stereotyping | The Plaid Bag Connection

September 18, 2012
by Calvin 12 Comments

Being an Asian woman in South America

My friend Miyuki Baker (“a queer, multi-racial/lingual female mixed-media artist”) has been traveling around South America as part of her year on the Watson Fellowship. She made a sketched blog post about what it is like being an Asian woman traveling in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru:

Apart from a few exceptions, no matter what your background is within Asia, you are from China! China, chinita, and nihao are all common greetings, as is pulling the edges of one’s eyes up. In Colombia and Ecuador, I was rare, in Argentina I am exotic… on the streets of Buenos Aires, a man called out that he’d love an Oriental woman. Hmm.

Unsurprisingly, this is very gendered. In my travels in Argentina and Uruguay, all I ever got was the occasional “konnichiwa!” and kowtow. My female companions of all ethnic backgrounds would get several catcalls (piropos) a day, and for the women of color this was often explicitly racialized.

Miyuki’s full post and some more on racism against Asians in Argentina after the jump:

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July 27, 2012
by Calvin 8 Comments

The 626 Night Market and Asian American self-image

Photo: Kenny Korn (Flickr/Creative Commons)

Tomorrow is the second 626 Night Market, an event that tries to bring the night market cultures of Asia to Southern California. I missed the first one, and thank goodness, because by all accounts it was a dangerous and unpleasant mess of an event. The venue was too small, there was not enough food, and the parking spaces were limited–all things the organizers are trying to fix this time around.

What really struck me in reading the reviews of the first event on Yelp (a business and event rating site) was the amount of racialized self-hatred there was in the negative reviews that the algorithm put at the top of the list. The Yelpers, mostly of apparent East Asian descent (judging from the photos), tended to blame the mess that was the 626 Night Market on the fact that it was an Asian concept attracting Asian people.

Van D.: “And THE CROWD… FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKK!!! makes me hate asian people!! They push into you, they step on you, they cross the street without walking. Fuck, this is worse than Asia -_-’ They even try to cut in front of you when you’re waiting in line. It felt as though I left civilization and re-entered some PRIMITIVE place where rules no longer applied.”

Anita L.: 1. Traffic – Well, you know what they say about Asian drivers, I was grateful that I didn’t get killed. [...] 4. Crowds – Okay, I understand that we are all Asian here, but give me my personal space! I really don’t hate it when people actually think they can move faster if they rub against the person in front of them.

Laura S.: “There is nothing ou can do about crowds… The planners anticipated hundreds but not thousands. But with an event like this… And Asians… You never know…”

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June 24, 2012
by Calvin 1 Comment

Teresa Hsiao’s extremely unfunny “A White Man’s Guide to Dating Asian Girls”

“Comedy” writer Teresa Hsiao (on the staff of the show Family Guy) wrote a article entitled “A White Man’s Guide to Dating Asian Girls” for the Huffington Post. Thank goodness missed when it was published last month. It’s really, really unfunny. Here, I mean unfunny as in “not funny,” not as in “offensive.” Take a look:

STEP ONE: Finding an Asian

Asian girls typically hang out at one of three places: the mall, the library, or Pinkberry. When you get there, look around: the best Asian girl to pick up will be the one wearing a hoodie and heels (there is always one). When you approach her, ask for the time. As she takes out her phone to tell you, you should make a nice comment about her phone flair (Asian girls always have some bedazzled jank hanging off our phones, usually a cartoon duck or a jade tiger). And with that, you’re in. Asian girls will go on a date with anyone if she can tell a cutesy story about it later: “And then, after he saw my Keroppi keychain, he asked me out at Pinkberry! Pinkberry!”

Who goes to Pinkberry anymore? Are we back in 2008?
Phone flair, okay. That’s valid (but still unfunny). I actually got a wooden dragon phone charm in a Cathay Bank red envelope in my goody bag from the Asian Pacific Islander American Historic Preservation Forum this past week!

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