Us VS Them
Introduction
This is the beginning of a long series that will discuss the discrimination, history , racism , emasculation , and experiences of Asian American Men ,and other Asian men around the world. This series is about the Asian Male experience.
As Asian Men who live in western society , we often encounter many situations in our day to day life where we might think back to ourselves , “Was that statement racist?” or “Was that person racist?”. In these situations , we often do not picture racism when it comes to someone of our own race, because it is irrational : “How could someone of our own race be racist against ourselves? We are all recognized as one minority and we should be helping each-other.” You might have encountered these situations yourself , somewhere in your life where you came up empty handed, not knowing how to respond. But alongside the racism seen from other communities , we also face racism from inside the Asian American community.
Asian Americans often focus on the racism that they experience as minorities from other races , but we are silent to the adopted racism among us. You may ask , what kinds of racism are we talking about here? You must be kidding , how could we be facing racism as a group on the inside?
Racism Still Exists?
When it comes to external racism, this is something we have probably all experienced. Remember these words? Gooks , Chinks, Japs, Slits, Slants, Slopes, Fishheads, Zipperheads, and fellow Mongoloids. I don’t even know where half of these come from , but they certainly do have a lot of racist words on Asians. Being called these words isn’t a common practice today because society is much more concerned with being politically correct. Blatant, verbal racism is not accepted in society today , not even in the most backwards of areas. That’s great right?! No more being called chinks! It’s great that we may not get called a chink , gook , or Jap while we’re walking to the 7–11 , or your favorite convenience store but something more sinister persists today.
It’s not okay to spit out these words today , but, somehow, it is still completely fine to roll out the list of racist devices to promote Asian inferiority: Asians have tiny dicks — no wonder no woman wants you. Can you even see anything from those eyes? Can’t even speak English properly. Go back to your country! Why aren’t you a submissive geisha? Aren’t you supposed to be smart? Why you no speak engrish propery?. These examples contain no racial slurs, so what are they? They are remarks that are casually racist. There are hundreds, if not thousands examples of casual racism framed like this.
In comparison to the Black minority, the level and amount of casual remarks that are directed at Asians is alarming. Many people ,and especially white men, will never make racial remarks against African Americans in fear of retribution , but will unashamedly do so when it is an Asian Man. Why do we tolerate this? Racist remarks like these must be dealt with, or be allowed to continue unchallenged; people will not learn if you do not give them consequences.
Racism from other Asians
If you are still reading this , then you are likely under the umbrella of Asian prejudice. Asian men, intermixed men, and hapa men are likely branded as the same racial class in America. White people have little sympathy for Hapas, but in the end we are in the same boat together , albeit a rock boat. Even to those outside of the Asian male experience, I encourage you to read along with an open mind. If you’re an Asian born American(AA), Canadian born Canadian (CBC), British Born Chinese(BBC) , or even Australian Born Chinese(ABC) , (Seriously though , why are we all named after TV boardcasting companies?), you likely live in either an Asian enclave where you see lots of Asians every day , or live among the general, white populace where there aren’t many Asians or minorities at all. Asians outside of the Asian enclaves have probably faced racism from other isolated Asian tokens. Asian women telling them “ Why would I date an Asian guy? They remind me of my brother/ cousin/dad” , or sometimes in even more extreme exclusions when it is obvious that these women express a preference for white men over the disgust felt towards their own race.
Some men may get to experience what it’s like to be with this type of Asian girl, or even be married to one when they find out that their wifes’ dating history is completely composed of white men. Now one may ask , “what is the problem with that”? Isn’t she (asian girl) free to date whoever she wants? This thinly-laid veil is only used to dismiss the reality of the internalized racism so many Asian women have adopted. These claims for free choice completely overshadow the reasons why many Asian women do not have dating histories that aren’t like the supposed tapestry of races in America , but are instead seen solely with white men.
If you’ve lived in an area like the 626 in SoCal , and you found an asian girl whose dating history was 100% white , would you would be suspect? If she’s in the 626 , she must have come across an Asian guy sometime in her life. (For thoose that don’t know what the area referred to be 626 , it is an Asian enclave with a extremely high asian population.)It’s pretty obvious that a girl like that has some raging fetisization going on. It is more understandable if she lives in hicksville, middle-of-nowher, where the asian population might be tiny. The problem with this pairing is when the Asian women accepts the white claim to superiority and manually excludes the Asian guy as a dating candidate; It is simple, self-hating racism. But here we must now ask why this is racism. Why? Keep reading , and you’ll find out.
** Ready? You can start reading here
And thus, we begin our journey into the rabbit hole.
