Boba liberal is a term mostly used within the Asian diaspora communities in the West, especially in the United States. It describes someone of East or Southeast Asian descent living in the West who has an apparent liberal outlook. It is also occasionally used to describe conservatives who weaponize their East or Southeast Asian identity. The neologism emerged among Asian American community who accused "boba liberals" of only holding their liberal beliefs to appear more white adjacent, by engaging in progressive social movements or viewpoints, while at the same time disregarding and trivializing issues concerning Asians.[1][2][3][4]

Definition

The term "boba liberal" was coined in 2019 by Vietnamese American Twitter user @diaspora_is_red.[5][6] It refers to Asians who would often use their "Asianness" to speak on behalf of the Asian population in the West, using talking points often parroting white liberals, which has been decried as minimizing actual issues faced by the Asian diaspora.[7]

The Asian identity of boba liberals has often been accused of being shallow and superficial since it goes directly against their goal of aspiring to whiteness, and so uses surface level stereotypical Asian traits such as "liking boba tea" to bolster their Asian credentials. Hence, the emergence of the term boba liberal.[8][9]

United States

Specifically in the United States, it is said that boba liberals often use boba tea as it does not require much personal investment;[clarification needed] it is a fairly popular drink in Asia and therefore a safe non-opinion to take and identify with, and is compatible with conflating "Asian-American" identity with policies and practices that primarily benefit a narrow strata of upper-income Asian-Americans, while not necessarily aligning with the interests of the Asian-American community as a whole.[4] Therefore, while the word "liberal" is used in the term, it is not mutually exclusive to one specific ideology, as it may also extend to conservative-aligned Asians in some areas, as they would often take advantage of the "model minority" label by defending such measures.[10][7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Frias, Lauren (6 May 2021). "Boba liberalism: How the emergence of superficial activism could cause more harm than good to the AAPI community". Insider. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  2. ^ Rosen, Laura (18 February 2021). "The Quad: Bursting the bubble of boba liberalism amid the COVID-19 pandemic". Daily Bruin. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  3. ^ Yukiko, Sarah (24 December 2021). "Boba liberals: The meaning of the term used to describe the Asian Americans everyone loves to hate". NextShark. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  4. ^ a b Quach, Cindy (27 February 2021). "What is Boba Liberalism?". Retrieved 13 February 2022. Boba liberalism thrives in a capitalist and neoliberal society because neoliberal policies primarily benefit wealthier communities. Typically, the faces of boba liberalism are Asian Americans that are part of the middle and upper economic class. As a result, boba liberals disregard the negative effects of capitalism because they profit from it. For instance, boba liberals tend to focus on advocating for Asian representation in white spaces, or discussing whether or not wearing chopsticks in one's hair is culture appropriation. These topics are popular within boba liberal circles, all while dialogue regarding inequality, globalization, and racial injustice are purposely neglected.
  5. ^ "What is Boba Liberalism? – FEM Newsmagazine". Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  6. ^ Zhao, Yingying (2021-02-05). "Bubble Tea, Boba Liberalism, and Capitalism's Effects on East Asian Diasporic Identity". The Yale Herald. Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  7. ^ a b Vo, Mai (19 October 2021). "How did we get from bubble tea to boba liberalism?". Trinitonian. Retrieved 13 February 2022. "Boba liberalism" obscures the diversity present in the community. It effaces the stories of working-class families, stories of undocumented immigrants, and stories of people who are fundamentally vulnerable in the community. Another issue with "boba liberalism" is rooted in its prevalence among middle- to upper-middle-class East and Southeast Asian communities and how they maintain the dominant voice within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) sphere.
  8. ^ Fan, Jiayang (29 January 2021). "Chronicles of a Bubble-Tea Addict". The New Yorker. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  9. ^ Zhao, Yingying (5 February 2021). "Bubble Tea, Boba Liberalism, and Capitalism's Effects on East Asian Diasporic Identity". The Yale Herald. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  10. ^ Zhang, Jenny G. (5 November 2019). "How Bubble Tea Became a Complicated Symbol of Asian-American Identity". Eater. Retrieved 13 February 2022. While bubble tea itself is neither inherently political nor bad, per se, some Asian Americans are critical of the dominant strain of Asian-American politics, called "boba liberalism," that the drink has come to represent in certain circles. Boba liberalism — is the "substanceless trend-chasing spectacle" that is mainstream Asian-American liberalism, derided as shallow, consumerist-capitalist, and robbed of meaning.

Further reading

External links

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