Monday, April 29, 2013
Welcome!
Welcome to our blog!
This blog is going to be used as a project for our Asian Studies class at Hunter College.
We are looking for brave individuals who feel comfortable sharing their experiences they had with racism as Asian Americans in America.
Feel free to include whatever you want to describe how you felt during the experience(s) or anything else relating to the incident(s).
We are looking for answers to a few key questions:
Describe the incident(s)
- Who experienced the encounter?
- Where did the encounter take place?
- What events led up to the encounter?
- Who was the racist individual(s) and describe what they did and or said?
Describe your reaction
- How did you feel before and after the incident?
- What did you feel like saying or doing after the incident?
- What did you actually say and or do?
- If you could go back would you have reacted any differently?
- Why or why not?
Why is this important to you?
- How do you feel America treats Asian Americans in general?
- Generally accepting or not accepting? Is there still a long way to go towards equality, how so?
- Why is standing up against racism as an Asian American important?
- Why is it important for yourself, for your family, for your culture?
- What is there to be gained from standing up against racism?
These are only some of the things that you can talk about and you can even include a little insight to yourself by including a picture!
** These stories can be something personal you yourself experienced OR someone you know did.
Thank you for your contribution!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
When I was in the fourth grader, that is when 9/11 happened. My class and a second grade class were creating a garden together behind the school. This was the first time I experienced racism, no one wanted to be my partner when it came to my turn to go out back and plant and move the soil around. Even second graders did not want to talk to me. I was the only Indian in my class and I felt so alone. It did not hit me that people did not like me because of my race until fifth grade when in class we were doing this project about making earth out of newspapers, pastier and paint and my partner was Jamaican and I remember her telling the teacher she did not want to work with me because I was Indian. She ended up working with me and I ended up doing the project alone but I cannot forget how much I hated her for saying that. Nor could I forget the horrific names I was called. Ever since than, I became more aware of racism towards Indians and my family particularly. It made me very sad that people can not like you because of race and ethnicity.
As an Indian American racism is important to talk about because people hate other people based on skin color, dialog or clothing but people have to become educated to understand the people they are discriminating have nothing to do with the people they hate. Get educated not to hate the right people but to understand that 7billion people means not everybody is the same nor follow the same beliefs. People who do stereotypes based on colon skin do not want to become educated. For example my father wears a turban, which is a religious in Sikh culture but people automatically assume a turban equals a bad guy. I remember this one time we were walking home ad this guys in a park across the street started screaming these names and I started screaming curses and my dad all he said was stop. It was at that moment I realized he probably deals with this all the time. This just makes it worst.
Growing up in Brooklyn wasn't so bad. but there was this kid from elementary school to middle school always called me Jackie Chan. I'm not even Chinese. I'M THAI. I hated him everyday on the courts or in school or walking down the street he would go around saying look at Jackie Chan what an freak. I was the only Asian in my class. Eventually i just got use to it and learn to ignore him. In middle school a few months after 9/11 I saw him picking on these little South Asian boys so I went over to him scared out my mind he was going to punch me and told him to stop. he told me they killed someone close to him and they had to pay. I told him to stop but he started pushing me, the boys ran off and i was the victim. He beat the crap out of me and it did not matter cause I saved those kids. I saw him a few more times picking on kids and I got beat up again. He was what you would think of when you saw a mugger or robber on the news. that summer we moved out of that neighborhood and I felt so bad for the brown kids there. Children are innocent they believe in truth, no one has to agree with me but I don't think any kid he picked on was involved with such terrible things. Its funny he stopped calling me Jackie Chan after the first beat up and started calling me "N***a" with hate.
Well I grew up in Chinatown downtown but like I went to school in midtown west and like the Thai person the only time I really experience racism is when other kids would call me names like Jackie Chan, Jet Lee, ninja, shit like that and coming from an oppressed culture I never spoke up about it. If I could I would speak up about how oppressed the Chinese community is and against the kids that bullied me on a daily bases. I was always scared to show my parents and friends my homework or test grades if it was anything below an A. I never asked for help especially when I needed it the most. And when I did show my parents my grades I would hear about it from months and my friends would jut laugh at me. Whomever came up with the minor minority screwed us up but its the Asian community that screwed itself up by not saying up.
Asian Americans have been around since the 18th century but we still get treated as “foreigners” and “exotic” in the United States.
One thing that irks me is when East Asians say I don’t look Asian. Non-Asians often thinks that I don’t look Asian because they assume all Asian look like East Asians and many don’t know about other groups that aren’t China/Korea/Japan. And it’s an anti-Asian racist assumption in that they think we are a monolith without individual histories. But when East Asians say I don’t look Asian, I get the feeling they’ve internalized some of the stereotypes that was applied to them. It’s like the racist idea that “we all look alike” get absorb and some of us starts thinking we do look alike and erase our individual history. My family history involves intermarriages between Khmer, Chinese, Koreans and French people and involves immigrating to different regions. But the idea that I “don’t look Asian” and conversely the idea that “Asians look alike” seeks to erase that family history. And it erases many people’s history and individuality. This isn’t strictly an academic guess, but more so my gut feelings about what’s going on here.
Noel Duan
I’m not fat — by American standards. I am considered slightly chubby for an Asian in China. I’m 5’1” and about 100 pounds, give or take five pounds depending on whether it’s New York Fashion Week or final exams week at Columbia. Everyone assumes I’m naturally petite because of my Asian genetics, but the truth is, I count my calories like Ebenezer Scrooge counts his gold coins and run and do yoga like Lululemon is paying me. The moment I “let myself go,” the weight bounces back.
