I can’t believe how many of us mixed-Asians are experiencing the same feelings right now. I just wrote about this, too, as a way to process the complicated feelings I have with this “Wasian moment”, and the algorithm brought me here. It’s like we are moving through the moment in lock-step, but from thousands of miles away.
There’s so much we have in common and the one emotion I feel that underlies the experience is a combination of guilt/shame/cringe. We can’t control how we are born or perceived so when others objectify us we know why it’s wrong, but it feels impossible to push back in the moment on our own.
But the thing is this Wasian wave for better or worse could actually start to build a culture beyond phenotype. If we want it to. Like you, I didn’t asked for this moment to arrive this way but it did. So the question is to do we let it carry us wherever it goes, or do we try to direct it into something better than what it has been: a cultural obsession about appearance and breeding.
Thank you for writing this. You said all the things and more that I've been feeling about the Wasian discourse. It feels so weird to be discussed like this when for me I've really only just settled into being comfortable in my mixed race identity. The part you said about growing up and feeling that being half white is truly inconsequential because people will be racist to your Asian half anyway was too real - I was exactly the same. It's been an incredibly confusing and jarring time! And strange to see in real time 'Wasians' trending, that trend getting backlash, now rejection again, when most of us are out here just trying to live!!
"Mixed-race people were never supposed to exist in this world."
Completely false and ahistorical. We have been mixing races for as long as people have tried to invent the fiction of race. The idea of a "pure" race is nonsensical invention of modernity.
In context, I think it becomes clear that they meant that "mixed-race people were never supposed to exist in this world [within the nonsensical confines dictated by colonialist ideas of race]". They make similar points to you, and then cite the contrived laws and systems that were installed by people in power to prevent this natural thing from occurring. It's a rhetorical device. Please read it again more charitably
thank you so much for writing this and sharing your experience as a Wasian, millie! i can only imagine how dehumanizing it feels to have your identity being politicized, rejected, and fetishized all at once. this was a wonderfully written piece and i loved learning more about your experiences growing up in different places!
Thank you for your wonderful essay and for putting into words these difficult and confusing feelings that I have experienced time and time again growing up. I had a similar, but also very different, upbringing from yours. I went to public school in Taiwan until the 3rd grade, where I was then transferred into an international school in Hsinchu because my white grandmother in Canada told my parents that she wanted my sister and I to speak fluent English. Growing up half-white in the early 2000s meant young women coming up to my sister and I, wooing and ahhing, asking for photos of us like we were mini-celebrities. It meant having strangers call you a "洋娃娃“, only to then be called ugly as I grew, because I didn't look as white as my other half-white peers anymore– that I "wasn't mixed well".
I find this dichotomy of both having been a recipient of white privilege and also a victim of it to be incredibly difficult to discuss, and with the current rise of "wasia" in popular culture, for this experience to be dismissed. I don't know how to talk about it without being accused of "praising whiteness", when it is actually that exact praising of whiteness by people around me (White AND Asian) that has harmed me all my life, but also of course, given me status at times. I think people forget that a lot of half-white folks have been spoon-fed by their parents and environment to aspire to become "whiter" than they present, whether that be with their appearance or to learn English in order to claim some kind of status by gaining closer proximity to the West. I too, had this White Supremacist delusion that once I moved to the West, I would finally be seen for who I was, because Toronto is so much more diverse than my hometown of Hsinchu. No! It turns out no matter where I go, my identity is in the eye of my beholder– that includes my own family. I had hoped that with an increase in representation, we could have these difficult conversations, but I feel as if it's just another push towards my ethnicity being an aesthetic.
Anyways, I don't even know where I am going with this! But thank you so much for sharing!!!!
I can’t believe how many of us mixed-Asians are experiencing the same feelings right now. I just wrote about this, too, as a way to process the complicated feelings I have with this “Wasian moment”, and the algorithm brought me here. It’s like we are moving through the moment in lock-step, but from thousands of miles away.
