Jess | she/they | nationality & ethnicity: Taiwanese/Chinese/Canadian
“Yellow”.
I guess if we start with just the colour itself, it’scertainly not one of my
favourite colours, but it’s been growing on me thepast few years.
Before, it just mostly straddled the line of the simplified,overly sunny
classroom associations of yellow, and its more garish,anxious
associations. However, in the past few years I’vebeen appreciating it
much more as a warm, glowy sort of colour, especiallywith how it
looks in art.
Though on a similar train of thought, I find mediain general has played
a part in how I perceive the way colours are associatedwith things, and
skin/race is no exception. For example, give me thewords yellow and
skin together my first thoughts would probably veertowards a sort of
illness or jaundice, since a lot of the media I consumedgrowing up set
white or rosy pink as the norm(I also read a lot ofmedical texts as a kid
though, so sue me haha)
That being said, I’m aware the word yellow can beused as a derogatory
term towards asians, though personally have neverexperienced as such
and only learned about it in third person(hence myknee jerk
association being jaundice). Within the past few yearsI know that there
have been efforts to ig reclaim the word, such asthe yellow cover used
in CRA. I found the reasoning for it to be quite beautiful,and if it can
mean something to someone who faced that sort of discriminationor
unfavourable connotation, it think that’s great, thoughI personally
don’t have that sort of experience.
“Asian”.
Oh boy interesting question. See ask me in my youthor ask my mom
and you’d get an answer that sounds smth like, youhave to grow up
with the culture, food, and people otherwise noneof it really matters,
thus excluding adopted asians, though as time goeson I’m starting to
realize the reality is a bit more nuanced than thatbecause as soon as
there’s something that makes someone a little bitdifferent, it’s likely
going to stick with many facets of their life, andbeing adopted is no
different.
However if you asked me to simplify it, I see therebeing broadly three
categories in relation to the Asian identity, withwith Asian, Asian
American(or any other nationality), and non Asian(andthis is kinda
dumb bc I barely fit into these categories either).Asian, kinda covers
the asians living in Asia, growing up completely submergedin the local
culture. Asian American, is the one that describesa lot of second gen,
and are ones that most likely have not experienceda lot of long term
exposure to their parents’ countries. Then non Asian,is just non Asian.
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