By Sophia Whittemore

AsAmNews Intern



Now, as a fangirl, I am psyched about Spiderman Homecoming. I’m so psyched that I don’t even care I just used the word “psyched”. The new movie features a diverse cast, a stellar premise, and none other than I-am-Iron-Man-Tony-Stark-RDJ. To make me love it even more, it turns out that there’s another actor on that cast who (similar to half-Indonesian, Pribumi ((native Indonesian)), indigenous Taiwanese, English, Ladino me) also sports a proud multiracial/hapa identity.

And that person is none other than charming Jacob Batalon who, according to Movie News Guide, plays the role of Peter Parker’s best friend, Ned. Am I incredibly excited that a fellow multiracial kid got cast in a movie? Of course! But, to loosely quote another past Spiderman movie, with great power, comes great responsibility. Or in his case, with great limelight, comes great responsibility. The article I read on Jacob Batalon listed him only as being Filipino American, citing his mother as having “true Filipino blood”.

Saying somebody has true blood makes me somewhat disappointed. It’s great to be proud of one’s heritage. Yet, having true blood… It reminds me of how often people try to quantify multiracial people’s amount of blood and their exact family tree as soon as they meet that aforementioned multiracial kid. I’ve been asked this list of questions before:

“were you adopted?”

“yeah, but HOW MUCH are you?”

“No, but who do you PREFER?”

“You speak: (insert language here), WHAT?”

and “wait is Whittemore REALLY you’re last name”?

They’re the “pick-a-side-only-one-side” questions that put you on one side of the fence or another. Multiracial kids get skewered dead-center usually because they don’t have the luxury of “pick-just-one”. It’s your identity. It’s not a “favorite dream crush” quiz.

And I don’t fault those questions. Most of it came from a place of curiosity. And I see it as my job to educate, not push away. And I love Jacob Batalon. He slayed his role in the movie blockbuster. But when I look at other trends in the media when it comes to half-Asian people in Hollywood, it confuses me slightly. Keanu Reeves, like Batalon according to IMDb, also hailed from Hawaii with British, Native Hawaiian, Portuguese, and Chinese ancestry. But I remember reading articles that listed Reeves on “actors you DIDN’T know were Asian”. It seemed like an add-on, a pleasant afterthought that made note of Reeves’ “otherness”.

Then there’s the opposite end of the spectrum. Being too much, too little, or not enough. Olivia Munn (pictured above) discussed challenges of being multiracial in Web Pro News.

“I’d go out for so many auditions, for everything. And then I’d be told, ‘You’re too Asian,’ or, ‘You’re too White.'” “I remember someone telling me, ‘Don’t feel bad. One day they won’t be trying to match you to fit with anyone else. You’ll just be hired for you.’

This reminded me of what it was like when I sat at the dinner table with a few acquaintances, trying hard to impress them despite being an author instead of going for a “safe” medical/law degree. They looked shocked when I spoke Bahasa. They grinned teasingly if they saw me reach for water after eating a chili pepper, remarking how I had a white tongue. On the other hand, some people prefer it if I dyed my entire head of hair blonde to fit in with the other side. They mistake me for being adopted by my dad, because there’s no way I can be related to a White guy. (Love you, dad).

Then, as I grew older. Sorry, I’m still growing. I won’t stop growing until I’m dead. But as I grew slightly wiser, I realized what Munn did. People should want you for you, not for your “true blood”, or your appearances, or your tongue. It’s no new surprise that there’s an issue of erasure in Hollywood, Emma Stone playing a part-Asian character in Aloha when there’s plenty of part-Asian actors in Hollywood hasn’t been forgotten quite yet. But, there’s also another kind of erasure. Some multiracial actors aren’t allowed to claim all parts of themselves. They get trapped into boxes like Munn did in her early casting. Instead of being viewed as a person, they’re made to either fit into one side of their ancestry or another.

If you’re multiracial, there should be no need to choose. There should be embracing, never eliminating. We deal enough with polarization as it is.

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