Anonymous | nationality: Australian | ethnicity: SouthernIndian
“Yellow”.
I don’t generally feel anything towards the term “yellow”,or at least, I
don’t feel anything strongly. I feel like the term‘yellow’ is used
primarily against East Asians, or asians with lighterskin tones, since
from my experience, everyone I’ve met who’ve beenfrom Asia (India
Bangladesh, Cambodia, China ect) all have yellow undertones.I,
personally, would refer to myself as brown, or atleast dark skinned,
and so don’t feel any bad connotations from that particularterm.
“Asian”.
I feel like ‘Asian’ as a term is extremely broad.I, personally, feel as
though no matter how ‘white-washed’ someone’s been,they’ll still be
Asian, so long as they’ve kept some aspect of theiroriginal culture.
Whether this be through their parents, (in some, ormost cases, looks)
upbringing, or how much someone resonates with theirown culture. As
long as someone is Asian, (by the above characteristics)there is
nowhere you can stop being Asian.
Ethnicity|part1.
My ethnicity is southern Indian, more specificallyfrom the state of
Kerala. Since, from my understanding, a lot of India’sstates have
different cultures depending on the region, a lotof my experiences
with being Indian would be vastly different from others.With my
experiences growing up in Kerala, I don’t have a lotof fond memories, I
do have the occasional good one, but they get outshinedby the sheer
amount of bad ones I’ve gone through. I’m generallyproud to be
Indian, I enjoy a lot of the cultures I’ve grown upin, and still practice a
lot of them with family friends even while livingin Australia.
Ethnicity|part2.
I think a lot of reasons I responded how I did, wasbecause how it’s
been influenced by the people around me. In my region,it’s very
heavily rooted to sexism, where women are to stayin the kitchen or to
work on the garden, and for men, it’s quite literallyan ‘every man for
themselves’ situation. When I lived there, there wasa prominent
‘hierarchy’ I’ve experienced personally. In the regioni grew up in, the
lighter your skin, the more smarter, pretty, wealthy,and healthier you
were. It did not matter whether or not you didn’tdo well academically,
if someone was living in poverty, or ones health wasn’tthe best. If you
have a light skin tone (still brown, but a lightershade) you were seen
as better. A lot of the times, because of my lighterskin, I was seen as
the ‘shiny new play thing’ whenever I was to moveschools. I definitely
think my responses are brought out because of badexperiences with
segregation/ racism in India.
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