There is a lot of talk and ranting online from some of our male counterparts that Asian women have access to white privilege because if we marry a white man and take on his last name then we are somehow deemed as honorary whites. In addition being objectified, fetishized and being victims of sexual assault/harassment is also somehow viewed by some of these male counterparts as “access to privilege”. To me personally, I can not fathom what logic surrounds this idea of privilege, and one needs to have a better understanding of inter-sectional theories to see that all the above examples are not about privilege, because to have privilege is to have power and control. Being objectified, fetishised and being victims of sexual harassment and assault are beyond control and is reductive in that Asian women are seen as “objects” rather than women with value.

At the end of the day as Asian women, our skin colour will always be the most visible, regardless of whether we change our surnames after marriage. This is no different to the racism and discrimination Asian men face – again skin colour will be the most visible. Our “Asian-ness” does not change due to gender, so let’s get it straight that our core struggles are exactly the same. Anyways, the purpose of this week’s piece is not to become an echo chamber and say the same shit I have been saying for the past few months, but I thought I would share some prominent examples of the racism I have faced as an Asian Australian woman to show that no matter how you spin it, us Asian women have no access to white privilege.

In actual fact, I was inspired to write this piece after I asked my friend Catherine Kim to share her medium piece she wrote titled: RACIST COMMENTS IN EUROPE on YOMYOMF website, and reading about her experiences made me reflect on my own life and all the racist shit I have faced being born and raised in Australia. It then also allowed me to make linkages to this myth about Asian women and privilege and I can confidently say to some of my male counterparts that they need to stop going down that fallacious shit hole.

In saying all that, here I will share some of my experiences of being racially vilified as an Asian Australian woman.

My childhood was riddled with physical racial abuse

I have written about this before where as soon as I started school in the late 1980s in Western Sydney, Australia. Back then the racial demographics were very different in the area I went to school then it is now. Back then I was one of the only Asian kids you would see and the white kids in my school made me feel that way. I won’t say too much on this but link my original piece I wrote on it, but just cite a few experiences and observations. As a 5 year old, you start school thinking how exciting it would be, and when you watch TV you are told that you are Australian. My experiences included being called “ching chong chewbacca”, “chinky chink”, “commie” ( that was yelled at me by some white kids parents) and the old adage of “go back to your Ching Chong land”. As a 5 year old I had no idea how to absorb this and didn’t understand how this was all fueled by hate and utter ignorance. In addition, I learned what toilet water tasted like, I was tied to trees blindfolded by older kids and I was thrown in the trash can like a piece of shit.

The sad part of all this is, the teacher never told my parents, and told me not to tell them, so they never knew what I went through until I was older and told them. Of course they felt terrible, but really not much could be done. These experiences have really damaged me growing up in terms of understanding my cultural identity and my confidence levels and as an adult it has shaped me for the life direction I eventually took in social activism.

In High school some white students thought all of us “East Asians” were the same

I attended an all girls Catholic school, and where my school was very diverse, there was still no escape from the racism I faced. I remember there was a group of white girls in my year, who I looked at as the epitome of who I wanted to be ( clearly my internalised racism started here). Despite the school being very diverse, I was 1 of only 3 – 4 Chinese background students in my year. The group of white girls would always intentionally mistaken all of us as being the same person because to them we “ching chongs” all look the same and were ugly shits having black hair and small eyes.

Despite all this, I would do all I could to get these white girl’s approval and laughed with them when they were racist towards me and the other Asian students. Obviously there are more examples of the micro-aggressions I experiences as a high school student, but this one example gives you an idea of the types of other shit I would have experienced.

