#people on the east coast have just never met a mixed japanese person LOL
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I'm struggling to word this but I'm finally ready to talk about it and I want people to listen.
I've noticed a type of racism in leftist communities I don't see talked about a lot. I am Quarter Japanese and I am visibly mixed, but a lot of leftists see "quarter" and assume that I don't have the right to an opinion on issues that effect me. The sentiment I've gotten from mostly white leftists is that I'm not "POC enough" for a lot of discussions.
There's this weird thing in a lot of leftist spaces where your appearance and percentage, not your experiences based on your race, are considered above all.
Meanwhile, in reality, all aspects of my identity are affected by my race and my family's experience with Japanese internment. An event which stripped them of any wealth they had acquired since moving to Canada over 50 years before the war.
An event that cause the intermarriage rate of Japanese-canadians and white Canadians to be over 90 percent post internment because we viewed proximity to whiteness as safety. An event which left them in severe poverty until my dad and aunt worked their asses off to get a degree. The generational trauma goes so deep my dad didn't want me transitioning because he was worried about what the government would do to me.
Because of my race I experienced negligence from authority figures related to pretty severe racially based bullying at 12. That negligence could have killed me. I've had to deal with microaggressions and straight up racism related to my last name on multiple occasions.
One time I was out with a friend and he grabbed my arm tight and dragged me to walk faster. A man wearing a white lives matter T-shirt was standing in the middle of the path looking directly at me when I turned around.
I'm pretty sure this wasn't based on me being feminine and goth that day, I live in a city with a decent amount of people in alt subculture and my friend was way more gothed up and queer than me. I was barely passing as a guy at that point so it wasn't because I was a man in a dress. I know this is a weaker point, but it made me realize just how unsafe I am in my own community even though I'm a mixed person in a heavily multicultural city.
Obviously, this isn't on the scale of someone who is less white passing than me and/or has more compounding marginalizations. However I've found that the fact I'm mixed race has been used against me to devalue my experience and knowledge regarding what it's like to be a POC in Canada.
I can assure you I am aware of how bad it is, and I am aware of how good I have it. I also want you to be aware that it's not all sunshine rainbows and bunny farts to be more white, it doesn't make the racism go away. It often just makes it more covert and easy to explain away because I'm "not really Japanese"
#tw racism#please be aware i struggle to type because of dyspraxia pleade br kind about grammar and spellinv#i just want to share my experiences and also talk about that racism idk if im oversharing but i wannamake my point#i have a lot of insights i feel are valuable but i also feel unwelcome in white leftist spaces because of how ive been treated in the past#ei trying to say that im fully white passing and dont experience racism and then having to relive truama to explain no actually#ive experienced quite a bit#but i also feel scared to go to bipoc centred spaces because of that judgement from other spaces#what if i AM white passing?#im not lol#people on the east coast have just never met a mixed japanese person LOL#Like ive met one perosn outsode my family who is mixed Japanese and shes like 15 and my sisters friend so not exactly the sorta community#im looking for haha#if i were out west (where internment occured and also just. closer to japan.) i would have a different experience i think#idk#this is a ramble atp#edit when i say white leftist spaces i mean primarly white spaces#to vlarify#clarify
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