Part 2: Unveiling childhood racism
An Interview with my Cousin Stephanie
Last week I published an interview with my cousin Stephanie. Today I present the continuation of that interview.
Stephanie comes from a mixed-race family. She is half-Chinese and half-Canadian. As our family gets older, even more cultures grow around us. At age four, she moved to Alpharetta, Georgia where she lived until fourteen. There, she encountered racism in her schools and her community — but it didn’t stop when she moved back to Canada as a teenager. Now, a young woman, her encounters with racism morphed into something heavier. In Part 2, we discuss dating, objectification, and how she’s trying to navigate her future as a newly single woman.
Stephanie’s handsome dad and beautiful mama on their wedding day in 1985.
Coco: Ok, I have to ask this because my mom and dad always used to tell me how hard it was for them being an interracial couple in the 80’s. Do your parents ever talk about that? Did your mom or dad ever get pushback from either side of the family?
Steph: When my dad introduced my mom to my grandparents, it didn’t go well. My Yen Yen (grandmother) was upset that he was dating someone that she couldn’t speak Chinese to and therefore didn’t approve of their relationship. He ended up moving in with my mom and they stopped talking to each other for 3 months.
It was a hard time for everyone. Eventually Yen Yen called and asked my mom to dinner. My mom told me that after they got to know her, and saw that she was committed to my dad and respected their culture, she became one of their “favorites.” She takes immense pride in turning a 180 on that situation.
Coco: It’s kind of funny because a couple months later my dad married my mom. The floodgate had been opened.
Steph: Yeah! All our aunts and uncles married white women and/or men after that. As a kid, I always saw our family dynamic as inclusive. So I didn’t ask them too much about the early years — I had no idea they went through any of this. They had their share of experiences with racism in both countries as well. When buying a house, they had a banking staff member “lose” their paperwork because she didn’t want a Chinese person to move into the neighborhood, when my brother and I were born they lost friends because some of them only wanted to visit us see what we ended up looking like, etc. Unfortunately, racist attitudes didn’t totally disappear from our grandparents’ behavior.
Coco: Yeah, I remember Yen Yen telling my mom she only knew how to cook us hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.
Steph: We’ve had Korean, White European/Canadians and African Canadian people marry into our family. All of them were met with some kind of hostility by my grandparents at one point or another. It made me so mad, like — did you not learn anything from my parents? I always took my birth as a symbol of “inclusion and universal love” and looked at our family dynamic as a positive example of that. It’s disappointing to know that even in more progressive families like ours, racism still existed and is layered in its own right.
Steph, second from right, and other cousins at our grandparents house in the late 90’s.
Coco: So that’s inside our family, what were you experiencing outside in your world? Was anything happening in your life that you wish people knew to stop before they even started?
Steph: Yes. When you approach someone and the first thing you ask is “What are you?” It’s rarely attached to a follow up. It’s more: “Ah-ha! I solved that puzzle!” As if, I confused someone with my appearance, then I “explained” it, and they feel better. It doesn’t make me feel great to be reduced to a question which can be solved with a single answer.
Then there’s the Asian component. When Asian men find out I’m part Asian, they get excited. They will start speaking Chinese or find other ways to test me on how Asian I am. Finally when they catch a breath, I’ll reply with, “Sorry I don’t speak Chinese,” and then something really elementary follows like, “Oh, well, do you know what dim sum is?” I can sense they are testing where I am on the spectrum: Asian on one side; white on the other.
Historically, white men have been more sexualizing and predatory towards me. They start acting in a domineering way, expecting me to act subservient. That whole experience made me not like men for a long period of time. I always felt like I had to be on guard.
Coco: What would happen in these conversations?
Steph: Where do I start? For one, my background was consistently intertwined with pickup lines.
“I normally go for Asians, but you’ll do.”
“I would have thought you were white except your eyes gave it away.”
“Oh, maybe give me a massage later?” (I was an Athletic Therapist so I always got asked inappropriately for massages from patients and strangers. I started telling people I was an epidemiologist at parties just to avoid this. It only backfired once when I actually met a real epidemiologist and he started asking follow up questions!)
Then there’s always the guessing game come ons:
“Let me guess what you are (rattling off ethnicities).”
“Oh! I didn’t know you were Asian, I thought you were Hawaiian/Latino! Etc.Well hey! That’s a compliment. They’re so beautiful!”
The last one is the most common and confusing to unpack. People use this in conversations all the time and think they are complimenting you by aligning your physical appearance with other ethnicities. What this actually does is show that the person does not care to understand or learn the nuances of the individual cultures. They’re sexualizing an entire race and it is actually dismissive of my own cultural beauty.
Coco: Seriously feel you on that. You second guess yourself more.
Steph: I know. And after time, I started to lose any pride for my culture, because I was constantly being judged or sexualized. I tried to figure out ways to not even get asked that question. There is literally SO much else you can talk to a mixed race person about. This is the greatest way NOT to date a mixed-race person. My first long-term partner never brought up my background at all.
Coco: Did you feel like you had to constantly educate men you were dating?
Steph: Yes, which is not my responsibility right? I dated a man from South America who was a 1st generation immigrant to Canada. He brought up the Black Lives Matter protests in the US and said that he was glad to be living in Canada where “we don’t have to deal with that stuff.”
Our conversation went something like this (paraphrasing):
Me: “Well, in my experiences that’s not really the case.”
Him: “Obviously, there’s the racist history with the Indigenous in Canada.”
Me: “From having lived in both countries — I have experienced racism at every age on both sides of the border. I’m happy that you didn’t have to go through it yourself, but there are a lot of marginalized groups that are targeted in Canada. All you have to do it listen to the stories people are sharing about their experiences to know that’s the case.”
