My Fear of Asians. Part 1.
I admitted that I’m afraid of Asians at Ignite Boulder last night. 900 (more or less and lots semi-drunk) people laughed their heads off.
Yes. Me. The Chinese kid from Malaysia. Is Afraid of Asians.
* Cue for you to be aghast and start laughing so hard that you fall off your chair.
Yes I have a fear of Asians. A very real fear of Asians.
Yet it is the culture and group of people closest to my heart. I grew up primarily among people of the same color and culture. “How could you have possibly developed a fear of the familiar?”, you ask.
Believe me, I really want to explain it and have it make sense to you on some level. Originally, I had a 700 word blog post for planned release today but it wouldn’t really make any sense to you unless you’ve met me. Where do I begin? Perhaps from where YOU want to know?
Last night, as I was trying to explain the nuances of my fear to 12 different people, I noticed that everyone has a different interpretation of my paradoxical fear. Imagine my exhaustive attempt at catering my answers to their questions and entertaining some rather disconcerting jokes.
On the bright side, many had GREAT Asian stories to share- think that Chinese kid who threatened to show his Chinese torture technique to you in kindergarden or that really gorgeous Japanese girl you always wanted to ask out. The Asians have been traditionally the model minority in North America after all and someone always has an interesting personal story about Asians, stereotype jokes aside.
And I’m infinitely interested in YOUR stories.
So I decided to structure this (and the coming!) blog post with a different twist; to have you, my darling readers ask me questions about this fear and even send me your own guess/reasoning/explanation/logic rational on why I’m afraid of the very ethnicity I’m part of.
Go ahead, put on your thinking cap. I know it’s Friday, whatever. Come on!!! This is a fun puzzle to solve and it’ll take you 5 minutes at most.
Why do you think I’m afraid of Asians? And what information can I provide that would help you understand this fear of mine?
Comments
I would guess you might have a fear in terms of expectations… Asians are expected to be the best at things.
They are like your mirror?
Do you fear Asians as individuals or a collective? My guess would be they remind you of some aspect of your self that you are afraid to examine. Perhaps a feeling of alienation or inadequacy. Does it have to do with tradition or the expectations of family / cultural baggage?
In a way yes. expectations play a huge part in this. Because of the physical appearance i’ve inherited from my ethnicity, i am expected to fit a lot of stereotypes. Stereotypes is a major reason why I avoid Asians; i’m afraid of interracial stereotyping.
The mirror that I never wish to look at again. LOL. Kind of.
Wow Lach you’re pretty spot on! I actually have a greater fear of Asians from Asian countries, than Asians from America. I avoid them mainly because I don’t fit into the stereotypical Asian persona and I don’t want to deal with interracial stereotyping.
Yes, they remind me a lot of my inadequacies as an Asian – I feel a strange obligation to fit the stereotype sometimes but yet my personality is so far removed from that. I am usually alienated, at least when I first arrived in the US by most of my peers because I wasn’t ‘Asian enough’.
Cultural baggage..not so much, if I understand that term correctly. I’m actually very proud of my culture and family traditions, but when I first arrived, I naively tried to shake off every aspect of my cultural heritage in order to ‘fit in’. You can say that I was afraid of sticking out like a sore thumb.
While I understand that I would have not been necessarily ridiculed for being Asian and I do do my part to speak about Asian cultures as much as I can (and there’re aspects of my heritage that I will defend to my grave) , subconsciously I knew that I wanted a clean slate and a chance to try and throw off my social/cultural conditioning and adapt new ones.
I wanted to start over. What better place to do that in America where perfect assimilation is considered success?
Not everyone makes decisions like that..and I’m very afraid for being judged.
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