i don’t know if this is just me,
because other people i’ve mentioned this to haven’t necessarily seen it the same way i have, but i feel like in society asians have this very unique position…we seem to be social chameleons who are encouraged to express their morphability.
wait, wait, hear me out, i do have some reasons to back up my thought process.
first up, let’s look at inter-asian-ness. i mean, looking at history, we’ve had our differences and even today there are some very nationalist people (my dad is very adamant that taiwan is a part of china and my mom is a food nationalist (more on this later)) but, for the most part i think we asians have mostly opened our divides, at least here, overseas in america, enough so that inter-asian-ness is acceptable and even welcome (see all those vietnamese/chinese/idk asians who sing kpop on youtube and actually sound very legit). and other aspects of culture, like sushi, bubble tea, manga, chinese new year, fobby poses in fob pictures, seem to have become more of a general spread out “asian-ness” rather than a segmented, clear cut divide. so, within the “yellow” crowd, asians are clearly accepted, and as per the youtube phenomenon, seem to seek each other out based on 1) mutual asian-ness and 2) mutual interests. i don’t know about you, but i think this mutual attraction is interesting in itself.
then, let’s look at this phenomenon of the “white-washed asian”. the entire stereotype depends on the idea that these asians, while technically asian by genotype, act and dress more like stereotypical “white” people and have been claimed by that crowd. so clearly, asians are accepted as “white” as well.
looking at youtube again, (because i don’t live in a very “ghetto” area), there seem to be “black” asians as well. (take those really hilarious asians who make funny videos and talk like “black” people (not ryan higa, more like luan legacy)) at least, in my opinion they seem very similar to the typical stereotype of the “black” person, but i mean, im like somewhere between a “white-washed” and “fobby yellow” flavor of asian, so i really can’t tell.
i don’t know if this is something only i see, because of the school environment i’m from, but i do think there are “brown-washed asians” (though rare) as well. i mean, when i brought this up to one of my friends she was skeptical. she argued that being “brown-washed” would entail more than knowing a lot about brown people and having a lot of brown friends, you’d actually have to want to be brown. but i mean….do “white-washed” or “black” washed asians actually want to be “white” or “black”, respectively? or do they actually consider themselves “white” or “black”? i don’t really know, i’ve never really asked them…but…that theory doesn’t really seem to hold up in my opinion.
now. the possibly even more rare(?) hispanic asian…do they exist? i don’t really know, since i don’t really know many hispanic people…but at the same time, i feel like most hispanic people either fall in with the “black” crowd, or have their own groups…and this could be very inaccurate because i’m not filipino, but i feel, from an outsider’s perspective, that hispanic and filipino people seem very similar.
looking at the asian youtubers, we see that asians tend to be talented musicians and singers, with the occasional rapper or classical musican, and dancers and make-up artists, and that asians can both act and film, and probably write. and of course, you have the stereotype of the “smart asians” or the “asians who can draw”. looking at the “white washed” asians you see that asians can be athletic, and looking at the “black” asians, asians can be funny as well. looking at real life famous asians, asians can also model and be famous in general. thinking about school stereotypes though, i know asians can be loners, band geeks, and “normal” but can asians be “skateboarders” or “emo” or “slackers”? i feel as though those groups seem more exclusive to people of specific races (mainly “white”), though clearly i don’t necessarily know what i’m talking about.
now that i’m done being a racist pig (what a topic to talk about on martin luther king, jr. day, huh?) all this random observation begs the question…why? why are asians so versatile? why does society allow them, more so it seems to me than any other race, to be so versatile? or am i just overly sensitive to the crossings-over of my own race than those of other races? or perhaps it’s just that the criterion i’m looking at is very loose in the first place? school relations and youtube aren’t exactly the most stringent evaluators of race… on the other hand…considering how many more inter-racial marriages there are today, perhaps phenotype and genotype are no longer good indicators of social identity? (and by the way, slightly tangential, but even though i’m not the best at distinguishing between different “brands” of asian, i can not bad at telling whether or not there exists some sort of asian blood somewhere in a mixed blood) and if the borders between races are becoming slowly blurred, what does this mean for the future of society, where wealth and technology will probably play an even greater role than it does today in creating the social divide? i suppose in the end, the world is simply an ever changing place with many surprises…
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