Polite Warning
I will talk about some experiences in this post, and it comes from a place of frustration. Please don’t take any of this as a personal attack against you. After a year of racial abuse due to everyone thinking all Asians are Chinese, I wanted to put my thoughts together. These are feelings that have been accumulating for almost 40 years.
Please note as well when I say Asians, I’m referring to Far East Asians, and in Europe and UK they be calling us “Orientals”.
I will never forget when
I was at Showtime at the Apollo and was a 100% Japanese woman singing. She was very petite, pretty, and had dark hair. Her name was Yoko Kanno (go to Youtube look up Yoko Kanno Apollo “Through the Fire”, every time I watch it I still get goosebumps). The crowd went wild and it was amazing. Here was this little person with a voice impressing the high standards crowd at the Apollo Theater.
During the intermission I ran to the bathroom. I was stopped by some people and they said “Oh my God you did such a great job! You were amazing!” They were for serious, they thought I was this person. I really thought that was interesting. Since I’m only half Asian, at least 5 inches taller, 10 year younger, and my hair is much lighter. I’m here to tell y’all something, most Asians will tell you all other races think we all look alike.
When you see Asians do you think we all look alike?
We are not all Chinese
Amongst Asians there are so many nationalities, and truthfully we all have some prejudice about another nationality. Actually we don’t even really like each other but we can definitely tell each other apart. We can recognize nationalities mostly through features, bone structure and skin tone. Each nationality has these attributes as a part of our cultural identity, and these things are really important to us.
As you know I’m Korean, my mother is Korean. A big part of her identity has been dedicated to her talent the “art of vanity”. Yes, vanity is a thing in Korea, have you not seen all the cosmetics? When my mom was young she was (is) beautiful. She has always found it rather offensive when she met non-Asians, and they tell her they know someone who looks nothing like her, but says they look exactly alike. I know one should be gracious, kind and generous, especially about vanity. However let’s talk in terms of another talent. Imagine if you are an actress like Meryl Streep. Someone comes up to you, and compares you to a kid acting in high school play. Since that’s only other actor she knows?
I know many people are ignorant and come from a good place. Most of the time we can be gracious. The thing is I started realizing this has been happening for 3 decades. I’m tired of adjectives like exotic. Should all Asians just be exotic?
racism and stereotyping
This is difficult being in Europe I’ve noticed this, there’s not as many Asian immigrants. However when you see Asian children in advertising, I feel like I see is what white people want to see in us. This is a subject I try not think about but it’s hard to ignore the stereotyping. I feel they want to perceive us as people still working the rice field during Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
This is a way to continue to keep us back, like they want to continue with perceiving us as the people they once colonized. Why aren’t we Asian enough? For me, I was born in Korea, went to Korean school, went to Korean church and still I am not Korean enough. I have Asian friends here who have mixed kids and their kids aren’t considered Asian enough (nor Caucasian enough). So I definitely feel like there’s still a lot of racism here about mixed children.
Asians are more accepted in America
Yes in America many racial issues do exist. At least, we have many people that recognize and acknowledge so many differences in nationalities. Perhaps we are just used to being mixed. It’s been going on for awhile now so our marketing depicts it. So with time maybe things will change but it’s still hard to see the stereotyping. It makes me feel like they get to judge who we are. It’s disappointing to see because this is an exploitation of the past. Asians are all so different and also have become super modern societies.
how we tried to fit in
Did you know every Asian I know in America and Europe had experienced some sort of racial abuse this year? As a race all these nationalities have so many commonalities. We come as immigrants to the West. We keep our heads low, work hard and try not to get noticed by the rest of the population. I know some other races in the US think perhaps Asians are sneaky and we pander to the white population. I think it was more of a survival mechanism. It was not meant to make any other races look bad, it was so we wouldn’t be the target. These are also behaviours we learned from our own countries, generally we are raised to be obedient.
And Covid19 just brought us all back to when we were fresh off the boat (FOB).
they don’t care about us anyways
So since we also became the target, even after all of those years just trying to fit in. I want to have solidarity as a race. It seems many people don’t know the difference between Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, Vietnamese, the list goes on. They think we all are the same person, so why don’t we stand together? I have been scared to point this out, but the marketing old stereotypes means they don’t ever really see us. They don’t care. We are just “exotic”.
It’s all up to us. We need to speak up and educate. Asian nationalities have to come together and support each other. Finally we need to help other races experiencing abuse (eg. BLM).
