[ SECRET POST #2727 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2727 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 082 secrets from Secret Submission Post #390.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Your... culture?

Or your parents' culture?

I know I'm coming off as a complete dick here, but I can't help but wonder if you're like one of those kids *insert of whatever descent here* who always gets ten times as offended whenever someone makes a comment that may or may not be racially/ethnically/culturally sensitive.

If I'm wrong, then I still kind of think you need a thicker skin.

[(Anonymous)]

lol, mte anon.

[(Anonymous)]

otherjapaneseamericananon here and ok a srs comment:

i wish it were that simple but it's sadly not. you can claim you're american and just american born in cali raised in LA all you like but when other people see you, they see your parents' culture because that's what makes you different. your family is steeped in it, you grew up with it, the trends, news, and everything else your parents follow is from 'home' which will always be 'home' and 'our land' even if they've lived here 20 years... its yours just as much as the american one is. maybe if you're 3rd gen or above, like your grandparents immigrated here and you had americanized parents, you're further from it, but if it's 'your parents' culture?' yeah, it's possible to be very part of both. a lot of the time you dont get a choice.

[(Anonymous)]

I understand that, and I do agree when you look a certain way, people will feel inclined to react to you in that manner (I have been guilty of this in the past, in the sense of "oh, where are you/your parents from??").

But then there are those kids of immigrants who feel like it's their duty to get butthurt over the slightest offense in relation to their culture, especially when they took no part of any of their parents culture. (Which, to be fair, I can kind of understand, if you were "left out" of that kind of thing, and maybe being hypersensitive about it helps you to feel more included.)

[ketita]

Real question here - one of the things I see often (on tumblr, granted) is people of various Asian descent insisting that it's racist when they're treated as "from somewhere else" and not as 100% American, and seem to deny that they are, in fact, influenced by the culture of wherever their family came from at some point. This seems to be the opposite of what you're saying, so I'm curious as to what you think of that.

[(Anonymous)]

Not the anon you replied to, but I'm also of Asian descent, and I think the issue is that while people of (for instance) western European descent may still be very influenced by the culture of where their family came from, it's much rarer for them to get the "but where are you ~really~ from" sort of attitude that is common with people of Asian descent, regardless of how removed they may be from that culture. This doesn't negate the fact that some people are more steeped in their Asian heritage (which some certainly are, though I admittedly am not), but it shouldn't be assumed that everyone is one way or the other.

I don't agree with everything in this satire video, but if you haven't yet seen it, it illustrates the complaint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMJI1Dw83Hc ("If Asians Said the Stuff White People Say")

[ketita]

hmm, thanks! I guess the answer is that there is no monolith answer.

Ha, I've seen that vid, and tbh - I live in Korea and 99% of those things have legit been said to me. While I understand that it's done from the perspective of Asians in America, I think they don't realize that most of it is "stuff people say to visible foreign minorities they don't know much about" regardless of race.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah this is like me getting angry about people making up fake German words or mocking the ones that "sound funny".

My parents might be German, but I'm not. I'm not "German-American", I'm just an American.

It's not "my" culture. I didn't grow up there. Japanese isn't "your" culture either, OP.

[(Anonymous)]

You don't get to decide how other people define themselves.

[(Anonymous)]

This. You can identify as any race or culture you want. I'm a black Aztecan American.

[(Anonymous)]

In that case, if I claim to be 100% Japanese, can I be offended by this entire discussion, including OP's attempts to make those of non-Japanese descent into bad people for not recognizing the cultural history of anyone who has a drop of Japanese blood?

[visp]

You're right - and that's why I'm an Otherkin married to Snape on the Astral Plane.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, it's much easier to assimilate and just be taken as American rather than ____-American when you're western European.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeahhhh, this.

[(Anonymous)]

Very much so. We have no clue just how steeped in their heritage culture somebody else might be either, so we can't make the call for them about what they are and are not.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

"It's not "my" culture. I didn't grow up there."

I think people seriously underestimate how attached and proud Asian parents are of their home cultures. Unless your parents are an extreme exception to the norm (and they do exist, but they are extremely rare), you're going to grow up in as much of "there" as your parents can manage to bring "here," because they're typically convinced "there" is superior in terms of traditions/values/whatnot. Then they try to instill that value system in you, for as long as you live.

There wasn't even an attempt to try to get me to fit in and be American. I mean, I got sent to elementary school in an unnecessary proper uniform, I got packed proper little bento lunches, teachers always got presents and stuff because that was respectful, no matter what anybody else said about it being sucking up and culture being different here. 30 years later, my parents still don't have any friends that aren't of their race. They don't interact with any American media at all, even the news they watch is in-language channels.

