Dear anyone who may have felt uncomfortable with my last post:

I guess I’m a little confused as to where you got the idea that the essay was saying that all white people are racist.

There are two things I that I think should be understood about the essay; firstly, it is in no way an attack on white people. It’s about stereotypes. Certainly, everyone gets stereotyped. However, I’m Asian, so I talked about Asian stereotypes. Even more, it’s about how stereotypes affect Asian students. Even Asian parents play a part in this stereotyping.Secondly, there’s a lot of underlying sarcasm in the essay that might be easy to miss when going through it, and I can see why you might feel offended by that if you were reading through it quickly.

I can think of a few places that may have made you feel uncomfortable so here: let me try to explain them.

“…because their circumstances are so very different and they shouldn’t compare themselves to those white kids.” This sentence is referring to the mentality of a lot of parents who emigrate from Asia, and is hardly relevant to what white students are doing. It actually looks down upon that mentality that a lot of Asian parents have, because yes: when Asian people think of America, they think “white”. It’s not my mentality and it certainly isn’t the correct mentality, and that’s where the sarcasm comes in.

“…while the parents at home consistently urge their children to try even harder to excel above their white peers.” Again, it’s that mentality again. Unfortunately, many traditional Asian parents are racist to some extent; it disappoints me, but it’s the truth. This essay talks about actual mentalities from my own experience. I live in a part of New York where about 95% of my school is white, and the truth is, Asian parents don’t even usually consider the other races in America because white people are all they see. This isn’t what I think. However, the sentence is structured so that it’s referring to what the parents are saying; I’m thinking now that maybe putting parentheses around “white people” here and in the last sentence would have made this a lot more clear.

And that brings me to the point about the media. This is only part of the essay that attacks people who stereotype and not just the actual stereotypes themselves. However, it’s an attack on American media, which is very obvious ruled by Caucasians. In a country that is predominately white, that’s no surprise at all. However, this attack has little to do with regular white people who aren’t making movies; it’s about the mentality of the media giants.

^^^^Those are the only parts of the essay that mention white people, and it never said that everyone is racist. It’s true, the only other race I mentioned was white people, but I hope you can understand why I did that when you look at places I mentioned them in. Two are pulled from stereotypes that Asian parents have, and they’re paraphrased directly from what they say. They are not aimed at the white kids themselves; actually, they don’t say anything about white kids being racist at all. The second is on the subject of the media, which as I’m sure you agree, is true. The opponents there are Hollywood, pop culture, and an American mentality; white people are mentioned because that’s what the media is like. This is completely different from saying that all white people are racist.

I’m sorry that you live in an area that has made you sensitive to talk about racism and white people all in one (and I hope your classmates someday realize that banding together as a majority against minorities is not okay), and I hope you can see now that this essay absolutely does not have an Asian vs. White mentality. “American culture” does not equal “white”. The essay isn’t even mainly about racism; it’s about discrimination that results from stereotyping. The bullying, name-calling, and pigeon-holing that I’ve experienced coming from an Asian family: that’s what I wanted to address. And understand that I hate double-standards, because I also experience that a lot, not as an Asian, but forother aspects of my person, and I’m not applying them to white people. Yes, Asian people get stereotyped, and so does everyone else. I focused on Asian stereotypes here, but I could write another whole essay on stereotypes in general. No, I’m not against white people. Yes, I’m probably getting redundant now… OTL Basically, there is no part of this essay that tries to “call out white people for stereotyping”.

But thank you for talking to me about this politely and not being rude, like some people would be prone to be :)