cultural assimilation

Is cultural assimilation ever funny? Yes, says the irreverent Jen Wang of website Disgrasian. "Normally…the things non-white people do to look like white people because that’s what’s considered beautiful are sad and sometimes dangerous," she argues. There’s one exception, though—Asians with perms. Wang said that trend, which peaked in the early ’90s, is hilarious.

The madness stops with me, I told myself years ago. My kids will have names that they won’t have to spell out, that won’t get their résumés dismissed, and that won’t make it easy for others to discriminate against them. They will have generic Western names, damn it!