As The Media Begins To Dial Back On Their Coverage Of A Particular View Of The BlackLivesMatter Protests,
As the media begins to dial back on their coverage of a particular view of the BlackLivesMatter protests, we need to stay vigilant to working towards social and institutional change for Blacks lives in America. We need to continue to educate ourselves on the history of the problem, how it has ultimately affects today, and what we must do to ensure that our mistakes aren’t repeated.
As a first generation Asian American, I’ve always felt a little out of place, because I was taught in school that racism was a black and white issue and didn’t consider the model minority myth a part of that problem until a couple of years ago. But now is a better time than any for anybody who never educated themselves to learn.
My process began years ago, and sadly it wasn’t because I came to the revelation myself, but out of necessity from being surrounded in mainly Black and Brown classmates. After years of learning the anti-black rhetoric in my family (subtle comments and attitudes), stereotypes in media, and in elementary school text books that teach me that racism is over and that it ended hundred of years ago, I moved to a middle school where even less of my classmates looked like me and came from low-income neighborhoods. There, I slowly became aware of the boundaries that race created, both as one of the only two Asian students and while being surrounded by Black and Brown students who grew up knowing about those boundaries.
At first, I gave in to the racism I was taught; I was weary around my Black and Brown peers and mainly only befriended my lighter-skinned peers. Becoming aware of how racism is still prevalent was a slow process, I was slow to learn about how racism is instilled in and helped build many of our current institutions. More embarrassingly, I played into the model minority myth by considering myself a victim because I felt like my classmates disliked me because of Asian stereotypes and the model minority myth (ironically, what I was doing to them). I honestly left middle school believing that I was more tolerant, when I was just beginning to chip that my racist behaviors and beliefs.
It wasn’t until high school that I actually did some hardcore unlearning and dismantling to my teachings. Before sophomore year, I learned about Brock Turner’s 6-month sentence, aka the Stanford Rapist. Even though I grew up with anti-blackness surrounding me, I managed to stay away from misogyny and was open to understanding feminism in the way I had yet to with fighting racism. I was disgusted by this news and educated myself on the problems with rape cases in America, white privilege, and toxic masculinity. As I researched and read more, and more racist attitudes became more public due to Trump’s presidential campaign, I became more politically aware and sympathetic to my Black and Brown peers. I looked for media that was made by minorities and judged where the media I was seeing came from. I saw the subtle microaggressions coming from my family. I began to have open conversations with my friends about feminism, LGBT+ issues, immigration, and racism, learning first hand from people who were directly affected, instead of mainly reading about it, like I was doing for a while. (Besides actually having conversations with people, I was also beginning dismantling the internal racism I had towards myself and acknowledging how some of my experiences in middle school contributed to that.)
As great as learning and reeducating myself seems, I’ve been having some trouble with the next step: taking action and confronting the system that taught me how to be racist. It was much more difficult talking to parents about their views on BlackLivesMatter because for a long time I lied to myself that it was okay because they grew up in more traditional settings and thus became rigid in those beliefs, and acted patriotic to America because they believed the rhetoric that it’s the land of opportunity and felt in debted after fleeing from their home countries. But I’m wrong, since they don’t/didn’t have the same exposure as me to culture differences, it’s my responsibility to teach them why they have to change, no matter how much time it takes. For my mom, she’s still processing institutional racism, I don’t think she ever properly reflected on the history with was more feeding into the idea of America since she came. For my dad, who consumes much more American media, he’s much more stubborn to recognize the racism he learns about and constantly reinforced with the news. But that’s just from a few talks, I have to the duty to do more.
We all have to do more, because if confronting yourself and your family is difficult or uncomfortable, think about how Black people feel everyday, knowing that being cautious of how they act or behave won’t save them from being murdered. That anything they did or didn’t do would justify their murder in the eyes of people in positions of power. I could never understand how that feels, but I can do what I can to making sure that no one feels that terror.
