Generality:“Yellow”. 217
My perception and how I conceptualize my identity is probably mostly
rooted as a product of my upbringing as a first-generation immigrant in
Canada. I believe there will always be influence interms of how I view
my identity, and it just so happens that being Canadianinfluenced that
the most. In a whole though I feel that the way Isee being Filipino as
one that is slightly negative has something to dowith internalized
racism and colourism. I do feel that there was anunspoken pressure in
Canada to adopt the cultures and customs of the countryas quickly as
possible which lead me to abandon the language, theaccent, the
mannerisms etc. that I took with me from the Philippines.
Differ from Asian stereotype(s).
it is important to acknowledge that certain stereotypesassociated with
people groups would be tied to both socio-culturaland historical
reason and that certain stereotypes would not necessarilybe salient in
Asia. This assumes that this question refers to Asianpeople living in
predominantly western countries.
As a whole, I see typical Asian stereotypes as a netnegative and a
detriment to the image of Asian people in Westernsocieties. While
yes,it is true that there are a lot of “positive stereotypes”associated
with Asian people, for example, that we’re all goodat school and that
most of us are doctors, lawyers or engineers. However, there is a lot of
negative stereotypes attached to Asian people in theWest. For
instance, there is a popular image of asians as cold,unemotional and
not beautiful.
I believe that these stereotypes can lead to otheringand fetishization
especially in media portrayals such as in books, movies,TV shows, and
video games. Most of the time, Asian characters areoften very
one-dimensional, while white characters often getto play themselves,
Asian characters often get to play as a substituteof their culture.
Stereotypes rob people of their inherent complexityand replaces them
with a cookie cutter image of who society thinks theyare.
For me, I have a complicated relationship with stereotypes,.On the one
hand I and many other people use it as a marker ofidentity, but on the
other hand despise it for limiting it and boxing meinto an identity that
I’m not 100% congruent with. I embody some but notall of the most
commonly held Asian stereotypes (I was good at schoolbut I hated
math for example), and some people have called meout for “not
acting” my culture because I like certain food itemsor things which are
not stereotypically associated with being Asian orFilipino, including
being told that I “act too white,”
A theoretical space without racism.
mchaos
(mchaos)
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