Is there room for me to put a soapbox down right here?
I worry that I’m reading too far into things, that I’m the one making everything about race. I fear I have gone off the deep end of woke-ness and am drowning because I’m trying not to sound accusatory. But I’ve landed on the side of yes, it is that deep. Because you cannot possibly understand what it is to be black in the USA (I don’t) or wasian (I guess) or what it’s like to walk around in a woman’s body (yup) unless you’ve done it. So you don’t know what it’s like to be me, which is a terrible position to be in because I am over-actively contemplating the social structures that impact how I’m perceived and toiling relentlessly over things I have little power over.
That’s just me though!
Being White
Is it crazy to say this is context dependent?
I don’t mind being ‘ethnically ambiguous’ because it’s fun and I am proud to be a mutt. Still, I know I have the fixings of a white person (green eyes, light skin, etc.) as well as being mixed with european/whiteness so it’s inevitable that some people will see me as such. I had a friend in high school that once told me that the asian and latina effectively canceled each other out in terms of my appearance. I can’t really argue with how I’m perceived–or why it should be such a bad thing. I’m not going to look you in the eye and say looking white has made my life harder. I’m not looking you in the eye at all.
I think, or hope, that it shows how fickle race is–that it doesn’t always present in the ways we might imagine. Often we instead prescribe arbitrary, common features to specific races. Is race a social construct? I won’t answer that, but credible sources point to yes.
Being “white” does make me hesitate when I talk about race, even my own, because I’m aware that it limits my credibility somewhat. And yet, here I am writing the race post with authority, because I’ll speak on my lived experience and I can only hope this is not the only exposure you ever have to multiracialism or race and identity discourse or whatever.
Being (W)Asian
Wasians rise up!! Okay now sit back down.
I was psyched to see so many wasians in the spotlight this year. It’s been nice seeing people that look like me being celebrated, and I think we’re all glad to see more representation of variation in the asian experience. Though I worry that some of the rhetoric and language being used does prize the ‘W’. Even referring to oneself as wasian feels like a distancing from the asian identity.
When I was talking to my friend Miles (asian) about my wasian concerns, that perhaps wasians are being fitted as the new model minority, he said this:
“Wasians are, in a way, the culmination of the asian-model minority phenomenon. The idea being that model minorities eventually assimilate and become white people.”
I paraphrased best I could for clarity. But it distills well the fear I have: wasians are hot due to their proximity to whiteness. It’s like being the most inoffensive person of color. I know that’s crazy and lacks nuance but I AM ONE okay. You have to wonder why blasians, latino asians, or other multiracial people haven’t gotten the same media treatment. Okay stop wondering, because it’s anti-blackness.
I recently listened to an episode of ‘It’s Been a Minute’ from NPR called ‘Welcome to the Republic of Wasia‘ (great listen) which was a catalyst in writing this and has a great discussion on how attitudes towards multiracial identities have changed over time. But in trying to find a referenced statistic, I stumbled on a study on dating preferences of multiracial people. They found “a linked privileging of white multiraciality while they also reinforce a hierarchical ranking of racial desirability anchored by anti-Blackness.”
Not that the whole wasian thing is being propped up by our dating preferences, but I do need us all to acknowledge how much we fetishize multiracial people and similarly how much anti-blackness seeps into who we give power and attention to. Maybe you too have heard discussions around mixed people become an analysis of which parent has a specific racial preference, how that affected the mixed child, which race the child is “more like.” This is all bad for the cause, guys.
We know that colorism is alive and well. While so much systemic racism is propped up by white supremacy, we should still acknowledge the pervasiveness of asian beauty ideals that prize whiteness. That’s what’s given the wasian wave so much momentum: being revered from both sides. Lest we forget, “notions of racialized gender frame the mixed-race body as ‘exotic’ and attractive” (that same study linked above).
As an anecdote, some guy recently harassed me on the bus with “shorty you asian?? you white and asian?? I need me one of those” which is 1) yes problematic, but unfortunately ordinary 2) more shocking that he racially profiled me when I had a baseball cap on with my head down in a book.
My sister chimed into this topic with the idea that the wasian craze is like a cultural boomerang from all the asian hate that fell out from the coronavirus. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is funny to imagine all the “stop asian hate” becoming “actually… wasians?”
This is all to say I think wasians are valid, but it’s not my favorite term to describe myself. This could also have to do with the fact I’m ~25% asian, instead of the standard 50%, and that it neglects the entire latina identity I have (Latinwasian doesn’t really flow off the tongue). I prefer mixed-asian or just mixed. Leaning into the ambiguity I suppose.
being latina
I’m not going to sidetrack us from the wasian thing too much, but I need everyone to understand how complicated being a multiracial latino is for no reason. What the hell is the difference between race and ethnicity? I know the answer google says and the census says but goddammit I’d never say I was ethnically hispanic and racially wasian. I think most latinos would reject that they’re white people with the hispanic sepia ethnicity filter.
My latina identity, like many others, is a mixture of indigenous groups from South America, the Spanish conquistadors, and waves of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere. And I’m just supposed to call that Hispanic? Having the white default tends to flatten a huge and complex network of identities into something that we can easily understand.
Recently I was looking at census data about suicide rates (sorry) to confirm a statistic I heard: that although men die by suicide at higher rates, women actually make more non-fatal suicide attempts (this is true btw, also never kill yourself). That could be its own post, but for now I’ll draw your attention to the graph from the CDC below about suicide rate disparities among racial groups:
Why are hispanic people only hispanic? There’s no data for multiracial latinos, or is that all under Hispanic? What happened to race vs ethnicity?
From that same page: “Data for race and Hispanic or Latino (Hispanic) origin should be interpreted with caution; studies comparing race and Hispanic origin on death certificates and on U.S. Census Bureau surveys have shown inconsistent reporting. This might lead to underestimates for certain racial groups.”
Great thanks I didn’t want to know anyway.
The main point I want to make here is it’s annoying and frustrating to see specific multiracial people celebrated in a specific way while I’m getting catcalled on the bus and racism still exists everywhere.
There’s so many ways to be multiracial that it’s difficult to coalesce or find community around a unified shared experience. But I believe in solidarity, and I believe in uplifting each other. But the idea of doing that regardless of race is a beautiful, utopic fantasy of a post-race world. We have to contend with anti-blackness so that we can keep celebrating each other without simultaneously tearing ourselves down. We have to dismantle white supremacy before we can see it objectively.
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