More Posts from Infinitepastlives and Others
what she says: i'm fine
what she means: i still can't believe simon's fucking "friends" abandoned him after he was traumatically outed to the entire school, over something as petty as high school relationships. they didn't even take an "i love you but i'm mad at you" approach, they forced him to face returning to school alone, even sit alone at lunch in total isolation. The hate incident happens in the cafeteria and they don't do ANYTHING. they don't stand up and say anything, they don't support simon, they don't even try to stop it. they just sit silently and watch as simon, and simon ALONE, confronts his attackers in front of everybody. yet somehow the narrative portrays them as The Good Guys, the heroes of the story who have nothing to apologize for.
so yeah
To All the Boys, some personal casting complaints
I read the books before the movie came out because I read that they were adapting the first book into a movie and the main character, even though she was half-white and half-Korean, was going to be played by a Vietnamese actress. I was a bit annoyed since Hollywood has a big problem of casting different ethnicities this way, pushing the assumption that all East and Southeast Asians are interchangeable (when they actually do choose to cast Asians at all).
And then I found out that Kitty was being played by a white actress (I have not found anything that Anna Cathcart is Asian at all, so I was further upset that in Disney’s Descendants, her character’s grandmother was played by an East Asian actress, further driving the idea that she’s part Asian). I was pissed, because that’s the other issue with Hollywood casting Asians, when they choose not to at all and cast white actresses instead.
But I tried to be excited nonetheless because I was/am deprived of Asian leads and Asians as romantic leads in US films, and I’m Viet, so that felt like a bonus.
In the first movie, I didn’t really care as much because of that representation hype and because they never discussed race at all. (Literally the only elements of Korean culture they includes was food) Which I guess I understand, if you’re trying to normalize the idea of an Asian-American lead, just don’t point it out. And the advertising did that work for them. Also, it’s supposed to be solely a love story, so I guess it’s unromantic to talk about race.
But in the sequel, it stuck out a lot more to me that Lana Condor and Anna Cathcart are not Korean to me when they dressed up in hanboks, traditional Korean dresses. And, less so, the scene with Lara Jean and Gen, where she mentions jung, a Korean word that describes the connection between two people that can’t be severed. As nice as that scene was, the whole jung bit felt too thrown in there for my taste because we never meet Lara Jean’s grandma, who introduced the term to her and, more importantly, we never see Lara Jean try to connect to her Korean culture.
It just felt weird to me to see a distinctly Vietnamese face and then a white face use elements from Korean culture, that was more than food, in a movie with zero Korean leads. Personally, I didn’t like that Korean culture was portrayed by non-Koreans as plot point.
That is to say, you can always argue the for the subtle integration of Korean culture in the plot and development of Lara Jean.
If it were up to me, I would have tried to cast Korean actresses, and everyone knows by now that there is no short supply of them. Or adapt to the culture of the lead actor/actress, since they could more accurately portray that culture, in my opinion. (I wouldn’t have done so in this situation because South Korea and Vietnam’s history with the US are very different and not at all interchangeable) (This is coming from the fact that I usually see actors and actresses of one ethnicity play side characters who are of another ethnicity and their culture is never all that important to their character development or plot. It’s more of whoever’s in charge seeing East Asian actors as interchangeable)
That will always be a part of why live-action adaptions are so hard to get right, in my opinion.
Personally, I will always believe the books were better, especially since they had the room to address and highlight Lara Jean’s race and ethnicity in a consistent way. (warning: book spoilers from when I read it around 2 years ago):
Halloween in the first book, Lara Jean said that she usually dressed up as Asian characters (ie. Cho Chang [a ridiculous name btw] instead of Hermione Granger) in order for people to recognize her costume. I think Peter and her decide on a couple’s costume, so that year people actually recognized her even though she didn’t dress-up as an Asian character.
New Years in the second book, Lara Jean and Kitty (and maybe Margot, I don’t really remember) dress-up in Hanboks
ending of the third book, Lara Jean spends the summer before college away from Peter and in South Korea (we don’t get to “read” it and it’s kind of brushed over)
I know it’s not a lot, but I remember feeling so seen and understood when Lara Jean addressed how she was always categorized and reduced to as an Asian. I think it really exemplified the other-ness she felt in small town in Virginia.
But the first movie didn’t address that at all, which I guess I’m okay with because of how irrelevant it is to the main storyline, the love story between Peter and Lara Jean. Especially since they never addressed race at all, it could have felt forced if it wasn’t consistent.