Him: “Have you heard of this podcast (forget which one)? It talks about how prejudice is so systemic that people can learn to be racist and not even know it. Where those people ‘racist-racist’ or only subconsciously racist?”
Needless to say, I was not impressed. This was his response to me telling him that I was called a chink in my first week of university. There’s only so much educating you can do on a second date. Subconscious or not, acts of racism (no matter how small) still have lasting effects. Shifting the focus towards the offender’s motives to validate your world view or searching for a justification for them can be very invalidating.
Coco: Did any experiences feel dangerous? Or perhaps you reflected back and realized there were warning signs earlier?
Steph: Yeah — the last guy I dated was just a few months ago. He was a very well-educated Israeli man who taught kids with autism. A catch right? One night, he showed me a list of his saved porn. Every single girl in these videos were Asian and had similar body types to me. I thought, ‘Ok, maybe this guy just has a type?’ ‘Should I be flattered?’ or ‘Is this a fetishization thing?’ I’m still confused on where the line is.
I didn’t think it was a problem at first, but the longer it went on, he started getting angry and argumentative with me if I was stating opinions that countered his.
Then I started to see the sexual violence in the manga and anime he collected. All of it was so incredibly brutal towards women. The combination of these videos which sexualized assault did not sit well with me.
I asked him one day if he thought there was any kind of problem there. He said to me (paraphrasing):
“You need to understand that in Japanese manga women need to go through a significant trauma like this to justify their storyline in gaining a special power or acting as a motivation for the hero to save them.”
I replied with: “Well do you see a lot of men in these stories getting gang-raped by goblins?”
He quickly said, “No. Men wouldn’t buy that.”
We didn’t date much longer after that. He did not feel like a safe person to be with.
Coco: Wow. Wow. Honestly feel like you dodged more than a bullet there. How do you navigate moving forward dating as a young woman with all of these experiences in you?
Steph: Throughout my 20’s, I started presenting myself as more masculine in response to all the catcalling and constant sexualization. My hair was in a pixie cut for years and it kind of worked. The douchey guys were attracted to that stereotypical femme look I guess.
I only recently realized that I did this out of fear, and now I’ve had another awakening: I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m trying to make a point to follow my intuition and present myself in the identity I truly want without fear guiding it. I want to grow my hair long, I want to wear shorts, but I guess maybe, this is a whole new game I’m going to have to deal with all over again as a single person. I’m still trying to figure it out.
Coco: It’s such a hard balance trying to put boundaries up and be a free woman. I feel like that doesn’t exist as much as I want it to.
Steph: Yeah and summer’s here right now in Vancouver. I busted out my shorts the other day as a newly single woman and immediately got hissed at on the street. I felt so tense I almost went home and changed, but I told myself: “No girl! You’re not wearing pants in 30-degree weather because some douchebag can’t keep it in his pants.”
It was eye-opening how much my tall (ex)boyfriend shielded this behavior over the years. I don’t want to tie myself to a guy just to feel comfortable walking down the street. We need to create safety for ourselves and start holding men to higher standards. I’ve put so much work into unlearning this pattern of fear that I refuse to go backwards. Choosing to let down your defenses is not the same thing as being vulnerable. It requires you to trust your ability to deal with whatever will come and there’s a strength to that. I am constantly reminding myself of this — to stay the path.
Stephanie and her mama, Wendy
A few of our awesome cousins from our big, loud, and loving multi-racial family
I have learned so much from talking with Steph.
I’m sure by now, many of us have heard the generalization that Asian people keep quiet in moments of trauma because, “That’s how we were raised,” or “it’s in our culture to keep our heads down.” I accepted that story for a while, and now I respectfully am telling it to go fuck itself.
That narrative is flawed. It puts the onus on us. Plus, I come from an abundance of badass cousins and siblings who are loud and rebellious and opinionated. Come on, we’re second and third generation Asian kids who, by-in-large, did not follow traditional career paths. We’re artists, entrepreneurs, dancers, writers, festival directors, gymnasts, and carpenters. It’s time we toss that generalization away. It’s old news.
So where does the keep quiet attitude come from? It’s so clear to me now, no wonder it’s been so invisible.
The silence is bred from you — our friends, our partners, our in-laws. Anytime a bully at school told me I was gross and an entire table of classmates looked away. All the boys at bachelor parties who prefer to “order the Asian girls.” All of my past friends who tried to find ways to make me look less-Asian. All of the teachers who didn’t want to cause a ruckus when they witnessed bullish behavior in their periphery. Every single time you hear someone say something even slightly micro-aggressive and you do nothing, you kept us quieter, longer.
Doing nothing gives you a free pass from an awkward moment, but it doesn’t disappear — that decision shows the victim that they’re not worth being stood up for.
But, what if something was said behind closed doors? (ie: bachelor parties) And that targeted person or demographic wasn’t there to bear witness? That silence equals allowance. Next time that person feels the need to yell a slur at someone, they will be bolstered by your silent nod of approval, and that next time could very well do all of the damage we’ve been talking about today.
Thank you again to Stephanie, to whom I love and admire.
xx
Coco.
"Doing nothing gives you a free pass from an awkward moment, but it doesn’t disappear — that decision shows the victim that they’re not worth being stood up for." YES. This whole piece is Power. Deep gratitude for your sharing.
"Doing nothing gives you a free pass from an awkward moment, but it doesn’t disappear — that decision shows the victim that they’re not worth being stood up for." YES. This whole piece is power. Deep gratitude for your sharing.