LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Upon entering the Student Union, there is a sacred stone bench right below the “USC Pharmacy” sign. Everyday at noon, as the sun rises higher into the sky and the building casts its shadow over Trousdale, the shade around this bench is suddenly covered by Asian students, namely members of the university’s Asian American fraternities and sororities. I look at the cluster of guys in baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts with spiked hair and the girls in their fitted jeans and smug t-shirts with long layered hair and can not help but be reminiscent of my early adolescent days when such appearances and social mingling were the styles of the playground’s kOoLeSt AzNs. Of course, I can’t say this to be true for all Asian Americans across the nation. I draw my experiences from growing up here in Southern California and from hanging out with my cousins up north in the Bay Area.

A significant part of fifth and sixth grade was spent immersed in academics, and while my social life was just beginning to develop, much time was also spent on thinking about creative ways to express my Asian Pride — AzN PrYdE to be more exact.  Whether downloading “Got Rice?” and such songs from Napster or taking glossy wallet-sized photos at the studio, I was very proud to have that pride and to display it relentlessly, decorating my notebooks with Johnny Ngo graphics (there is a whole collection of them online) and Asian-styled letters.  A typical message on the back of a picture would read

To My Eva Dearest (insert name),
Wazzup?  I hope u like dis pic of me and I hope u’ll neva 4get me bcuz I kno I’ll neva 4get u!  Ish been gr8 knowing u.  Stay swt.  KIT.  LULAS [love you like a sis].

♥,
Helen

Azn Pryde Nationwide
ADIDAS [Asians Dominating in Da American Society]
AZN PRYDE 4EVA!

And when instant messaging became our most prolific form of communication, screen names personifying Asian Pride popped up everywhere: xXcute_azn_girlXx, lildragonboi617, thug4lyfe95, aznbabee626, and the list could go on to fill up your buddy list.  Sometimes the lengths to which these young teens took to assert and defend their pride fell only short of racial supremacy, instigating fights on the basketball courts and blatantly denouncing other races on online blogs.  In retrospect, I was never on that extreme end but I can hardly recount these years without a bit of embarrassment. 

I often ask myself why I had such an intense devotion to my race.  I hesitate to say that it was an interest in my culture or ethnic background because at that time I had no explicit intention of preserving my family’s traditions or traveling abroad to learn about my family’s history.  Asian Pride is like a drug catered to young teenagers, an addicting and potentially harmful substance that is the ticket into a loyal community of fellow Asians. 

When I asked my roommate from Hawaii whether or not there was a prevalence of Asian pride at her school, she said no.  I highly doubt that there is such a culture in Asia itself.  AzN PrYdE is uniquely Asian American.  Sometimes I wonder if kids like me prescribed to it so readily because it was a rebellion against mainstream American culture, because it was our way of finally speaking out after years of being the quiet Asian students, or because it was our way of preserving our identity in a white world where we were starting to learn that we were a minority.  Or maybe it was all of these reasons.  Maybe we really had no legitimate reason at all; we could have been just a bunch of kids caught in an Asian hype.  Yet I find this hard to believe because this subculture, although I have pretty much grown out of it, is still very popular among Asian American youth, predominantly among those growing up in communities where they are not the overwhelming majority but have a substantial number.  Even here at USC—at the college level—this behavior is not too far from us than noontime at the pharmacy’s stone bench. 

Try Googling “Azn Pryde” and you’ll get a more comprehensive perspective of this experience.

Write to Helen Tran at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Source: http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/apass/apassreporter/htran.html