Another day, another massive Twitter timeline of articles begrudging a beloved POC character (or real life person) being played by a white actor in the movie adaptation of their life/book/story. I wish this was infinitely less common instead of a typical Tuesday, but it’s become a pervasive, problematic, awful part of our culture that needs to be changed ASAP. The people that the story is about should get to be the people who tell the story, hands down, bar none, end of discussion. Unfortunately, the problem with the big movie studios and their prejudice against hiring these POC actors to play an appropriate role is systemwide and can’t easily be solved by them simply doing the right thing.
At a panel in Los Angeles Saturday, Constance Wu and Ming-Na Wen spoke out against Hollywood whitewashing. The two addressed Asian jokes at the Oscars and rumors Ghost in the Shell tested CGI to make actors appear Asian. Wen also made a great point about the circumstances under which whitewashing will continue.
I created this survey to collect information about the experience of being an Adoptee from the perspective of the people most left out of the adoption conversation: Adoptees. It’s my intent to bypass the typical bias inherent in surveys conducted by adoption agencies, their representatives, government agencies, and other nonadoptees to capture an accurate representation of the collective experience of participating Adoptees. I hope to use this information to educate nonadoptees on what it means to grow up and live as an Adoptee, and to empower the Adoptee community.
This survey contains 45 questions. Most are multiple choice, though there are places throughout the survey in which you are invited to provide more information about your individual experience. I’ve worked with several other Adoptees to be as inclusive as possible of the diversity in the Adoptee community.
This survey is anonymous. At no time do I ask for identifying information like names, email/ip/mailing addresses, etc. However, I will be able to tell if duplicate responses are made in order to filter out manipulation attempts.
The survey won’t take long. Some of the questions may not apply to you. Others might offer you the opportunity to finally give voice to something that’s been weighing on you. Every Adoptee’s experience is important and I hope you take the time to tell me about yours.
Friday boost and update: After only a few hours over 100 Adoptees have responded! Fantastic response so far. However, transracial and international adoptees are under represented. Your voice matters, too!
Please, everyone, encourage (not bully!) your fellow members of our Adoptee community to take the survey. It doesn’t take long. Most people complete it in under 15 minutes. Add your voice to this important research by Adoptees FOR Adoptees!
Reminder - The survey does not collect personally identifying information. So, if you leave a comment at the end asking me to contact you, but don’t leave me any contact information, I won’t be able to do so.
~YFN Cryptic
Saturday boost and update: So far over 250 Adoptees have participated in the Adoptee Experience Survey! ParticipatingAdoptees have been from North America, Europe, and Australia; Cisgender, Transgender, Agender, and Genderfluid; Transracial; Domestic and Transnational.
Keep spreading the word so every Adoptee who wants their voice counted can participate!
Sunday boost and update: Over 450 Adoptees have now participated in the Adoptee Experience Survey!
People taking an interest in the survey have come from the US, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Ecuador, Spain, France, Mexico, Netherlands, and New Zealand. It is important for this survey to have as wide of a reach as possible because Adoptee Rights is a human issue, not one bound to a single culture or inside one nation.
A tip for survey takers: Some questions may not have a specific answer listed which accurately describes your experience. If you find that is the case, please select the answer that it is most applicable. Then, use one of the many “Other” options throughout the survey to provide more information about your individual experience.
Later, when I’m reviewing the survey results, I can use this information to most accurately record your experience. I cannot change any questions in the survey at this time because doing so would render previous submissions inconsistent with later submissions.
Keep spreading the word so every Adoptee who wants their voice counted can participate!
“Hmm. Yes, that does sound like a lot to deal with,” my therapist said as I held back tears of frustration, anger, sadness, and hurt. “Is there anything in the Korean culture that says you need to take on all the family obligations? Like do people in Korea do this?”
“Wait what?” I paused for a moment to allow myself to fully grasp why that question offended me. But once I regained my thoughts, I simply said “I’m adopted. I. Do. Not. Know.”
I noticed my bag buzzing while I’m sitting with this therapist who I don’t like. But dealing with all my emotions was becoming too difficult to handle alone. But I was too worried of being a bother, being a nuisance or taking up too much space so I pushed away a lot of my close friends. I was really hurting and this woman was not helping.
“What I mean is, in the Korean culture, is there a sense of honoring the family?” My therapist inquired ignoring my body language and restlessness. She wasn’t getting it. I’m adopted and have a white family. I am not familiar with the familial obligations within the Korean culture. I’m not an expert and should not have to explain the international adoption system. I’m adopted.
At this point, there’s nothing more I could do than just wait till my session is over. Whatever words uttered from my lips now was usually a cliche of buck-up, sad, yet hopeful accolades to make people feel less uncomfortable about cancer and death. By the time my session was over, I hop in my car and grab my phone.
MISSED CALL DAD
1 NEW VOICEMAIL
Christina. Mom’s not doing too well and doesn’t have much time. You should come over and say your goodbyes.
Crap. Sad. Crap. Not yet.
Seattle in the autumn is my favorite. The trees in Seattle are turning bright orange as the season changes to the damp and gray. The roads were damp with clumps and leaves and mud get pushed to the side. I was mentally preparing myself for what I needed to do. I call out of work and quickly drive to the ferry terminal to take me to the town where my parents live and there I grew up. The dock was only about half full since it’s mid-morning and the commuters have all started their work days.
