We have a few Asian-Americans and Asian-Canadians. I've been very interested in trying to learn the stories and experiences of other Asians in the US and Canada, but also the rest of the Anglosphere I suppose. NS doesn't have many non-whites, so it is often difficult to have a meaningful discussion about issues and shared experiences as a minority group apart from the very few threads which mention us (which generally tend to be using us to imply that other minorities are lazy). It is also often difficult to have a discussion about ourselves considering that we often don't have anyone to talk to who have shared similar experiences (unless you live somewhere like the 626, lol).
Are you Asian-American? Are you hapa? Did you grow up in an area that had lots of Asians? What about members of your own ethnic group? How connected did you feel to them?
I think there are a few experiences which many of us can relate to...
Chinese Japanese, dirty knees, look at these?.. Everyone assuming you're Chinese? People constantly asking you where you're "from"?
If you're hapa, how did people treat you?
I've noticed that, in my personal experience, hapa are often strongly seen as Asian by white people, although as white by Asians from Asia.
Personally, I am Korean-American, and grew up in the United States. However, I was generally the only Korean person in my classes (I never had a classmate who was also ethnically Korean until 8th grade, when I ended up actually moving to Korea for a year and a half, except for one year during 4th grade). I was also one of the only Asians around, the others generally being Filipino or Vietnamese. We all knew each other, since there were maybe ten Asians in the entire school, haha, out of over a thousand people.
That was middle school of course. For the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, I was in Korea, and being an Asian-American in Asia is... oh god, haha.
Do you think we have racial discrimination? How do we have it in comparison to black people and Latinxs?
I've heard that while growing up, Asian-Americans often don't like being Asian, and will try to make themselves seem white, while later on, many feel more compelled to embrace at least part of their Asian identity. I think this has been pretty true for me.
(20; ;-; I will never understand why some people like the idea of aging so much). Spent my teen/preteen years in the Dallas area, which has a nice sized Korean community, which has grown a lot since we first came here. The Chinese and Koreans were always the largest East Asian group in my schools so I never had to deal much with being asked if I was Chinese or something else.
