Author Archives: The Stripes

FAIR AND LOVELY

I have never been quite as intimidated by an inanimate object as I am by the little bottle sitting on my bathroom countertop. It had arrived, along with a flood of other unfamiliar toiletries, in my cousin’s bag this morning. The bottle is only a couple of inches high and the words “Fair and Lovely” are written across the top in friendly, pink script. An ambiguously ethnic girl smiles on the front. Behind her grinning mug is a picture of the same girl, minus the idiotic grin but plus a whole hell of a lot more melanin. “Smear me all over your face,” the bottle demands rudely. “Then maybe you can be white – pretty – and happy, too.”

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YOU’RE JUST IMAGINING IT

Recently, I have been hearing about circumstances in which a person suspects racism and is told that perhaps he or she is just imagining it, that racism is nothing more than a figment of the imagination. Saying that an individual is imagining racism, in other words, is to imply that that person is delusional, or that the person is trying to think of an excuse as to why he or she was treated a certain way in order to become the victim. I never examined this idea of “imagining racism” until a few weeks ago.

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BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?

This article is the first part of a series on the field of Asian American studies.

To most people, being asked, “Where are you from?” seems innocuous enough. Someone is just trying to get to know you a little bit better. Asian Americans, however, have almost universally had a different experience with this question. At first we’ll answer with “California,” “New York,” or a variety of other places. But then comes the dreaded follow-up question: “But where are you really from?” It becomes immediately clear that there’s a certain answer that is expected, and a failure to comply will just result in more questions.

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SCANDALOUS: INTERRACIAL DATING IN COLLEGE

When I was in middle school, a boy in my class — who happened to be white — told me that he liked me. I kind of just stared at him, nodded silently, and went back to doing my work, because I didn’t know whether he was joking or not. As a fifth grader, I couldn’t even fathom the fact that a white guy could find me attractive, and I think a lot of that mentality has spilled over into my college years.

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Elementary, My Dear Watson: Representation of POC in Television

From the exchange of hostile attacks and impassioned defenses over Lena Dunham’s Girls and its lack of minority characters, to the controversy over the delegation of barbarian and slave roles to mainly non-white actors on HBO’s Game of Thrones, conversations about the representations of people of color (POC) on screen have been heating up. Continue reading →