America dies every time you say ‘FOB’

Shiny Chandravel, Contributing writer

Your stomach churns from anxiety and seasickness. Amongst muddled foreign accents, only one thing remains coherent — beyond the Statue of Liberty lies opportunity. After enduring brutal physical and mental tests to get to America, you face one more unexpected hurdle: a kid in a VCU sweatshirt, pointing and laughing at you, shouting “FOB.” 

FOB stands for “Fresh off the Boat,” and refers to immigrants new to America. The term gained traction during East Asian immigration in the 1970s, and has grown in popularity since. While the term can be used lightheartedly to describe those unfamiliar to American culture, even becoming the title of a popular ABC sitcom, it has since evolved into a divisive label within immigrant communities.

Today, FOB is a casual insult for anyone seen as less “American.” Those who wear thicker accents, dress in cultural attire, or eat ethnic foods are accused of acting “fobby.” 

The accusers? Immigrants themselves. 

The irony of immigrant-on-immigrant insults may seem trivial, but it reflects a larger historical picture — each generation faces hostility from their predecessors.

American sentiment on immigration fluctuates like a pendulum, swinging from hostility to apathy. As the pendulum swings, each new group becomes a scapegoat,  accused of “stealing from real Americans.” From the Irish of Ellis Island to the South Asian influx of today, the pendulum never stops swinging — simply shifting its target. Today, it may be you, but tomorrow you will be sure to make it someone else. 

That is how this game is played. Each immigrant compares assimilation in petty battle, disputing their heavy accents, pop culture fluency and years on U.S. soil. Someone whose parents came in the 90s will make snide remarks about immigrants from the 2000s, who then mock those from the 2010s and so on and so forth. 

This is not just some online trend or niche semantic. The word FOB is alive and well at VCU. When I hear my South Asian peers snickering “FOB” at international students or mimicking accents they hear in class, I cringe. 

Because all I can think of is my own dad. 

Twenty years ago, he was the international student at VCU who barely knew English, who left his family behind, drowning in a foreign culture while unsure how to pay for his next semester. 

It is not just my dad who was once the “FOB.” It is every parent, grandparent and relative within our communities. They were all fresh off the boat at some point. It is how we are where we are today. 

Now that I am at VCU, I wonder what would have happened if my dad immigrated now. Despite muttering “FOB” under their breath, are those second generation students willing to support new immigrants? Or do our own communities turn up their noses at those they deem not as “American” as themselves?

When we call people FOB, we are complicit in xenophobia — glorifying heritage on American soil as a measure of value. When you feel a sense of superiority that your parents were born here, you are no better than those touting the fact that their heritage goes back to Jamestown colonizers. 

Your engagement in the “real American” rhetoric only feeds into a culture that will one day put a target on your back. Every time you point FOB at an international student, you are deluded by your own pride, forgetting that many still see you as foreign, too.

The joke, in the end, is on all of us. 

When one group is not welcome in the United States, no one is.