As a half-white, half-Asian woman I find myself viewed by my white surroundings as a safe and relatable personification of their orientalist fascinations.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2018-11-13 03:33Z by Steven

As a half-white, half-Asian woman I find myself viewed by my white surroundings as a safe and relatable personification of their orientalist fascinations. I theorize that this intercalary role is a convenient tool for white people to mask racial tensions and guilt. By exhibiting acceptance to people of color who embody whiteness, such as in the “lighter is better” advertisement, in the model immigrant trope, as assumed interracial mediators to white people, and as westernized exotic sexual fantasies, white society attempts to maintain its dominance while exhibiting an image of tolerance.

Sophie Buzak-Achiam, “Stop using mixed race people as symbols of interracial unity to ease your white guilt,” Friktion, May 9, 2018. https://friktionmagasin.dk/stop-using-mixed-race-people-as-symbols-of-interracial-unity-to-ease-your-white-guilt-997208eb420b.

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Stop using mixed race people as symbols of interracial unity to ease your white guilt

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Asian Diaspora, Communications/Media Studies, Europe, Media Archive, Social Justice on 2018-11-13 03:16Z by Steven

Stop using mixed race people as symbols of interracial unity to ease your white guilt

Friktion
2018-05-09

Sophie Buzak-Achiam


Illustration: Mette Clante

Dutch beer company Heineken has recently faced backlash for its “lighter is better” ad, where a bartender with light skinned Latino appearance slides a beer past three dark skinned Black people towards an Eurasian woman, with whom he shares a wink, before the slogan “sometimes lighter is better” appears. As a mixed race person, who might be racialised in a similar way to the exotic yet safely light skinned woman in the ad, this ad struck a well-known chord. Spending a good half of my life in a white Danish environment, I have often found my ambiguous racial appearance used by white people as a symbol of a conforming, non-threatening otherness. Although still seen as a person of color, I also embody a whiteness that can make me come across as safe mediator to ease racial tensions and white guilt.

Considering the overwhelming whiteness in European advertisement in general, I don’t believe it to be a coincidence that Heineken, as a white owned company, chooses to use people of color and racially ambiguous people as the stars of this ad. In representing the “lighter is better” demographic, the two lighter skinned actors become pawns to the white system which uses them to mask its racism, that becomes perhaps more subtle with the acceptance of some people of color…

Read the entire article here.

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