#ASian capital

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

YouTube Video Essayists™️ genuinely have no idea what the fuck they're talking about huh

[writingwithcolor]

Diversity Win: Is "Crazy Rich" POC Representation Necessarily Empowering?

sodapopsculptor asked:

I’m writing a story with two sets of protagonists: A trio with a Black girl, a Latino, and a Vietnamese-American boy who all come from middle-upper class to ridiculously rich families, and a pair of white working-middle class sisters. They’re all heroes of this story. I’ve seen way too many rich white people and poor poc people in fiction, and I’m kinda getting sick of it, but I’m worried that by having the poc kids be rich and the white girls not so much, I’ll be reinforcing the idea that poc somehow rule the world. The only time the rich kids use their status as leverage is when the Asian threatens to sic his cop dad on a bully (race unstated but I imagined him as white) picking on a freshman, and during the Black girl’s birthday party, when she pays the biggest jock there fifty bucks (And later says offhandedly that it was just what she had in her pocket) to chase off a creep hitting on her.

OP, have you ever seen the “diversity win!” meme before?

I understand that your motivation for these narrative choices is to give POC a chance, if you will, to be the rich characters. But it is evident from this ask that you have not asked yourself what this entails. I want to ask you to critically examine the race and class intersections you’re creating here, as well as these kids’ roles in oppressive systems.

You explain that these rich POC are heroes and only have righteous reasons for leveraging their power.

But is your Black girl character aware of the potential disciplinary and/or legal consequences her jock accomplice might face while she has the resources to keep her hands clean? Are you?

Is your Asian character aware of how much of an abuse of power it is to “sic” a cop on someone, and the sheer amount of harm a criminal record or incarceration does to a juvenile with behavior issues? Are you?

So you want to put POC in positions of power for #representation.

Does it resonate with the group you’re representing?

Do you research and portray the unique ways race, ethnicity, class, and majority vs. minority status come together?

Or are you putting these characters in oppressive hegemonic roles for the sake of a power fantasy, on behalf of a group you're not even in?

To your question, you're not reinforcing the idea that "POC rule the world" because such a generalized belief does not exist. Instead, you're reinforcing:

The idea that society has “winners” and “losers.”

The idea that the problem with disproportionately powerful people is the lack of “equal opportunity” as opposed to the power imbalance to begin with.

The idea that those in oppressive positions of power need only have the right intentions to justify their use of it.

To be clear: that is not to say that you can't have jerk aristocrat billionaire millionaire crazy rich POC. Evil or mean rich characters are fun! I have some myself! You can even have rich characters who are gentle-hearted and well-intentioned, but you have to know the ways in which they’re privileged and decide how aware of that your characters are. That’s no problem.

But if you think that wealthy and powerful POC would have the same values and priorities as their poorer counterparts, you’re deluding yourself. There’s a reason why the quote “power corrupts” exists. There’s a reason why no matter where you look on the globe, there are historical dictators and tyrants.

If you want bratty rich POC who lack regard for the consequences of their actions, because you want bratty rich characters, great! If you want them because it would be uplifting or empowering representation? You’re doing it for the wrong reason.

~ Rina

I fully agree with Rina, and truly want to emphasize the last paragraph.

If you want bratty rich POC who lack regard for the consequences of their actions, because you want bratty rich characters, great! If you want them because it would be uplifting or empowering representation? You’re doing it for the wrong reason.

I don't think you need to aim to subvert or purposely make all the BIPOC rich and powerful and the white people poor and suffering. Add diversity and include upper class rich and class privileged BIPOC, sure thing! And you can avoid your fears of intentional subversion message by including rich and powerful white characters as well, even if they're not the focus of your story. Just their existence helps. You could also include middle-class characters of Color as well.

More reading: Black in upper-class society

~Mod Colette

[djuvlipen]

"What happened in Germany since full legalisation? Today the police say that only 10% of the women have no pimp. About 90% of the women are migrants from very poor countries, mostly Romania and Bulgaria.

