This week, I read Kieu Linh Valverde's ""Doing the Mixed-Race Dance: Negotiating Social Spaces Within the Multiracial Vietnamese American Class Typology." What I find interesting is that Valverde speaks on having grown up in the Bay Area, which is known to be a heavily Asian-populated area. I believe this factor alone affects how Valverde experienced a multiracial youth in that multiracial-Asian folks who are raised in areas with smaller numbers of Asian inhabitants will experience a very different childhood. She mentions how many people who meet her immediately ask her "What are you?" and it resonates with me in that, as a mixed-Asian person, I too am asked this question quite frequently. Sometimes it is annoying, especially when it's the first thing someone asks of you after meeting, but I've gotten used to it and even sometimes enjoy answering the question.
Valverde mentions the interactions between a typical multiracial Vietnamese and a monoracial Vietnamese, and this to strikes a chord. There is this subtle back and forth of one figuring out "how Vietnamese" the other is, and I myself have experienced a form of this. It's almost a way for the monoracial to "test" the multiracial to comfort themselves. In my experience, some monoracials do this to ensure themselves in a way that they are cultured enough. I've seen some people who feel somewhat embarrassed when a mixed person is more knowledgeable or experienced with aspects of their cultural background that the monoracial.
I guess my question after this reading is: what makes someone "cultured"?
Plenty of monoracial Asian Americans grow up not actually knowing much about their culture, possibly due to the desire of "blending in" but at some point in young adulthood they begin to resent not having that culture in their lives. Is it too late for them?
Neel Kolhatkar's "The Privilege Game"
This sketch subtly portrays the social interactions between select racial groups and the varying perception of "privilege."
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