There’s so much we have in common and the one emotion I feel that underlies the experience is a combination of guilt/shame/cringe. We can’t control how we are born or perceived so when others objectify us we know why it’s wrong, but it feels impossible to push back in the moment on our own.
But the thing is this Wasian wave for better or worse could actually start to build a culture beyond phenotype. If we want it to. Like you, I didn’t asked for this moment to arrive this way but it did. So the question is to do we let it carry us wherever it goes, or do we try to direct it into something better than what it has been: a cultural obsession about appearance and breeding.
Thank you for this. Your article might be the best take I’ve read on this entire situation so far!
Thank you for reading! I really appreciate you saying that
Thank you for writing this. You said all the things and more that I've been feeling about the Wasian discourse. It feels so weird to be discussed like this when for me I've really only just settled into being comfortable in my mixed race identity. The part you said about growing up and feeling that being half white is truly inconsequential because people will be racist to your Asian half anyway was too real - I was exactly the same. It's been an incredibly confusing and jarring time! And strange to see in real time 'Wasians' trending, that trend getting backlash, now rejection again, when most of us are out here just trying to live!!
Thank you so much for this! Love to hear it and thanks for sharing your story too.
"Mixed-race people were never supposed to exist in this world."
Completely false and ahistorical. We have been mixing races for as long as people have tried to invent the fiction of race. The idea of a "pure" race is nonsensical invention of modernity.
I obviously know that Sasha.
Then why did you write that...
In context, I think it becomes clear that they meant that "mixed-race people were never supposed to exist in this world [within the nonsensical confines dictated by colonialist ideas of race]". They make similar points to you, and then cite the contrived laws and systems that were installed by people in power to prevent this natural thing from occurring. It's a rhetorical device. Please read it again more charitably
thank you so much for writing this and sharing your experience as a Wasian, millie! i can only imagine how dehumanizing it feels to have your identity being politicized, rejected, and fetishized all at once. this was a wonderfully written piece and i loved learning more about your experiences growing up in different places!
thank you ❣️
Thank you for your wonderful essay and for putting into words these difficult and confusing feelings that I have experienced time and time again growing up. I had a similar, but also very different, upbringing from yours. I went to public school in Taiwan until the 3rd grade, where I was then transferred into an international school in Hsinchu because my white grandmother in Canada told my parents that she wanted my sister and I to speak fluent English. Growing up half-white in the early 2000s meant young women coming up to my sister and I, wooing and ahhing, asking for photos of us like we were mini-celebrities. It meant having strangers call you a "洋娃娃“, only to then be called ugly as I grew, because I didn't look as white as my other half-white peers anymore– that I "wasn't mixed well".
I find this dichotomy of both having been a recipient of white privilege and also a victim of it to be incredibly difficult to discuss, and with the current rise of "wasia" in popular culture, for this experience to be dismissed. I don't know how to talk about it without being accused of "praising whiteness", when it is actually that exact praising of whiteness by people around me (White AND Asian) that has harmed me all my life, but also of course, given me status at times. I think people forget that a lot of half-white folks have been spoon-fed by their parents and environment to aspire to become "whiter" than they present, whether that be with their appearance or to learn English in order to claim some kind of status by gaining closer proximity to the West. I too, had this White Supremacist delusion that once I moved to the West, I would finally be seen for who I was, because Toronto is so much more diverse than my hometown of Hsinchu. No! It turns out no matter where I go, my identity is in the eye of my beholder– that includes my own family. I had hoped that with an increase in representation, we could have these difficult conversations, but I feel as if it's just another push towards my ethnicity being an aesthetic.
Anyways, I don't even know where I am going with this! But thank you so much for sharing!!!!
Interesting essay. Thank you. You might enjoy “White Mughals” (2002) by William Dalrymple. Geremie
Last time I was in New York City and I noticed the hippest white girls had Asian boyfriends.