CAN I JUST SAY ONE THING RIGHT NOW AND RISK SOUNDING LIKE A SJW?
I ALWAYS see people saying "act white," and I absolutely do not like that term because it always seems to imply to me that somehow, "acting white" is better than not. Or whatever.
I'm sure you didn't mean to come off like that, y2dvd, so I'm not targeting you. I just mean, that general idea, when someone "acts white," that it's supposed to be a good thing.. like, oh, I don't act like <these other minorities>.
ionno. Maybe I'm looking way too into it, but what does it even mean to act white?
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I kinda dislike the terms white-washed, acting white, etc. lol
Don't really believe in the 'acting white' thing. You can't seriously expect to preserve all the culture your parents and community give you in an increasingly globalized and homogenized world. If you grow up in America you will be Americanized, there's no stopping this. Now of course you face the debacle ofhow much should I embrace the cultures, mannerisms and attitudes of my country versus those of my ethnic homeland(or maybe you dont idk)? I think that's up to the individual and I don't begrudge how someone chooses to present themselves based on that choice.
I think there's an inherent problem with the term "acting white" because it does two things:
It signifies that american culture (where this is primarily encountered, but brits and canadians have racial skeletons too) is composed and owned by white people, which I think is flawed.
The other thing, which stems from the first is that creates cultural/racial rift between the speakers. I have found that more often than not, when people say "acting white" it comes from within a community instead of from outside. I certainly won't deny anecdotes of outsiders commenting about expected cultural norms ie "I'm surprised you speak so well/you don't seem that asian..."
So when people say it hurts both ways, you're either not [insert ethnicity] enough for your community which makes you an outsider, or you have the risk of always being an outsider to people who are surprised you're like them.
Edit:
White-washing/acting white was just a term people sued when I was growing up and it perfectly described the phenomenon. I guess looking at it now I can see how it's problematic. I still maintain that it isn't directly hurtful, while something like ABC kind of is.
With regards to being called ABC, that ties back into what I mentioned earlier about what others said about "acting white"
I once brought home a Japanese girlfriend to meet my grandparents. I was later asked by my Chinese friends how it went, because apparently the Chinese and Japanese have a beef. My grandfather had actually fought in WW2 and my grandparents on my mother's side grew up in Taiwan under Japanese occupation. None of this crossed my mind though. I'm typically oblivious to this stuff because it never impacted me. I think of this as my version of white privilege.
It's an American/ post-immigrant privilege to live in a world that is almost ahistorical. US history classes have the fortune of only teaching US history (with varying degrees of accuracy) which is quite short, and as a military history, the US hasn't faced the horrors and atrocities of domestic war since the civil war, which was prior to the complete transformation of the country via the industrial revolution .
Not all Chinese and Japanese have historical beef with one another mostly because those are beefs that result from a national identity instead of an ethnic one.
I won't make an assumption, but there are many families (both Chinese and Japanese) whose lineage in the US predates WW2, and precludes their possible involvement. If your then girlfriend was among those then your family is being racist, and even if she wasn't they still were being racist. (Yes intra-group racism exists, racism is not a white person exclusive trait)
I ended up with a Chinese girl, which I hadn't really planned it. It's almost a shame that we'll be churning out generic Chinese babies instead of awesome half-breeds (joking). She is Canto from SF though, so even though we're both "Chinese" we had totally opposite upbringings. As I said in the other thread, the Asian experience is incredibly varied and that's just among the Chinese, to say nothing of the differences between the other ethnicities under the Asian umbrella.
As someone of blended ethnicity, I take the good with the bad, I have features that people consider unique I guess, but it results in occasionally having a sense of falling through the chasm of identities.
Just don't delude yourself into thinking you'll ever be 100% integrated and accepted, cause eventually you'll run into some hard ugly perceptions people will have about you based on your race.
That last bit breaks my heart a little. I think it's cruel and cynical, but I also know that sometimes it's true.
I can only say that you should keep looking around to associate with people who aren't so quick to jump on race as a means of relating.
Incidentally if y'all want some good history and reading, try reading some of the books by
Robert Takaki, he was a professor at UC Berkley who wrote a couple of excellent books on the ethnic tapestry of America.
