mental manifestations

I really hope that it’s some Italian word I don’t know (though I can’t find anything remotely close to it) and not actually what I think it might be.

Disclaimer: A lot of the observations I make in this post are general trends I have personally observed or experienced. What I say is not absolute, because I have also seen exceptions.

There is a post over at 8 Asians that has been bothering for me some time, but I haven’t had the chance to formulate a thought-out response at the time. The issue that the post revolves around is interracial dating between Asian and Caucasian people. What bothers me the most is that the response to the issue feels too generic and stereotypical. What someone says in a few words about “typical” Asian males definitely does not encompass the entire spectrum. The reason it bothers me a lot us because it is opposite from what I have seen. People’s lives are so hugely influenced by their environment and social dispositions.

I was born and rasied in Boston. I lived in an Irish neighborhood. I really never saw a huge Asian population until 7th grade. Up until then, I went to schools that were predominantly white or of other minorities (black, Hispanic, etc.), and my only contact with other Asians were family, Chinatown visits, or the small percentage of students in school. 7th grade was a big change for me; I entered an extremely diverse school of over 2400 students where my graduating class was at least 300 students. Yet I never hung out with the Asian kids. They were generally cliquey, and I never shared any interests with them. This just doesn’t apply to Asian people. I’ve seen the phenomenon in so many other groups of people. People always banded with others who were of the same race because the familiarity and similarity makes them feel comfortable and safe. It always bothered me when others tried to latch onto me because I was Chinese (like when someone wants to be a project partner or a random person sits next to me on the bus).

I always hung out with people who shared the same interests as as me which almost all the Asians I knew never did. I always loathed people who would try to make me join some Asian culture society at school. These are the same kind of people who hang out in the same Asian clique. I have no objections for sharing my heritage and celebrating my culture, but it seems silly when all the attendants just happen to be of the same culture. I was never taught racism when I was growing up. I never inherited it from my parents. I had to learn it from all the social situations I was in. My social confusion screwed me up for a long time, before I learned how to just be myself. However, the exposure I had to other people showed me that we really aren’t that different if you strip skin color away. Character — what people said or did to me good or bad — always struck me more than anything.

I only ever really dated one girl who happened to be Korean. Her past boyfriends were all white (if I remember correctly). She came from a white suburb and grew up in a different setting than most other Asians I knew. However, she was not the kind of girl I would date again. It had nothing to do with physical appearance at all. Her character just didn’t cohere with mine which is why I broke up with her. My cousins have married various people of other races (Italian, Korean, Spanish), and there are no issues with race with anyone there.

I have met some really great and nice people throughout my life. It didn’t matter what race they were, because I knew them as individuals instead of abstracting them into a global group and personifying that. Taking interracial dating so seriously is dumb. The people who do that probably have some insecurities they need to take care of. In the end, people should do whatever makes them happy regardless of race.