What we see is that prostitution is a very racist system. It is usually the racially discriminated women who enter prostitution – like Roma women from Romania. And prostitution itself is racist too because it fetishizes ethnicity. We have brothels that have a kind of apartheid system when it comes to the women. You go to the first floor for the Romanian women. You go to the second floor for Asian women. You go to the third floor for African women.

We see that prostitution in Germany makes sex buyers more racist. They use very racist and sexist slurs against women and they try to offer refugee women from Syria money for sex.

To allow prostitution makes a country more racist because the sex buyers who, for example, buy Asian women won’t see other non-prostituted Asian women as human. This is what we see. It’s as if we are still a colonialist country.

Legalisation normalises prostitution. For example, we had a TV show that was called ‘Pimp My Brothel’ where a brothel keeper who’s now in jail for human trafficking went into brothels to tell them what they could do better.

Legalisation brings more capitalism into prostitution because the women are the product and are only there to serve the client. So, legalisation strengthens the client’s rights. We even had a court case. There was a girl, I think she was 19, and her punter had not orgasmed and went to court over that. She had to pay him money because he wasn’t able to orgasm with her.

This is what legalisation does."

[hussyknee]

Whenever Brits are like "tea is our national drink, our culture, our personality, our mental health" I think of our hill country blanketed in a patchwork quilt of human suffering and ongoing violent colonialism and want to smash all their tea cups. Your genocidal leaf juice is nothing to be proud of. The present day tea pluckers are the descendants of the Indians you enslaved and they still live in unthinkable poverty in the line houses you built to house them like cattle. The families whose farmlands you robbed have been starving for generations. Every sip of your leaf juice is soaked in blood and you drink it like vampires.

Tea will never belong to you. It's our legacy of grief, and your shame.

Drink your tea and shut the fuck up.

[joshualunacreations]

Being an artist is hard.

(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)

If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal.

[lotusinjadewell]

Huế, Vietnam. Credit to _im.rot_ (Instagram).

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against ASIANS

Between 1956-65, the Chinese Confession Program sought confessions of illegal entry from US citizens and residents of Chinese origin, with the (misleading) offer of legalization of status in exchange. The program resulted in 13,895 confessions, with about 10,000 in the San Francisco region (where the bulk of the illegally entering Chinese population was concentrated. This was far less than the number of people suspected of having entered illegally, and the less than complete usage of the program was attributed to lack of trust in the United States immigration enforcement agencies among the Chinese population, the lack of clear benefits from confessing, and the risk of deportation faced by the confessor as well as his or her (blood and paper) family. Since confessions by neighbors could implicate a person and cause him or her to be deported, the program created fear and distrust in many Chinese-American communities. Anybody who had illegally entered and came in contact with the FBI before he or she had confessed was subject to immediate deportation. The confessions had a significant impact on the Chinese-American community: as a result of the confessions, 22,083 people were exposed and 11,294 paper son slots were closed. For comparison, the 1950 Census listed 117,629 Chinese in America (excluding Hawaii).

From 1942-46, FDR imprisoned ~120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps after the attack on pearl harbor. The conditions of the camps were notoriously horrible, and most were forced to make “loyalty oaths”, or risk deportation and separation from their families. It was later admitted that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. Most lost their homes and jobs, as whites took over vacated homes.

The repression faced by Chinese Americans in the 19th and 20th century are found in the articles, History of Chinese Americans, and Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the US.

The Immigration Act of 1917 imposed literacy tests on immigrants, and created new categories of inadmissible persons and barred immigration from the Asia-Pacific Zone.

The Scott Act of 1888 was a law that prohibited Chinese laborers abroad or who planned future travels from returning. It left an estimated 20,000-30,000 Chinese outside the United States at the time stranded.

In 1882, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, illegalizing Chinese immigration, in a long chain of anti-chinese legislation. It was repealed in 1943.

The San Francisco Riot of 1877 was a two-day pogrom waged against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, California by the city’s majority white population from the evening of July 23 through the night of July 24, 1877. The ethnic violence which swept Chinatown resulted in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city’s Chinese immigrant population.

