies the increased number of sex trafficking that is happening today; and it also perpetuates the oriental view of Asian females as exotic, dragon ladies, china dolls, etc. And lastly, the production of Japanese import cars has provided people in underdeveloped Asian countries employment, though it also comes at the expense of exploiting them as cheap labor.

From this reading, I can relate this Pan-Asian American youth culture of import racing similar to how the Filipino DJs have established their cultural legitimacy and belongingness in Hip Hop. Having their own cultural space allows the Filipino DJs to feel confident, proud, recognized, validated, visible, etc., which is similar to this import racing subculture where Pan-Asian males can have their own cultural space to express their own notion of masculinity, talents and knowledge of cars and technology. Though this space is not a long-term fix to bigger, deeper issues such as anti-Asian Racism and Violence. Therefore, We also have to reconsider the negative impacts this subculture has within and outside of the Asian American Community, which already has led to very complex tensions between the domains of race, gender, and class.

In summary, the overall impacts of import racing had made me reflect on how today's problems (such as systematic racism and sex trafficking) are so complex and intertwined with so many deep rooted problems throughout history, and it is not that easy to undo some of them without jeopardizing the lives of other marginalized groups, which in this context are Asian women and those who live in underdeveloped Asian countries.

Film: Tony loves Kelly

Seeing Tony and Kelly’s dysfunctional interactions from this film made me reflect a lot on the mental impact of living in a low-income community. People underestimate how horrible it is to live with a lack of resources. It is not just the resources, but the conditioned mentality that will cause people to perpetuate the cycle of poverty in future generations. In this context, I am referring to mental health, meaning the quality of your interaction with others (ex: do you talk in a hostile way? Use cuss words? Berating?) In the film, I can read the language of Tony and Kelly’s interaction; they seem to have a lot of communication problem (I’m assuming because their culture does not encourage them to express their feelings and they don’t really tell each other the things that they say when filming individually), hostility (based on their use of profanity, name calling, and an angry tone of voice), and the Tony seems to be oblivious of Kelly’s struggle. All of these factors stem from chronic stress due to (poverty) and they can lead to negatively extreme actions that might harm the person and society as a whole (ex: crimes, rape, murder)