I can't even think of a German equivalent to that. Can you? If you can, did you grow up in it your whole life? Is that typical of Western European immigrants like it is of Asian ones?

Just. Not all cultures are the same. The bigger the difference the more you're kind of torn in two as a kid and all along growing up. It is your culture, as much as American is, no matter how much you wish you could be just one or the other.

[(Anonymous)]

This doesn't even necessarily just relate to Asian cultures though. I grew up with parents who immigrated from Scandinavia, and even though it's not quite as extreme as your experience, there's some similarities there.

People who say that it's not your culture are asshats though. Even though I didn't grow up there, it's still a huge part of me and who I am and my cultural background.

[(Anonymous)]

ARYT

My experience is a little like that. My parents were much more strictly disciplinarian than just about every other kid's parents I knew, and pretty much never gave out open displays of affection, but... They completely encouraged me to be as American possible? I mean, this is my home, not Germany. English is my first language. If I traveled to Europe and lived there I wouldn't be "German" to anyone, especially not actual Germans. I hear that actual Japanese people in Japan think pretty much the same of second-generation Japanese people who go there, especially if they don't speak Japanese fluently.

You can choose to identify with any culture you want, I suppose, but the people in that culture don't have to agree with your chosen identification.

[(Anonymous)]

My mother is as stupid proud of being Filipino as she possibly can be, thinks the Filipino in any show/movie/production/music video/organization/doctor's office/etc is superior to any other artist/worker in the same field, goes to damn near every Filipino or church-related Filipino event, befriends every Filipino that comes her way, is constantly inviting all her Filipino friends to the house, and does all but wave a Filipino flag in front of her house.

That said, none of that rubbed off on me, and I couldn't care less.

Oh, sure, when I was growing up, she made Filipino dishes and stuff, and even one time took us kids to the Philippines (it was right after my father passed away when I was very little and she wanted to be with her family). But when I was growing up, she never even offered to involve me in the events she went to, or encourage me to get involved in my own way. And it was a decent sized town, so there absolutely was a community. As a kid, I didn't learn any of the dances/rituals, wasn't taught even one of the languages, never learned anything of the culture, and I only have a vague idea of who I'm related to.

I won't lie, if there was a gathering I just happened to be at, I did feel a little left out because everyone was so familiar with each other and it was like their own secret club. I wanted so badly to be a part of it, I would "represent" myself as part Filipino. I displayed the flag. I even took it upon myself to GET OFFENDED any time someone said something about the culture that may have been mildly insensitive at worst, completely innocent and uninformed at best. Which was true, but in the end, I was more familiar with being simply American. It took me some time to accept that there was nothing wrong with me for being who I was and where I was at. I accept this is where I came from (at least partly), but it's nothing I have to cling to just to have a sense of identity. And in the future, I want any involvement in the culture to stem from a genuine interest, and not from some desperate need to be a part of something I came into by accident of birth.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

So, to paraphrase, "I get to decisively explain what I am. And what you are, for good measure!" No. Just ... no. If you consider yourself a perfectly assimilated American, that's your business. But you don't have any right to universalize your experience and trying to strip other people of their cultural identity is downright offensive. You don't get to judge whether the OP is Japanese or not, or if they're Japanese enough.

nayrt

[(Anonymous)]

All right, you have a point. Only the individual knows the truth about their own identity, and it can't be determined by an outsider.

Though I still side-eye anyone with a great amount of secondhand butthurt. It makes me think something else is going on there, and it has nothing to do with someone "ironically mocking" a language. (But if I'm wrong about that, then I'm wrong.)

[(Anonymous)]

But your cultural identity is not "Polish" and it is not "Chinese". That requires living (or, to some people who are super strict, growing up) respectively in Poland and in China and experiencing the culture first hand.

The experience of being surrounded by artifacts of your culture through your parents in a situation where it's a minority culture instead of the mass that sets your expectations in life is different.

Culture isn't just the clothes you wear and the food you eat and your music and your dances, it's also the political discourse, the realities of how friendships are made (very fucking different in Germany and UK, the only two places I've lived for prolonged periods of time), how family ties work, etc. You can't export that shit, because it requires you to be surrounded by other people in the same bubble.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

OP isn't "Japanese", though - the experience of growing up in Japan, completely inside Japanese culture, isn't something she has. Yes, I agree, her experience as the child of immigrant Japanese parents does make her "different" from other Americans. It makes her Japanese-American, certainly. It's not a matter of stripping someone of an identity, it's defining the obvious. No matter how traditional, having two parents from another culture raise you doesn't make you yourself of that culture. Your culture is the world you grow up in, how you interact, how you are conditioned to think and behave. Immigrant parents affects your culture, yeah, but cannot solely define it.

[(Anonymous)]

Culture...you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, sorry if I offend the anons born from a Petri dish.