Remember, EM POC only!
Welcome to EM POC weekly, comrades. Say whatever you got on your mind! Someone piss you off? Something amazing happen? You just wanna talk about how you’re doing today?
Whatever it is, have at it!
Remember, EM POC only!
Welcome to EM POC weekly, comrades. Say whatever you got on your mind! Someone piss you off? Something amazing happen? You just wanna talk about how you’re doing today?
Whatever it is, have at it!
I’m Asian and I’m very hesitant to include myself as a “brown” person even though some people do. In terms of suffering from colorism, I feel like my skin isn’t dark enough and I tend to have more privilege than other brown people. Racist stereotypes of Asians say they’re all super smart and high achievers. Many other racial stereotypes say the complete opposite for other ethnicities of brown people. I feel like I’m stealing victimhood when I say I’m brown.
My anxiety about this is so great, I don’t talk about this at all, not even to my closest loved ones. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes about this topic of if I’m brown or not. I don’t want to be excluded but I have guilt about being included.
You are a stonethrow away from being in the “brown” category pretty much regardless of which Asian ethnicity you’re from. I think most people (racists especially) consider Arabs, Indians, and Pacific Islanders to all be brown. Between those areas are China, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. It shows just how absurd and arbitrary racism is that these places are all part of Asia, but they’re still labeled differently as though there’s some kind of blood magic that created these distinctions.
Make no mistake about it. It didn’t matter what category Chinese and Filipinos were in when they were pressganged into building the western United States. It didn’t matter what category Japanese-Americans were in when they were rounded up and put in camps. And it didn’t matter Sikhs, Persians, and Indians weren’t Arabs, they were all lumped together and became the targets of hate crimes following 9/11.
In the end, whitey will switch from calling us “the model minority” to calling us “removed” the moment we inconvenience them.
You matter regardless if you identify as brown or not :). Def lots to unpack but just remember that, and also race is more than appearance