I had deep seeded internalized racism issues in my early adult years which made me desire to only date white guys

To be honest with you, this intenralised racism phase lasted for 6 years as a young adult. When I entered my undergraduate studies at my University, I only had eyes for white guys. I refused many offers of dates from Asian Australian guys and wrote off international student men as “FOBS”. I remember telling one guy ( who’s heart I broke at the time), that I would never date an Asian man because it was sick and disgusting to do so. Obviously I regret all the stuff I said to Asian men at the time, and I regret the number of white guys whom I dated from the age of 18 – 22. Thinking back many of the white guys I dated had was because of the internalised racism I had and I wanted to try my best not to be Asian at all. One must remember these are all a product of the racist experiences we all went through as a child. Out of the 5 – 6 white guys I did date during that period 4 out of 6 had severe yellow fever and made that clear to me that I was “their little oriental girl”.

Now I am not saying all white guys are bad, but again, I am only citing a few examples from my personal experiences and why I chose to exclusively date white guys for awhile. Before I met my husband in 2010, I dated a range of guys of all colours. My ex before I knew my husband was a white guy, and he was a great dude but could never understand the Asian culture.

Being catcalled and sexually harassed as a woman because I am Asian

As I have already shared, I have been sexually assaulted/raped twice in my life. The first time was a guy I dated at 16 (Asian guy) who was 19 and basically forced me to give him my virginity, and the second time was when I lived a year abroad in China, and was sexually assaulted by 3 Chinese men at a Beijing club. Please click on the links to check out my experiences which I have written about before.

Anyways, till this day, as an Asian woman, I can’t escape being catcalled by white dudes in the street all because they have “yellow fever”. The number of times I have randomly experienced having random white dudes yell “Ni hao ma”? or ” hao piao liang” is very telling on how Asian women are seen and how we get constantly objectified and fetishised all because of certain negative stereotypes and the whole “Suzy Wong” phenomenon. I can’t even count the number of times I felt I have been reduced to an object, and again I refer back to my initial notion of where is the access to privilege here?

I was told in my first job out of college that I would never get promoted because I was in the wrong skin colour

Yes, this has happened. After I graduated from my undergraduate studies and after I came back from my 1 year abroad in Asia I worked for a medium sized boutique financial company as a financial analyst. I worked there for 2 – 3 years and realised I was not being promoted where my underlings who were all white were eventually promoted to higher positions than I, despite the fact I was a top performer and worked harder than them. When I asked my manager during a performance appraisal that I intended to seek a promotion and asked how to apply, she looked at me sternly and said:

” I do not want to be racist or anything, but I doubt my boss will sign off on a promotion considering most of our business deals with the UK and the USA in terms of investment. What kind of look will we have if we promote you who is not what they would deem an “Australian” would look like”.

Safe to say I lodged my letter of resignation not long after that.

Being told to “GO BACK TO CHINA” and “SPEAK ENGLISH”

Till this day I still get this. I won’t recount every instance of being racially discriminated with one or both of these slurs but just mention on recent example. 2 years ago I self taught to be able to speak both Cantonese and Mandarin to a level where I can engage in good conversations. This happened last year when I was back home in Sydney:

I was at a shopping mall and there was an old Chinese grandma walking around looking lost. I asked if I can help and she started to talk fast in Mandarin. So I spoke to her in Mandarin and helped her find the items and even do a return at the register.

Whilst helping her find some items, a red neck white Aussie woman walked up to me and made a side comment of :

“SPEAK ENGLISH AS THIS IS AUSTRALIA NOT CHINA. IF YOU WANT TO SPEAK YOUR CHING CHONG LANGUAGE THEN GET OUT OF STRAYA”.

I turned to her and said:

“HEY LADY IF YOU DONT SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH YOUR RACIST SHIT THEN WE WILL HAVE SOME PROBLEMS, AND FYI PLEASE LEARN HOW TO SPEAK PROPER ENGLISH AS YOU CLEARLY CANT SPEAK IT WELL AT ALL”..

She was so shocked and walked away muttering under her breath something about Chinese people.

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There are obviously more examples of racism I have faced, but I will save them for a future post. Here is a range of them and all these experiences for better or for worse have made me the person I am today, someone who genuinely cares and advocates for Asian causes and works hard for the Asian Australian community. I think this is my life’s trajectory and I will continue this indefinitely.