I drive onto the ferry where I become a sitting duck expecting in inevitable. Since my mom got sick, three months ago, in July, I had been taking on a lot in my life. I had to come to terms with my mom getting sicker and weaker by the day from the brain cancer and chemo, the damage of a bad break up, taking on the maternal duties my mom did for my dad, and me in shock most of the time. Needless to say, I was a mess. I was trying to keep it together…
“Hello? Hey Dad. I’m on the ferry. I’ll be there soon. How’s mom?”
“Christina, Mom passed away about 15 minutes ago…”
“… Oh… I’m too late.”
“You can still come here. The [hospice] home is keeping her comfortable till you get here.”
“… Okay… Bye Dad.”
She was gone. She is gone. I had never felt more alone than that moment on the ferry boat, sitting alone in my car. Time seemed to stand still as I felt trapped, terrified, sad, depressed, and hopeless rush over my body. I began to uncontrollably cry for what felt like hours. I hoped someone would notice I was in distress, but I just cried alone into my hands.
I’ve known of them for 3 years now and never drawn myself with my #birthfamily. Each nose and eye I drew I finally saw the family resemblance ☺️
.
.
#koreanadoptee #입양인 #입양
Is this a thing for others (half joking half serious question)?
Through a lot of self reflection and humbling convos, I’ve learned a lot of my anxiety lies within people not understanding me and that my “I’m listening to you face” is unfortunately me not looking like I care. And I get really freaked out with long sustained eye contact. I will close my eyes if I have to.
I’ve been told, even at a young age that I’m a bad listener. Perhaps my defense mechanism in hearing that inadvertently became the person, or rather expression that I am today.
“Smile more” “Give more visual cues” “Be louder in your non-verbal acknowledgements”
“Be quiet and listen more”
But what if I have been listening?
More makeup? Plastic surgery? Buy more glasses?
I’d like it if I could just be my authentic self, Resting Apathetic Face and all. It’s who I am and it’s how I look.
A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.
Season seven, which kicked off in early November, has focused much of its existential storytelling on Princess “Bonnibel” Bubblegum and her gal pal, Marceline the Vampire Queen, culminating in Adventure Time‘s first mini-series, Stakes. The eight-episode endeavor colored in some of Marceline’s past, answered lots of questions about her relationship with Bonnie, and promised her a richer future. It also explored the loneliness and listlessness both PB and Marcie have grappled with as they’ve moved from childhood into adulthood.
a lot of people on here maybe do not think enough about paradigms and frameworks of racial power within the united states, particularly as it is structured around whiteness & white supremacy
i was scrolling through the asiam tag the other day and there were some posts that were like “oh no one would find it acceptable if someone did blackface but it’s totally alright if an actor were to yellowface!” which i think we can all acknowledge as anti-black bullshit being spouted by people who do not follow enough racial discourse from black activists and who clearly equate hypervisibility with some sort of protective shield against racism which is so obviously not how it operates, which i feel like is suitably obvious if you looked at the wider scope of media representation of black people? and there’s no excuse for these people but what i want to talk about
are the self-flagellating asiams who constantly post things like ‘asiams are some of the most anti-black communities’ or ‘asiams have relative privilege’ or ‘asians are not as seriously discriminated against’ because i find this to be a troubling, really unnuanced sentiment that’s a really popular one in mainstream tumblr activism and i find it kind of unsettling also, and also really lacking education & perspective towards both critical race theory and anti-asian racism
because like. modern racial discourse owes a lot to black scholars. a lot. many of the foundational theories and the ways we talk about race and racism in america come from them and this is really important, and this also informs a lot of the way we talk about racism against other communities of colour as well, right. but because a lot of racial discourse today uses the language of black scholars and theorists and activists a lot of our understandings of race necessarily come from a black experience of white supremacy
& i want to argue that it’s not a problem of degree (i.e. ‘asians do not experience racism to the same extent as other racialised groups’) but a problem of differing experiences (i.e. we experience racism in a different way because we are situated differently to white supremacy, we have a different history with whiteness, and so you cannot expect that racism be enacted upon our bodies in the same way)
& also when your only experience to asians & the discrimination we face is financially privileged light skinned east asians your understanding is ultimately incomplete?? because asia is huge and it is diverse, and there are many different types of racisms lobbed at different asian populations, different immigrant generations, different ways of interacting with whiteness and with america.
idk i just have so many Thoughts and i’d need a whole dissertation to organise them all but
i’m so frustrated with the way some of the #discourse operates on tumblr it’s so??? simplistic and also ultimately very western-centric and there’s zero push and pull a lot of it ends up being performative acts of narcissistic self-flagellation that do not ultimately do anything to either take concrete steps towards a concrete goal or even to help us further understand complex issues??? idk
People seriously have such a hard time wrapping their heads around the concept of, as you’ve said, Asian Americans experiencing racism in a different way due to the different ways we are situated with white supremacy. And people constantly end up butting with the idea of “but then how do we modify a system of racial understanding that is founded upon anti-blackness” in trying to reconcile these two things.
Claire Jean Kim has a concept called racial triangulation that could be considered to actually get in people’s heads that Asian Americans honestly do experience a racism that isn’t exactly like anti-black racism, which is still wholly legitimate and not some kind of pseudo New White/relative privilege status
ie according to Kim, Asian Americans may receive more Relative Valorization (the model minority stereotype) compared to Black Americans, but we also uniquely face Civic Ostracism (forever foreigners, consistently locked out from immigration & paths to citizenship, having assumed citizenship status be used as tools of oppression, NOT to be confused with things like trying to prevent poor Black communities from participating in community/state/federal voting)
I’ve been reflecting on this 🙌🏽 I just haven’t had the words to share it.
