This campus's Asian American literary set fails to understand a simple concept: When we Asian Americans appropriate African American language for our own, we sound ridiculous.

Using another people's street language is both a joke and a corruption. Sporting a traditionally "black" attitude results in cheap imitation, not expression. Ripping away words like "brothah" and "sistah" from their proper social context reduces their verbal power to nothing.

In his essay "Backtalk," Frank Chin declares, "We are a people without a native tongue... We have no street language to flaunt and strut the way the blacks and Chicanos do. They have a positive, self- defined linguistic identity that can be offended and wronged. We don't."

The need for our own Asian American language should be self- evident: As Chin says, "If our basic means of expression is mimicry and ventriloquism, then our art and culture is mimicry and ventriloquism too."

Stealing the idiom of African America is a copout for any Asian American writer who is committed to establishing a true Asian American cultural identity.

Three weeks ago, at a poetry reading for Asian Pacific Heritage Week, I heard many talented Asian writers taking one of two easy ways out.

Some of the writers fell into the Amy Tan Family Dinner style of writing. Strings of meaningless adjectives weaving a mystic tapestry called Chinatown. Weak, exotic "talk-stories," bearing little resemblance to genuine myth. Words that didn't dare have the spice or flavor--like nonauthentic Chinese dishes designed for the mild palates of the white mainstream.

In contrast, another group of poets announced themselves through their bold clothing with an attitude. Like modern-day Al Jolsons in yellowface, they leaned back with an air at once laidback and danger- ous. Every word was fraught with borrowed power, drawing from a street language which was obviously so integral to their middle-class suburban lives.

In other words, they were laughable.

An Asian American sensibility must be unique. We must find our own tongue with minimal influence from the white mainstream or the African American alternative.

Any strength discovered through African American experience or language is an illusion. On the surface, appropriating African American culture and language may seem like a bold move. Unity among people of color is a worthy goal. Anti-black racism in our own community must be erradicated by drastic measures. And the vitality and power of expression in African American culture is enviable.

But if we hope to enter any alliance of color as an equal partner, we must know ourselves. Without a culture we can call our own, we will be forever unable to express ourselves--we will continue, as always, living in silence and self-denial.

Self-hatred is a complicated concept.

Cowardly assimilation to white ideals is what immediately comes to mind. When we speak of Asian Americans abandoning their ethnicity, we tend to only consider complete cultural surrender to the white mainstream.

However, for many Asian Americans at Berkeley who posses a higher ethnic awareness, it's possible to go running to the other extreme. In a society ruled by white culture, it's tempting to latch on to African America as the only strong, identifiable alternative. But let's not fool ourselves. Jazz and rap are culturally ours as much as Bach and Brahms. James Baldwin speaks for Asian Americans as much as Shakespeare does. Taking African American culture as ours is a delusion and a violent misappropriation.

A community of color is an admirable long-term goal, but it is no excuse to be intentionally imitative and submissive.

Searching for our own identity and language is not any easy process. But once we discover our true collective voice, it will mean the to our days of silence and self-hatred and the birth of a new Asian American.