Clever, right? I like that it steers away from melodrama, because I’ve played that game enough. Let’s stand around and admire our pain and forget about Darfur. But it’s also a defense mechanism, because deep down, the pain is there. The question almost always comes from a white person, and some part of me is remembering elementary school, when some kid would ask me if I was Chinese, I’d say no, I’m Japanese, and discover the whole thing was a setup for a really bad joke.
“Chinese, Japanese, American knees!"
In case you’ve never seen it performed: You pull the corners of your eyes up, and then down, and then you touch your knees. You laugh, and the kids around you laugh, and a little piece of Hannah’s soul slips out of place.
I grew up in an inner-ring Cleveland suburb called Lakewood. It’s remarkable for its socioeconomic diversity, but it is 93% white. In advanced and AP classes, I was almost always The Minority.
I got used to this, and over time, the questions people asked me got less and less offensive. “Do you speak Japanese?” became “Do your parents speak Japanese?”, and so on.
It would be nice to believe that all Carleton students know better. Once, someone asked my race before asking my name. But for the most part, people behave themselves. I really want to trust them. I don't want to have a violent visceral reaction to anime kids. I want to hear guys wax poetic about the beautiful women they met on study abroad trips and feel special and desirable instead of nauseated.
In the past, internalized racism was a simple problem with a simple solution. Detroit Red became Malcolm X and never looked back. But what do you do when your culture is exactly what The White Man wants? What do you do when your hard-fought identity is charming, adorable, and still not quite human?
Most people don’t seem to think about this. Some Asian girls have no problem dating guys who are “into Asian girls.” We can write lengthy papers on Orientalism and then go out and buy Japanese furniture for what it represents - something that is not familiar, not mainstream, not your parents, not your trashy cousins, and definitely not your third grade shame, whatever that may be.
When people ask me what it’s like to be half-Asian, I get the same feeling I got two years ago, when we moved out of Lakewood to a much rougher neighborhood in West Cleveland. Every time I walked the dog, I faced a string of catcalls. It made me angry for a while, but one day, I realized something much worse had happened. I’d stopped smiling. The more I smiled, the more attention I got. Exoticism does the same thing: It turns who you are into a source of fear.
In case you’ve never seen it performed: You pull the corners of your eyes up, and then down, and then you touch your knees. You laugh, and the kids around you laugh, and a little piece of Hannah’s soul slips out of place.
I grew up in an inner-ring Cleveland suburb called Lakewood. It’s remarkable for its socioeconomic diversity, but it is 93% white. In advanced and AP classes, I was almost always The Minority.
I got used to this, and over time, the questions people asked me got less and less offensive. “Do you speak Japanese?” became “Do your parents speak Japanese?”, and so on.
It would be nice to believe that all Carleton students know better. Once, someone asked my race before asking my name. But for the most part, people behave themselves. I really want to trust them. I don't want to have a violent visceral reaction to anime kids. I want to hear guys wax poetic about the beautiful women they met on study abroad trips and feel special and desirable instead of nauseated.
In the past, internalized racism was a simple problem with a simple solution. Detroit Red became Malcolm X and never looked back. But what do you do when your culture is exactly what The White Man wants? What do you do when your hard-fought identity is charming, adorable, and still not quite human?
Most people don’t seem to think about this. Some Asian girls have no problem dating guys who are “into Asian girls.” We can write lengthy papers on Orientalism and then go out and buy Japanese furniture for what it represents - something that is not familiar, not mainstream, not your parents, not your trashy cousins, and definitely not your third grade shame, whatever that may be.
When people ask me what it’s like to be half-Asian, I get the same feeling I got two years ago, when we moved out of Lakewood to a much rougher neighborhood in West Cleveland. Every time I walked the dog, I faced a string of catcalls. It made me angry for a while, but one day, I realized something much worse had happened. I’d stopped smiling. The more I smiled, the more attention I got. Exoticism does the same thing: It turns who you are into a source of fear.
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