ATTN BAY AREA ASIAN LADIES - LETS TALK ABOUT INTERNALIZED RACISM
I am working on a project that deals with my own internalized racism towards other asian girls and I need your participation and help!
I just moved to San Francisco about a month ago and I am looking to meet new people and explore the city and the greater bay area. I am looking to meet all kinds of people, but I am specifically looking to meet up with other asian girls to work on a project that I am trying to start. Let me explain myself.
I grew up in the very caucasian suburbs of San Fernando Valley and then attended UCSC, which has a student demographic that is over fifty percent white. The outcome of my social surroundings of being predominantly white created a situation in which almost all of my friends are white. During my last few years at university, I have come to recognize the influence of this type of upbringing and the internalized racism against other asian people (specifically asian girls) that it has fostered. My initial knee jerk reaction to the presence of other asian girls is to immediately dislike them, which are feelings that always subside within five minutes when I take the time to recognize that those are irrational feelings, but feelings that were there none the less. I didn’t care if girls flirted with my boyfriends, but I would immediately feel threatened if I noticed that she was asian. I recognize that tokenism is bad, but I almost feel that I’m the one that is enforcing the idea of me being “token asian (girl)friend,” almost in a “back off bitch, this is MY group of white friends.” Obviously, this type of thinking is wrong and although I have always known that these feelings were problematic, they exist anyways. I think that these feelings are in place because of the more or less white washed upbringing that I received as well as the white washing of the people shown in media.
I want to work through these feelings with you (and maybe you have felt this way as well) through a photo series. We will meet up, chat for a bit, and then I will take a photo of us making some form of friendly physical contact (i.e. hugging, holding hands, etc). My hope is that through this project I will cease to view other asian girls as antagonists who are trying to tread on my turf and also to call awareness to this issue, that I’m certain I’m not the only one that has experienced.
If you are interested in participating, please e-mail me at heyvivianfu@gmail.com
Even if you don’t live very close to the Bay Area and even if you don’t live in California and the possibility of us meeting up is slim, I would still like to hear from you and your experiences. If you could reblog this to help me find more participants, I would really appreciate it.
