Monday, January 14, 2013

Revoking My Model Minority Card

Mama and Papa Fung have been looking after a brother and sister pair, ages 8 and 4, a few times a week. Perhaps because their parents once lived a cosmopolitan life that included living in Japan for a while, they want their kids to become immersed in different languages and cultures from an early age. They have sent the kids to Chinese school, and their previous nanny also spoke to them in Mandarin. As a result, the kids are remarkably fluent, and their accent is spot-on. My parents reinforce their education by speaking to them only in Mandarin and by teaching them some easy words to read and write.

My mother has been reflecting on why she hasn't been as successful in instructing her own children. She had to drag me kicking and screaming to Chinese school when when I was a kid, and quickly lost the struggle to maintain a Mandarin-speaking household the second I started preschool and jabbered in English. (It doesn't help that my father speaks Cantonese, so that was the dialect I was more exposed to growing up.) As a result, I speak Mandarin with the fluency required to order food at restaurant. My Cantonese is only good for petty gossip. And the little Chinese that I can read and write I retained from college, when I finally valued my mother tongue enough to attempt to learn. In sum, my Chinese language abilities are pathetic. My brother's are worse. 

So when Mama Fung told me about these kids she's babysitting, she could only lament: "Can you believe it? These two white kids speak Chinese! WHITE KIDS! What kind of mother am I?" 

My father, however, is a bit more forgiving of himself and of his children. In the time that he's spent with these kids, he has discovered that they have absolutely no musical knowledge. They don't know any songs, and have trouble singing notes on a scale. From the time my brother and I were able to make any verbal noises, we were singing. We sang Mandarin songs my mother taught us, Disney songs, songs we learned from preschool, Beatles songs, Motown songs, songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. Together with our cousins we could have been the Chinese American Von Trapp family. We also all learned musical instruments-- My brother and I both took piano and voice lessons. I played the flute in the school band; my brother played the trombone. There is not a single tone-deaf person in our family. 

Of course, this is just a testament to what constant reinforcement can do. My father, always one to believe in the power of genetics, says to me, "Come to think of it, you and your brother are smarter than these two white kids anyway." 


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