Anti-Blackness in the Asian community

By Asian beauty standards, dark skin is considered ugly.

Dark skin signifies that one faced poverty by working in the fields while pale skin represents wealth and privilege because a person had the luxury of staying in the shade. Colorism (defined as discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone) is not outright as it was in the past, but that does not mean it is not still a prevalent issue in the Asian community.

While Asians have their own fair share of struggles in tackling discrimination in America, we also need to acknowledge that we profit and benefit from the inequality of black people. From dubbing black culture as trendy through our fashion and music, allowing Asian American celebrities to profit off acting black and being complicit in the racial hierarchy we are placed in – we are no better than our own oppressors if we are not fighting for equality for all.

We cannot pick and choose what we like and do not like about black culture. Choosing the culture means you must also choose the people.

African-American culture heavily influences Asia’s music and fashion scene, especially in the K-pop industry. K-pop, short for Korean popular music, showcases a large range of genres – indie rock, traditional trot pop, ballads, bubblegum pop, hip hop and R&B being its most popular. Accompanied with most K-pop songs is a catchy beat, flashy choreography, high produced music videos and more often than not, luxury street-wear fashion that are reminiscent of black culture.

In Kenyon Farrow’s piece, “We Real Cool?: On Hip-Hop, Asian-Americans, Black folks and Appropriation,” he writes about how Asian culture profiting off of black culture is similar to how White people do it.

“If first-generation White European immigrants…could use minstrelsy…to not only ensure their status as White people, but also to distance themselves from Black people, can Asian Americans use hip hop (the music, clothing, language and gestures, sans charcoal makeup), and everything it signifies to also assert their dominance over Black bodies, rather than their allegiance to Black liberation?”

K-pop idols like 2NE1’s CL and EXO’s Kai are some leaders in this issue of culture appropriation, often wearing dreads or cornrows to seem gangster and urban.

Viewing black culture as nothing more than a market enables negative stereotypes of black people and teaches consumers that appropriating these styles are acceptable.

Stephanie Choi, who studies ethnomusicology at University of California Santa Barbara, said that these industries believe they are using black culture as “inspiration” rather than appropriation in an interview with the Daily Dot.

“Most of the stereotypical images that [K-pop] portrays comes from American media,” Choi said. “It’s not something they experience from their actual lives. They’re just imitating what they see.”

Imitating black people’s experiences is nothing new in Hollywood either.

Ariana Grande, a white woman, is notorious for appropriating black culture through the use of African-American vernacular English and spray tanning her skin to the point where she is brown/black. Despite committing multiple forms of appropriation, Grande still has a wide fan base that defends her behavior.

Like Grande, Asian-American actress Nora Lum, better known as Awkwafina, has yet to face repercussions for building her career off through her cringe-worthy blaccent and monetization of acting black. This was especially evident in her role in “Crazy Rich Asians” as the protagonist’s eccentric and brash best friend Goh Peik Lin.

Throughout the movie, Awkwafina personifies her character by acting out a caricature of the “sassy black friend” through forced and awkward AAVE.

Many of Awkwafina’s supporters came to her defense by justifying her appropriation by saying she grew up in a black neighborhood. However, when Awkwafina breaks from her persona to Nora Lum, she speaks in her normal speaking language and never in the exaggerated AAVE she puts on for the screens.

For Awkwafina to be rewarded for blackness in a way black people are not is telling of the privilege Asians hold over black people.

In the article, “Can Non-Black People Use AAVE?” Mecca Mutsafa wrote that non-black people appropriating how black people speak is a prime example of society adopting terms without giving its due credit.

“It is akin to mimicking a culture of people who have been consistently oppressed and denied opportunities,” Mutsafa wrote. “However, when it is used by its originators it is denounced as, “ghetto” and in alignment with negative portrayals of black people.”

I know many Asian Americans struggle finding an identity that they feel is truly them. There is so much lack of representation for our community that we grasp at any sort of persona that makes us feel we fit in. We despise the model minority label because it boxes our suffering as an endless struggle of trying to be white.

However, while we seek to break out of the model minority cookie cutter, that does not mean we should crush other minority groups while trying to discover our true selves.

If we want to achieve equality for our community, the first step is to recognize the privilege we hold over black people and reject the negative portrayals media tries to feed us. We need to stop valuing the approval and proximity of white people and instead fight to dismantle the institutionalized discrimination we are put under.

Asian-Americans need to stop feeding into the standard that white is ideal and start fighting for the justice of black people.