When Asian American students seek therapy…their mental health issues–overwhelmingly perceived as intergenerational familial conflicts–are often diagnosed as being exclusively symptomatic of cultural (not political) conflicts. That is, by configuring Asian cultural difference as the source of all intergenerational disease, Asian culture comes to serve as an alibi or a scapegoat for a panoply of mental health issues. These issues may, in fact, trace their etiology not to questions of Asian cultural difference, but rather to forms of institutionalized racism and economic exploitation. The segregation of Asian American health issues into the domain of cultural difference thus covers over the need to investigate structural questions of social inequity as they circulate both inside and outside the therapeutic space of the clinic.

David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, “A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,” Loss: The Politics of Mourning, pg.355-6 (x)