The Social Illusion

It was difficult for me to even begin writing this blog because I have no idea where to even start.

Do I start off with the broad generalization of how I appear on a standarized test? Sure, that's easy, I'll just bubble in Asian/Pacific Islander as oppoed to white, black, and hispanic. Huh, that wasn't too bad, I just summed myself into one of the most diverse group of humans ever. No biggie. What does that mean though, to have a blackened bubble next to Asian/ Pacific Islander? What am I? Asia is the biggest populated continent in the world. It's people range from white middle easterners of Turkey to dark skinned south Indians. Not everyone has pointy eyes, yellowish skin, and incredibly high math scores. In fact its very difficult to distinquish where the oriental end and the middle east begins. In China there is a region of people, in the rural west I want to say, that have brown hair and green eyes. They aren't the stereotypical looking Chinese fellow. I remember watching their folk dances on TV on the Chinese New Years festival and think, Whoa, they can't be asian, their white. So if physical features cant truly pinpoint a persons race I guess culture and values must be the uniting factors amongst race.

When people ask me where I'm from I usually say FLorida. Then they would clarify their question and ask, "What am I?" I would then say Chinese and then all of a sudden it seems as if I was classified into a whole new group of people with a different set of moral code. Then I would ask, "what are you?" They would respond, I'm american. GAHHH Why are they american and not me? I grew up with a heavily dominated american Culture and environment. I've lived here since I was 2 and grew up speaking English. Why can't I be considered an American as a race? A small little pet peeve that I have. If my values and desires don't classify me into a race then I guess that leaves an ambiguous nature behind too.

Maybe it's nationality that truly really seperates us apart, Where we were born, the people we resemble, the way we dress, and the way we carry ourselves. Wait that doesn't work either. I often get mistaken as a korean. A lot of the times I would be walking through the super market and an elderly Korean couple would walk up to me and start asking me questions in Korean expecting me to help them out. I would always see the suprised look when I said, "meeyahn, nahn joong gook sah lahm eeyah" , and then they would shake their head and walk away dissappointed. Completely befuddled on the constant confusion I asked one of my Korean friends, Becca (I think you had her last year). She said something along the lines of, how I don't act like all the other Chinese people being extremely book buried and up tight. So basically it was just a stereotype that I seemed to break with the Chinese which made my nature completely ambiguous. It was difficult to classify because I didn't fit the general stereotype and therefore I'm no longer Chinese, intresting. Believe it or not, there a definitly a lot of differences between the different asian nationalities. The Chinese tend to be extremely school bound, the Koreans and Japanese tend to be loud and more attuned with the social trends, and the philipinos are the hispanics of the asians. I'm not sure if most people are aware of that but to classify all of us as one group, usually tends to either offend people or please people. I'm not baseing this on any real statistics or fact but, when you ask Chinese what are they, they tend to respond Asian. When you ask Koreans what are they, they tend to respond Korean. A cool little tidbit

In the end I think race is just a stereotype and social construction that society creates in order to distinguish itself and each other quickly and efficiently. It's just so much easier for us to be ignorant about the differences and just label each other so that we could generalize, judge, and act towards each other accordingly. Race will always be here, and always be there to help us describe the way people are. With the social standard of race it would be like describing what a color looks like to a blind person. Impossible. There must be some catgorization of people in order to even be able to talk about them. Even in this blog where I tried to talk about how race is ambiguous, I couldn't help but still use it in order to dispell the usual stereotypes of race. As an intelligent society, we just have to be aware that these generalizations and standards are never complete and full. There will always be variation and we must keep an open mind and never have a bias against someone based on race.