![]() They assume that non-white and non-Asian men are sexually and morally deviant - especially Black men… Some friends have commented on ‘how cute’ my mixed kids would be if my boyfriend and I ever decide to have a family, and others have pointed out to me that the existence of relationships like mine show how improved race relations have become in our country. But my extended family in Korea has told me more than once to at least stick to white or Asian men they want me to stay away from ‘darker’ men. “I’ve dated interracially enough that my family is no longer shocked when I introduce them to non-Korean partners. I have been called a race traitor, a house slave, and many more horrible things…I see much criticism and backlash against interracial relationships…there is much work to be done.” The hate mail will range from disappointment to violent threats, to name calling, to everything negative under the sun. I usually get about 1 piece of hate mail a week, often more if I write on something ‘controversial’ such as interracial relationships. Because I blog, contacting me is easier than for the average person. I suddenly lose credibility as a writer, activist, and member of the community. There’s often that split second after I tell them the race of my partner that I see this change occur on their expression. “When I date interracially friends, especially within the Asian American community, are quick to criticize or judge. Identifies as: Asian American, 2 nd generation Chinese Interviews with several of these women follow, all words and images used here with their permission. ![]() I thought #NotYourAsianSideKick moved away from this topic too quickly and decided to to contact some of the brave women who had spoken up for a deeper exploration. But sadly just a handful of women (including Park & Shen) responded before the discussion dashed off in another direction: In fact hers was the only question that specifically addressed issues of interraciality possibly cracking the door to include a broader discussion of multiraciality in the hashtag and the Asian community at large. There was really only one moment that jumped off the screen at me and really connected to my lived/mixed experience, when Shen asked: Now while I think overall #NotYourAsianSidekick was and is a gorgeous and deeply needed movement to be heard, and even though plenty of mixed race people chimed in throughout – honestly I felt on the fringes of the conversation before it even began (as I usually do) being a multiracial person who can’t align fully with mono- categories like Asian. To get the convo going, the 2 friends threw out a series of thoughtful questions with Park first up and Shen quickly following. Something that got quickly lost in the explosive hype surrounding the trend (which has since been solely credited to activist Suey Park) was that it was originally co-hosted by Park and fellow activist Juliet Shen. Case in point, I happened to hear about #NotYourAsianSideKick before it launched and participated at the very beginning for an hour. I’m on Twitter I have a love-hate relationship with social media but in my view there’s simply too much happening around race in that arena and online to ignore it. ![]() In fact the discussion has so deeply shown its importance that it has transformed into something of a movement with its own website and hosted forums that aim to continue “bringing conversations between artists, activists, and academics” about “everything from using Twitter as a platform for agitation to interracial solidarity to disability to queerness.” It has since generated widespread and well-deserved attention much of which you can easily locate and peruse via Google search. Tanya Maria Golash-Boza covered it for Racism Review here, noting some of the social science evidence about discrimination against Asian Americans.Ī month later, the hashtag is still trending. A groundwell of interest caused the hashtag to go viral globally, garnering 4 5,000 tweets within 24 hours, appearing in 95 million feeds across the next 3 days. Designed to create much-needed but difficult-to-find space for discussing justice in the Asian American community, participants tweeted about everything from “media representation of Asian women to the way the prison industrial complex erases Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in its demographic tracking”. In December of last year an Asian feminist conversation took Twitter by storm under the hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick.
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