That’s the problem — Asian girls are suffering from body image issues and eating disorders because they try to hold themselves up to the expectation that Asian girls are naturally slim. In fact, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Diane von Furstenberg said, “It is great to design for Chinese women, because they have great bodies. They are slim and have tiny waists, so it’s nice.”
When I came back from my first year of college in New York, my mother whispered to me, “You’re a little fat now.” When I fell on my butt during cheerleading practice, my dad said to me in the car, “I wonder if it’s because you’re fat for an Asian.” The first time I realized I was “fat” for an Asian girl was when I was 10 years old, on a trip back to China to visit relatives. A distant cousin whom I had never met before grabbed my arm and said, “so Porky,” Since that day, I stopped wearing short sleeves whenever possible because I was afraid others would notice my “porky” arms.
In Chinese culture, eating is seen as a form of affection and commitment to the family, so I always ate every meal, every single kernel of rice in my bowl. But I also felt fat and unfit to be the “perfect” Asian girl, as I compared my body to those of my fellow Asian American girl friends. When we would go out to eat and drink — a group of petite Asian girls — I knew I had to work out more and eat less the next day to make up for the amount I ingested with my friends. I’ve spent countless Friday nights in college, feeling completely inadequate because every single Asian girl I met was thin and beautiful with porcelain smooth skin, like Asian girls are supposed to be. I started to wonder if I was the only Asian girl who felt this way. I spent much of my life hating my body because it felt imperfect for both Asian standards and Western standards. I wasn’t skinny or tall enough to look like a fashion model or busty enough to be a swimsuit model, and I wasn’t petite and cute enough to look like a Korean pop star. As a little girl growing up in an immigrant Chinese household in America, I never thought I was pretty. I wasn’t considered beautiful in either of the two cultures I considered part of my identity. I spent the first half of my life wishing I were a beautiful white girl, and the second half of my life wishing I were a beautiful Asian girl.
I’ve done my best to be the perfect Asian daughter — getting straight As in high school and attending an Ivy League university, for example. I, and many of the Asian girls I’ve talked to, have expressed the pressure to be “perfect” in every single way — whether it’s because society expects you to be as the “model minority” or your parents expect you to be as the “precious daughter.” I never let myself be happy with the way I looked; after all, if I could work for perfect grades, why couldn’t I work for a perfect body?
I don’t think I’ll ever be thin enough to satisfy my family. I don’t think I’ll ever be thin enough to satisfy society. And unless things start changing from the inside, I don’t think I’ll ever be thin enough to satisfy myself. As of right now, I’m still spending hours every week, working off the calories at the gym and measuring my portions on the kitchen scale. I’m still trying to be the perfect student, daughter, and human specimen — as futile as that may be, I feel that it is expected of me. I know all experiences — and body types — are unique and I’m not speaking on behalf of all Asian women, but I know I’m not the only one.
I haven't felt discriminated and I think there's an American view of Asian Americans in a highly static way in that Asian Americans are either asexual nerds or overly sexualised fetishes for males and females, respectively which only feeds into the western discourse of orientalism.
3rd grade we were learning history and talking about pearl harbor when the Japanese bombed it. we were all sitting down on the floor together and my teacher was talking. when she said the Japanese bombed pearl harbor, my friend turned around and looked right at me. I have no idea why she did that and what the 'look' was insinuating. I dont know but i felt like i was being discriminated because she made me feel uncomfortable and as if pearl harbor was somehow my fault and my family's fault. (even as a third grader, silly i know) I know that after that day i had a small chip on my shoulder toward my friend and it hurt me for so long which is silly because we were 9! If i could go back to that day I would have not taken that moment so seriously and hurtful and let go of that tiny grudge. let me say I did not have to think hard about this story. I was proud to be a Japanese -American and I still am and I proud of my heritage. I think that is why I still feel a little hurt by that one, tiny motion.
Some guy was trying to con people into giving him money for a bus tickets back home for him and "his wife" and he came up to me and was like "hello" "hi" "do you speak English?"
my friends get excited when I eat Asian food
like rice or anything
or if we get Chinese food they're always like you're the only one who can eat with chopsticks 'cause you're asian
I remember being called jackie chan or jet li in school
saying things to me in the kung-fu accent in dubbed movies. I remember also the eye thing.. the one where people pull the ends of their eyelids to look asian..
If i could go back in time, i'd probably give a blank stare or something.
My girlfriend cracks on me all the time for being asian
When I first came to Oneonta, I was extremely worried about discrimination for being Asian, since the statistic was 3%. When I actually got here, a lot of people, predominantly white, were shocked to hear an American accent come out of my mouth... Most people have never heard of the Philippines either! The statistic of Asians in my school has definitely risen with the increase of international students attending Oneonta. These students were Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. Most of the international students told me I was not a true Asian. They didn't even identify the Philippines as an Asian country. I get really annoyed when ever I hear it, too when it comes out in conversation. Even Miyu says, that she is a true Asian and that I'm not because I'm filipino. It usually pisses me off.
During middle school I remember kids would assume I liked anime and manga. A bunch of Asian American kids would get together at recess and sit at a table and draw anime characters. I never got into anime or manga and I never even sat down at that table during recess, but if I wanted to play football or hang out with other “white” kids they’d ask me why I’m not hanging out with the Asian kids. I felt like they wanted to cast me out and conveniently categorize me into a group. I’d overhear kids calling out other Asian American kids for their academic capabilities and instead of saying they’re advanced they’d say “his level is ASIAN.” Asians in my school were also more vulnerable to bullying. I think it was because other kids would assume we would be quiet and passive when confronted. In middle school I didn’t really have a sense of style and I was a victim to being stereotyped (completely based on physical appearance, not clothing). But by high school I started wearing outfits to make me look tougher and I learned to speak up if someone was harassing me.
Post a Comment