The Page Act of 1875 prohibited entry of immigrants considered undesirable, classifying that as any individual from Asia who was coming to America to be a forced laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. It was introduced to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women”. The Page Act was supposed to strengthen the ban against “coolie” laborers, by imposing a fine of up to $2,000 and maximum jail sentence of one year upon anyone who tried to bring a person from China, Japan,or any Asian country to the United States “without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service”. However, these provisions, as well as those regarding convicts “had little effect at the time”. On the other hand, the ban on female Asian immigrants was heavily enforced and proved to be a barrier for all Asian women trying to immigrate, especially Chinese.

The Chinese Massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot which occurred on October 24, 1871 in Los Angeles, California, when a mob of around 500 white men entered Chinatown to attack, rob, and murder Chinese residents of the city. An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants were systematically tortured and then hanged by the mob, making the event the largest mass lynching in American history.

The Pigtail Ordinance was a racist law passed in 1873 intended to force prisoners in San Francisco, California to have their hair cut within an inch of the scalp. It affected Han Chinese prisoners in particular, as it meant they would have their queue, a waist-long, braided pigtail, cut off.

The Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 was passed by the California legislature in an attempt to appease rising anger among white laborers about salary competition created by the influx of Chinese immigrants at the height of the California gold rush.The act sought to protect white laborers by imposing a monthly tax on Chinese immigrants seeking to do business in the state of California.

[nando161mando]

"Love asian food, stop asian hate" (EN: English)

[gennsoup]

I guess it's an old question: is there anything that works that isn't a machine for killing, or doomed to collapse, or stolen from the sweat of the hungry?

Franny Choi, On the Night of the Election,

[the-lady-maddy]

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A post shared by Qasim Rashid (@qasimrashid)

[forkaround]

I'm sorry, do people kinda forget that BLs have to make money to make more BLs? Or have they not touched grass in so long that they've forgotten?

Media needs to make money for there to be more media made.

Are people expecting these people to work for free? For min wage? It's understood that being a celeb is profitable so why are people complaining when it comes to BLs? I've never, in India or the West seen so many companies, individuals or stories actively advocating for equal rights and even then I see people say shit like this. Have they forgotten that they are people who need to cloth, feed, live in their ASIAN countries?

How is this nuance getting lost? Tumblr might brainwash you into thinking all money is evil (evangelical christian ideology, mind you) but it's not. It has, would you believe, nuance to it.

[aengelren]

life after seeing people start waking up and stop idolizing elitism and celebrity culture, feeding their pockets while the working class and third world countries suffer..is the human revolution near?

[kumishona]

Ok, major pet peeve moment.

I really don't understand why people use acronyms for names of fictional Chinese characters. The names themselves aren't any longer than Christian white people names—so why? Why is it WWX and not Wei Wuxian, and why LWJ and not Lan Wangji. Why CXS and not Cheng Xiaoshi and LG and not Lu Guang. IT'S NOT HARD.

Like, I understand using acronyms for show and book names that can be as long as a whole phrase. But with names it's so unnecessary. Feels like copping out from actually learning and using them. I've never seen anyone do this with Japanese or Korean names. (And even if they did, it would still annoy me.)

[cakemoney]

i don't want to put my uninformed foot in my mouth or get involved with the Discourse but i've been seeing the two extremes of reactions to the korean low birth rates issue (on tumblr and twitter both) and i'm just kind of like. look. i feel like "low birth rates (in many countries but especially japan and korea as part of this conversation) are more broadly the result of capitalism/a culture of overwhelming overwork that makes social relationships and having families incredibly inaccessible to young people" and "low birth rates are very much a part of the current conversation about misogyny and social expectations for women in korea especially in the context of reproduction as 'unpaid labor' for women" are statements that can both be true

[frankbelloriley]

The Crimson Kimono (1959, dir. Samuel Fuller)

[bandsanitizer]

nah but why tf they bringing mama to la?