{"id":34821,"date":"2013-11-21T04:01:36","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T04:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34821"},"modified":"2013-11-21T18:44:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T18:44:27","slug":"where-%e2%80%9cold%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cnew%e2%80%9d-world-color-meet-in-multiracial-asian-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34821","title":{"rendered":"Where \u201cOld\u201d and \u201cNew\u201d World Color Meet in Multiracial Asian America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where \u201cOld\u201d and \u201cNew\u201d World Color Meet in Multiracial Asian America<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Racism Review<\/a>
\n2013-11-18<\/p>\n

Sharon Chang<\/a><\/strong>, Guest blogger
\nMultiracial Asian Families<\/em><\/p>\n

Rare indeed is the Asian American who has not heard an aunt or grandmother say something like; \u2018Don\u2019t go out in the sun. You\u2019ll get too dark\u2019\u2026[Asian countries have] had long-standing preferences for light skin, especially in women.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination Among Asian Americans<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my continuing research examining the lives of young multiracial Asian children, it has become pretty clear pretty quick that colorism (skin color discrimination of individuals falling within the same racial group) is a major theme. This isn\u2019t a surprise to me, a multiracial Asian woman who grew up constantly scrutinized and measured as more European looking against other Asian peoples. I launched an Amazon hunt and as usual, found very little. In fact almost nothing; only one book addressing colorism in the Asian American community: Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination Among Asian Americans<\/a><\/em> by Joanne L. Rondilla<\/a> and Paul Spickard<\/a> (2007) (if you know of more, please send to me).<\/p>\n

According to Rondilla & Spickard, colorism in Asia is less about wanting to look European and more a class imperative. \u201cTo be light is to be rich, for dark skin comes from working outside in the sun\u2026the yearning to be light is a desire to look like rich Asians, not like Whites\u201d (Rondilla & Spickard, 2007, p.4). A preference for light-skinned beauty existed long before serious encounters with Europeans and Americans, and this desire deeply persists. Though not visibly common in the US, skin lightening products are loudly advertised and mass-consumed all over Asia. And sales are rising. Two million units of skin lightening soap are sold annually in the Philippines. Today, every major cosmetics company has some form of skin lightener (Rondilla & Spickard, 2007).<\/p>\n

So what happens when huge numbers of Asian immigrants (430,000 in 2010) and students (6 in 10 international students are from Asia<\/a>) start arriving Stateside and their colorist\/class values meet US racism which has aggressively devalued and violently oppressed dark-skinned people for hundreds of years? What happens when White Perfect (above) meets Jim Crow<\/a>? \u201cLess yellowish\u201d meets Yellow Peril<\/a>?…<\/p>\n

…Where does this leave multiracial Asian Americans born into these overlapping frameworks?<\/strong> I\u2019m afraid that as multiracial Asian Americans, this leaves us poised very precariously at times. Despite what you might imagine, with the recent influx of Asian immigration and Asians marrying out of their ethnic group at a higher rate than any other racial group, multiracial Asian children are not actually that far removed from \u201cold world\u201d prejudices and are often second generation Americans like myself. I have been constantly scanned for Asian versus white features by Asian immigrants and proclaimed \u201cthe best of both worlds\u201d leaving me with the uncomfortable, highly racialized feeling there\u2019s something I did or didn\u2019t get that I should be glad about but that one or both of my halves might resent. In my October post \u201cMixed Heritage and Knowing We Still Have Work To Do,\u201d\u00a0 I described the race challenges shared by a quarter Asian youth panelist (Black\/Asian\/white) as part of a local mixed heritage dialogue…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where \u201cOld\u201d and \u201cNew\u201d World Color Meet in Multiracial Asian America Racism Review 2013-11-18 Sharon Chang, Guest blogger Multiracial Asian Families Rare indeed is the Asian American who has not heard an aunt or grandmother say something like; \u2018Don\u2019t go out in the sun. You\u2019ll get too dark\u2019\u2026[Asian countries have] had long-standing preferences for light […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,8,394,20],"tags":[5869,5870,323,2669,14613],"class_list":["post-34821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-joanne-l-rondilla","tag-joanne-rondilla","tag-paul-spickard","tag-racism-review","tag-sharon-chang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}