FIFY
I guess that “Yellow Peril” was a thing back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and then came back, targeted at Japanese instead of Chinese, during the WW2. I think that the first wave was triggered by Chinese immigration in to California, and by Anti-Orientalism introduced by things like the Opium Wars.
Yeah I totally think that if a large wave, especially of poorer Asian immigrants, happened to be coming into the US right now we’d see anti-Asian hostility rise again. Or, also if we got into direct conflict with North Korea, China, or any other Asian country. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, but more like Asians are just lower on the priority list for racists right now. Eh… I feel out of my depth here though TBH.
I guess what it hits home to me is that the racism of individuals is malleable and the media uses that very effectively.
The weird thing to me, as person if Chinese descent, is how Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Thai, Indians, etc… we’re grouped together as “Asian” as if the fact that we come from the same continent implies that our experience is somehow common.
“OK… so this is the race for the darkest skinned ones, and that race is for anyone who lives to the east of us.”
It really highlights how poor a system race is for understanding human populations and cultures.
You call it Ohio, I call it Pennsyltucky.
Over here in the UK, “Asian” means anyone from the Indian Subcontinent (a nicely derogatory phrase in its own right); so Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Kashmiri, etc. I presume it would have reach all the way up to Afghanistan and Tibet if they weren’t traditionally lumped in to the “Orient”. The effect of a globe spanning Empire, I guess; “we” didn’t “own” those Northern States, so they got firmly pegged as beyond the Pale.
I wouldn’t know if it’s a local twist that makes it a derogatory phrase in your area, but “Indian subcontinent” is the legitimate geological term and represents the fact that genetically, phonetically, culturally, etc. it is a specific region that differs from the main part of the continent around it.
This might be a situation where the term has negative cultural associations in Britain – for obvious historical and political reasons – in a way that it doesn’t in, say, the States. A similar but opposite example would be the use of the term “c*nt” in Britain, which is simply not acceptable in any circumstance in the States.
The fact that you capitalized Pale makes me think you knew exactly what you were referencing there.
For the past few decades, they’ve been useful as a “model minority.” They can be pointed to as “proof” that Americuh isn’t a racist country, and that all one has to do to succeed (and what other racial minorities have supposedly failed to do, or are supposedly too inherently lazy to do or are incapable of doing) is pull oneself up by one’s proverbial and nonexistent bootstraps.
Except when white people’s stupid children need to get into decent schools. Then they’re crying fit affirmative action.
Not to mention objects of fetishization…
Yeah. I recommend against typing “Asian” into Google Images.
Why oh why did I do that?
But I looked, so y’all don’t have to.
The entire page of images is people. They are all female, save a young guy and an older Central Asian looking guy with a beard and hat. All the women appear to be East Asian, and are scantily clad and/or fetishized.
None of the pictures are of Asia or are of things that are Asian or represent Asian cultures.
The web links are mostly porn, with a couple definitions of “Asian” and a sponsored link for food delivery.
An entire continent, home to the plurality of the world’s population and many different vibrant cultures, is reduced to internet porn.
Because of the way google search works, not everybody will get the same search results given the same search string.
I googled Asian and got images of people as well, but looks like different results.
Yes, that’s Angela Merkel and Gordon Ramsey. I guess google thinks this is what Mexicans are looking for. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere.
“Asia will miss the globalist Merkel”
Gah. I’d rather see bad softcore porn.
Asian restaurant draws criticism
Ah. That explains it. Americans are looking for porn, and porn we shall find.
Speaking of which, third row third from left is fucking hot. Where’s that beefcake thread when I need it
Or Norwegian.
I think every human has some set of deeply ingrained prejudices that may manifest as some sort of racism (or other ism/phobia). I’m no exception. I consider myself pretty woke but I’m certainly not above making prejudicial assumptions about strangers for one reason or another.
I guess the difference is I’m willing to be open about this and try to not let define me. I’m not going to hand wave my bad behavior away with excuses (“but I can’t be *-ist/phobic, I have Asian/black/gay/trans/Muslim/etc friends!!!”), instead I try to recognize these bad thought patterns and do better.
You should hear my 90 year old mother when she is “among friends.” My sister is mad at a really great, one-eyed builder because he uses Mexican labor, but she can’t bring herself to say anything, because they do such good work and she wants that. The cognitive dissonance drives her up a wall.
But it’s not just down here. When I was living in Ithaca, NY, for seven years, the academics at Cornell were astute enough to never show racism, but the locals in the surrounding towns were just awful, some of them. Many had those little jockey hitching figurines in front of their houses, and they all had black faces. It was shocking for someone who grew up with casual racism as the ocean in which one swam. I left the South after high school, and swore I’d never come back. Had to return to take care of my mother. She can be embarrassing, to say the least.
The look in her eyes is … scary … like the dogs of war in her head have been unleashed after years of holding them back.