The weirdest, least successful "white supremacy" ever.

Dude, punk and Riot Grrrl specifically were so important to me because it not only allowed me to express my struggles as a girl but as an Asian-American.

The model minority myth was pushed onto my parents and onto me by my parents. Sometimes I get really stressed out about my identity because I am basically a walking, living, breathing stereotype. I get straight As every year, I'm good at math, I literally wear a Harvard hoodie every day because it helps me keep sight of my goals.

Punk is my way of combatting that. Listening to punk music and embracing punk culture is my way of saying, "I am not your model minority myth. I will not stay quiet. I have struggles. I may be doing well in school, but the education system is still systemically flawed." It helped me remember that I am who I am not because I want to perpetuate those stereotypes but because I want to go far in life. Riot Grrrl helped me say, "My ideas should be taken seriously."

But, Riot Grrrl isn't inclusive of WOC.

Riot Grrrl isn't inclusive of me.

The worst thing about this is that I thought it did. The Riot Grrrl movement supports young, white, middle-class women. I am a young, Asian, middle-class woman. I was blinded by my middle-class privilege, preventing me from seeing the hostility towards WOC in this movement. And in that, I lumped myself in with white people.

I am not white, and I don't want to be seen as white. My dad and I constantly get comments like, "You're basically white people."

So yeah. I don't want to be a Riot Grrrl anymore. We need a cool new intersectional feminist punk movement now.

Thoughts on Being an Artist with Immigrant Parents

Alyssa Huynh (alt text)

RACIAL MELANCHOLIA | DAVID ENG

the gatekeepers in our lives...

just spent HALF an HOUR 'chatting' on the phone with the Accounts Receivable manager who handles my payment-plan at the pharmacy.

learned a lot about her! 👀 she said "where I come from in East Asia" as a lead up to a very Conservative Political Opinion. I had to specifically ask her 'where from', because East Asia is SO LARGE.. yannow.. She's been in Canada for over 15 years and originally came from Hong Kong. She has the social and political opinions of a Boomer from Edmonton.

she spewed a bunch of mindlessly bigoted rhetoric about "how we're all the same!" and no one should be treated better than anyone else..

and why would the City of Richmond spend all those tax payer $$ to repeatedly repaint the Rainbow Crosswalk after it got destroyed? "Just give it up already!" "LGBT people aren't special" "everyone's entitled to their opinion!" clearly we could just give that tax-payer money to people who really need it.

She controls my access to credit and payment plans at my pharmacy

So- I gently and in a round-about-way, gave her examples of invisible privilege that many of us have. How the IDEAL is that we all ARE equal- but that it's not actually TRUE in practice.

I used my Whiteness to frame this idea- (to explain structural racism to an Asian-Canadian woman!) and then used my government enforced poverty to show her an example of the casual ablesim I suffer from.

and she was.. AWAKE for a moment. Hopefully I'll be allowed to keep my payment plan..?

Dear white people, the pressure to be thin didn't come from my Asian culture. It was white people and their idea of an Asian body. It was white people who body shamed me for being a healthy weight, and it was also white people who body shamed me for being too thin at some points in my life that I had no control over. Who did I hear from that "Asians are naturally skinny"? Not my people.

Traditionally, thinness is not ideal in Hmong culture. I've always been skinny shamed for my body from my relatives. I surprisingly didn't receive many fat shaming comments from my relatives for being a normal weight. I received only one fat shaming comment on my thighs. Skinny shaming comments were more frequent though when my weight fluctuated lower. No one expressed a desire to be that thin.

Only white girls expressed that desire, either asking me how my body is so thin or insulting me by calling me an "anorexic bitch" while desiring to be that thin. When not as thin and at a normal healthy weight, I'd be called fat or "fat for an Asian". Who said those words? Not my people.

Who views fat Asians as more American? You. Who views fat Asians as less Asian? You again. Who spread the lie that Asians are naturally thin and don't need to watch what they eat because you equate thinness to health? You. Not my people.

Breaking Asian stereotypes is great. But we need to talk about the repercussions. In high school I deliberately became more loud & assertive because I was sick of being cast aside as just another ‘quiet, nerdy Asian’. And that got me a lot of hate. I was othered, even more so than before. So I was silent again because it was easier than having a target on my back. Easier than being seen as a threat. I’ll find my voice again one day, but later. Much later.

Blind Tom, a black mathematical prodigy, was exhibited by his physician owner for years and became famous for his ability to make fiendishly complex calculations more rapidly and exactly than the scholars of his time. He was, however, and idiot savant incapable of the ordinary tasks of everyday living. Because he was black, his condition was often used to illustrate the deleterious effects of intense thought upon the inferior mind of blacks. But the intellectual histories of these exhibited subjects were often falsified, just as their life histories and bodies were. For example, Thomas Bethune, a slave born around 1850 near Columbus, Georgia, was ballyhooed as an untaught musical freak of nature. Actually, Bethune was a trained musical prodigy who gave piano concerts throughout the south as a child and had performed for President Buchanan at age eight. Bethune was proficient in the classical repertoire and capable of complex harmonic inventions. He played popular music superbly, too, but, rather than being regarded as an American Mozart, he was relegated to circuses and minstrel shows.

Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid

I am neither model nor minority. / model I’m abandoning the backwards expectation that I must be twice as good to be taken half as seriously, reclaiming imperfection, because I am just as worthy of love without having to satisfy your every criterion. / minority Statistically, I too am not a minority, representing a large population ignored because of how your social circles are constructed. Remember that.

#quotes

pleas please ambrosius is the model knight, he's what all knights should aspire to be, he comes from the right family he does well in training, he's the model knight, he works within an institution because it benefits him--as long as he works in it, because the second the director thinks he's questioning things too much she kills him--are you picking up what im putting down? he keeps his true feelings buried--never show doubt, don't show conflict, keep your head down, do what you're told, aren't you so lucky to have this chance, aren't you glad you were born as you are and not like the others--are you hearing what im saying

(listen to eugene lee yang talk about this on the trypod)

Further, the idea that minorities in fiction must be represented in a uniformly positive light is an old and pernicious one inextricably linked to the idea of the Model Minority, which holds that every member of a minority demographic is an ambassador to the mainstream and must behave unimpeachably. In this instance it led to cis critics like Jemisin denouncing the story as transphobic based solely on its title, ironically stifling a transgender voice. Some fans even appear to believe that art’s purpose is essentially instructional, that it should communicate moral lessons to its audience like a Goofus and Gallant strip. Art that features transgression — think of Nabokov’s Lolita and the ongoing perception that it functions as a handbook for pedophiles — is often seen as endorsing that transgression and encouraging its spread in real life.

What's the harm in reading?, Gretchen Felker-Martin

40 Years Since Vincent Chin’s Murder: Is Asian-American Safety Backsliding?, July 11, 2022

Hate crime targeting Asian Americans is on the rise, and many are recalling the gruesome murder of Vincent Chin in 1980s Detroit. Helen Zia was on the front lines as an activist then and still leads the fight today. She speaks with Hari Sreenivasan about Chin’s story and the current danger to her community. This interview is part of Exploring Hate, our ongoing series on antisemitism, racism and extremism. Originally aired on July 11, 2022 Amanpour and Company