Generality:“Yellow”. 133
Anonymous | nationality: Canadian | ethnicity: Cantonese
“Yellow”.
I have a soft spot for the colour yellow. It's oneof my favourite colours.
To me, it's a really bright, vivacious, optimisticcolour. When I was
younger, a girl told me yellow was the colour of urine,so I was
ashamed of liking it, but I've gotten over that.
Growing up in a predominately East Asian community,I've never been
referred to as "yellow". I think being called "yellow"does only apply to
East Asians. Nobody in my community calls East Asians"yellows", not
even jokingly, considering most of them are East Asian.It's just
something that never came up, like "oh, I'm yellow".
I've realized that yeah, "yellow" only does affectEast Asians. Like, West
Asian and South Asian people are called "brown", andcall themselves
brown, all the time, but it feels like it'd be crossinga line to call an
East Asian person "yellow".
“Asian”.
This is a really difficult question to answer. I don'treally want to be a
gatekeeper, but I think people stop being Asian ifthe part of them
that's Asian is really small. Kind of like peoplewho say they can say the
"n word" because they're like 1/16 black, I don'tthink you can call
yourself an Asian if you weren't raised with Asianculture and only a
small part of you is Asian.
I think it also depends on how you think of the word"Asian"--like is it
the genetics or the upbringing/culture?
I think being Asian also does depend on your participationin the
culture too, though. Like if you don't eat the food,don't know your
native language, or have any interest in getting toknow more, yeah,
you might be Asian genetically but I don't reallythink you'd be one
culturally. Like traditions and cultures depend onpeople to pass on the
torch, so do you really count if you don't contributeto keeping it alive?
It'd be like not doing anything in a group projectbut claiming the
grade anyways.
Ethnicity|part1.
Cantonese, slipping away, ingrained, a driving force,fond.
Ethnicity|part2.
I chose the word Cantonese, because well, I am Cantonese.I speak it,
and most of the East Asian community around me isCantonese.
I think my "Asianness" is slipping away. It's part of me, yes, genetically,
but I know I don't have a lot of it culturally. Ican't speak the language
well, I barely remember how to read any characters.I don't know about
any holidays. And as I get older, I know I'm goingto lose more and
more. For example, I help my grandma out when preparingfor funeral
burnings, but when she dies, I think my family isgoing to stop them.
mchaos
(mchaos)
#1