As I mentioned before, it felt so out of place for me to see the two non-Korean actresses dress-up in hanboks.
For the last point, I don’t know how the third movie will portray the ending, my guess is that they either won’t or really push that Lara Jean really hates the idea of the trip because it’ll push her away from Peter. I personally hated that she even disliked the idea of the trip when her dad first told her because I believe in the whole “don’t go to college with a boyfriend” idea.
Feel free to disagree with me, I pretty sure I have a pretty narrow (and selfish) view of how different ethnicities and their cultures should be portrayed in media.
The good bits of 2017
There’s Probably more things that aren’t here, I loved making the list last year to prove it’s not all bad, and this year is just the same, not everything this year has been bad, there’s tonnes of good things
Feel free to add your own stuff as well
Good things from 2017:
- Pokemon ultra sun and ultra moon
- jacksepticeye’s #overnightwatch stream
- the eclipse
- The switch’s amazing intro to gaming
- The moonlight v la la land slip up
- The Wonder Woman movie
- Harry Potter and the portrait of what looked like a large pile of ash
- Lord Buckethead running against Theresa may
- Covefefe
- A talk on North Korea being interrupted by the guy’s kids
- Dear Evan Hansen
- The disaster artist brought the room to thousands of new people
- Pixar’s Coco
- And the subsequent removal of the frozen short from before coco
- Spider-Man homecoming
- NBC’s the good place
- Baby drivers amazing choreographic fight scenes
- Ted Cruz liking porn on his official twitter
- Dream daddy dating sim
- Donald trump’s twitter being deleted for 11 minutes
- Fortnite gave pubg something to fight with
- Mario odyssey and Zelda breath of the wild put Nintendo on all gaming top 10 lists
- Stranger things 2
- The new IT movie was amazing
- Star Wars the last Jedi
- Thor Ragnarok
- The emoji movie was so shit it was stupidly hilarious
- The snowman, cause ya know what is deffo scary and not at all a hilarious idea, scary snowmen
- Jodie Whitaker as the doctor
- Blue planet 1 & 2
- A series of unfortunate things gave us a better evil Neil Patrick Harris than doctor horrible
- Castlevania got a cool gruesome anime
- Doki doki literature club defied expectations and creeped out many
- American vandal helped Netflix poke fun at itself and the education system
- Sonic forces let us all create our own fursonas
- Mario and rabbids: kingdom battle surprised everyone with its goodness
- Dodie Clark’s You EP
- dodie Clark’s “in the middle”
- Critical role had an amazing ending filed with heart ache and epic magic
- The adventure zone’s first big story came to an end with plot twist after plot twist we all loved it
- Disney added it’s first gay character in le fou (not a good start but a start)
- Pokemon for the switch was announced
- Brooklyn nine-nine just got better and better #BiRosa
- Guardians of the galaxy vol 2 has an amazing soundtrack yet again
- The Lego Batman movie gave us the best batman film since the dark night trilogy
- bendy and the ink machine
- life is strange: before the storm
- the final fanf game? Maybe??? Probably not
The more serious good stuff:
- The royal engagement
- Hundreds of nfl players took the knee
- A treatment for ALS has been found
- A device has been created to help heal burn victims
- Stefán Karl stefánsson becoming free of cancer
- A new record was set by Peggy whitson for the most days spent in space
- Malala yousafzai started college
- All the women’s marches
- Everyone from the #meToo movement
Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!
so yeah what are you supposed to do when you’re at the age where everything you do actually counts for your future but you have 0% of your shit together and are 150% depressed
relates to 1 step forward, 3 steps back and enough for you except for not with an ex but with mommy issues
I just started watching Hospital Playlist after finishing Reply 1988 last week and I literally started crying when they started playing the Sangmundong theme. Actually, I think whenever I hear it, I start tearing up a little.
new comfort genre? insanely long and detailed video analyses of the 2010s shows I watched as a tween:
-
way2gojoe-blog1 liked this · 4 years ago -
infinitepastlives reblogged this · 4 years ago
anon - 23 - just a bi girl vs a collection of obsessions
31 posts