Read about an interesting article on Angry Asian Man today. The article was by Jeff Yang called Asian Pop: Opening the box and is about various aspects of
Asian America’s favorite taboo topic: interracial romance and the “gender divide.”
I find it so weird the way people talk about interracial relationships. It’s like it never really occured to me that it was a big deal. On playschool Manu hung out with Jemima, etc. etc. Just like interracial friendships, I never understood what all the fuss was about. The way that people talk about the issues surrounding interracial relationships – being attracted to the exoticism, having something to prove, wanting to be different - we’re talking about relationships, people. I think talking about interracial relationships as being different to any other relationship is kinda racist, it sets it apart and seems to assume there are different factors at work other than just feelings. Falling in love doesn’t really have that much to do with race…
That said, some people are more attracted to certain races than others. Again, I didn’t realise that this is still a novel concept to a lot of people. Isn’t it far more bizarre to think that all Western women for some strange reason have a gene which makes them prefer non-Asian guys?! Asian guys are hott. That’s just the way it is. It’s incredible the big deal people make about an Asian guy and a Western girl (“AM/XF”). There are freakin’ heaps of forums, blogs and sites dedicated to this kind of relationship, like wgwag.net (seriously, “WhiteGirlWithAsianGuy.net”) It’s so bizarre over at AznLover.com…
For Asian American men, AznLover feels like a kind of parallel dimension, where their status is inverted: Rather than being exiled to the margins, Asian males are at the center of this particular universe; not just “accepted,” but revered.
That just seems like some craziness (because of the truthfulness in what he’s saying). Just do a Google search for “Asian guy white girl” and you’ll come up with heaps of links, blogs, help sites, videos and pictures. “Asian males”… I really think this whole thing will be gone in a few years. It’s just not gunna be an issue. I think we’re at quite a unique (though possibly not as unique as we might like to believe) moment in modern history: for some reason there’s this discrimination against Asian guys for whatever reason, this aversion to interracial relationships - on both sides – that I believe will eventually disappear in the mainstream and be a weird thing that future generations look back on to mark human progress, like ‘haha, can you believe people used to actually think like that? Man, look how far we’ve come”. I think this process will start in Western culture the same way it did in Eastern – Asian media is beginning to enter the U.S. and other Western cultures more and more, with more and more Asian and Asian American actors, singers and celebs crossing over into Western media. I think this assimilation of pop-culture and an increase in Westerners learning Eastern languages and travelling to Asia will eventually result in a normalisation of “interracial interactions”. I predict America will both be the main catalyst in this process, and be a major hindrance holding it back.
Asian guys are just the same as white guys except hotter. I mean, they’re just guys. Sure, there are cultural differences, language, ways of thinking… but I don’t think you can just group people by race, “Asian guys”, “black guys” etc, that just describes what they look like. Am I the only one who gets a weird feeling looking at the “AznLover photo Feed“? Cute couples, but it’s weird to think they’re only featured for their race… I dunno. Feels strange.
Looking at AznLover feels really weird for me, on one hand I feel like “What is the fuss about?! Why wouldn’t those couples be together? What am I missing??” but at the same time there’s this weird… almost jealously, like, “damn, I knew other white chicks would cotton on eventually, I’m not special anymore.” I think really it’s society that’s just cottoning on. To a lot of people it’s still a novelty and while seeing an Asian chick with a white guy is pretty normal now, even among Asian guys themselves they can see being with a white chick as somehow exotic or impressive, almost like a status symbol. This is just because of media representations of Western chicks, and I think in the future we’ll continue to see more and more interracial relationships as globally cultures murge and interact; relationships between people falling in love with people, not with an idea or stereotype.
Read the article here!
