'they look right past us'

I found this great piece on NPR. (Not having a car means not listening or paying attention to public radio at all, but I've recently discovered Code Switch, which, despite it NPR's terrible design, is good at bringing attention to nuanced matters of race.) In it, Noah Cho discusses his internalized racism as a Korean and white hapa. Specifically, the internalization of having an Asian father and white mother when that specific pairing is found so far and few between. I was nodding my head while reading this, as I too have noticed the huge gap between Asian-girl-white-guy and white-girl-asian-guy relationships and have first hand experience with women straight up dissing Asian dudes. It bums me the fuck out how many times women I know and respect have told me to my face that they either do not find Asian men attractive or would never think of dating an Asian man. Each time I this has happened, I've raised my eyebrows, done a little bit of interrogating, and kept that voice in the back of my head yelling "WOULD IT BE OKAY FOR THEM TO SAY THAT ABOUT BLACK GUYS? LATINO GUYS? INDIGENOUS GUYS?" at bay. (Sidebar: Maybe this is just me, but I've literally never thought any race wasn't attractive or datable? Like, qt booty is qt booty! Who am I to discriminate?)

Daisuke Ueda and Jae Yoo str8 killin it for American institution, J. Crew. via

The other week I was having dinner with two Chinese friends on my floor, who are always talking about girls and trying to holla at this one and that, and I asked them if they've ever been interested in a girl who wasn't Asian. "Why would we?" one said. "When they see us, they look right past us. They see nothing. So why would we look at them?" I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. In his piece, Cho says he can't even believe his wife when she tells him she finds him attractive. Reading that absolutely gutted me. Especially because Cho is hella qt!

V good hair and nice face, imo!

On the one hand, we have our women being flagrantly fetishized, exotified, and infanitlized. On the other, we have our men being flagrantly feminized and branded as unwanted. Together, we have an entire race being sexually Othered. But, you know, it's cool because we're the """"""model minority"""""". We stay out of trouble and get good grades and become doctors, or whatever the fuck. We'll be just fine with this so-called positive stereotypes masking the insidious negative ones.

Tony Leung doesn't have the sharp angles of most Asian male models but could still get it 4ever. Also, does using gifs make my blog a buzzfeed article?? :/ via

It feels weird to say this, and maybe it's the phrasing that could be worked on or maybe I currently don't have the vocabulary to properly express this, but I am so grateful to be Passing. My perceived race is entirely fluid, depending entirely on context – whether it be the context of how I am presenting myself through makeup and clothing, the context of the perceived race of the people I am with at the time, or the context of the person trying to define me through their experiences of race. To some I'm white, or Latina, or Middle Eastern, or a mutt. I identify as Asian but I do not have to live by this dichotomy, I have never felt the pressure to look more white, as Cho expresses in his essay, and I am so intensely and weirdly grateful for this privilege.