Sarah Chien continues...
The other high school memory I have is of a guy at work who I later realized was trying to hit on me by asking/answering that question ["What are you?"]. After I responded with the usual sigh and standard answer, this coworker of mine said “Oh I thought you were half black because of your ass and your hair.” He was trying to say I had a nice (black) ass I guess, which was meant as a complement. But at the time I was an aspiring ballerina who wanted to be pale and slim, so it just seemed totally out of left field. I wasn’t even concerned with the racial implications, but just offended that he thought my butt was big! Once I left Illinois and before I became fluent in Spanish, this actually was quite a common assumption (especially in college when I lived in a residence for “people of color,” which ended up meaning mostly African American students). Of course after gaining a fluency of Spanish in college, Latina is now the more common guess.
And although I don’t get butt comments on the street, I often get ass-related compliments from men when I’m in bed with them. Guess my mixed ass isn’t big enough to get called out when I have clothes on, but it’s still enough to get noticed when they’re off! The other night this happened and I quipped to the guy that I don’t know where it comes from ‘cause it’s certainly not Chinese. He responded that actually Jews are known for being more curvy, at least more so than other white people. I fit another stereotype, who knew? You can perpetuate stereotypes without knowing they exist, since an outside gaze is doing the assigning (of stereotypes). So perhaps the ultra-religious Jewish guys harassing me in Williamsburg aren’t looking at my hair or my nose at all, but at my Jewish ass … now wouldn’t that be something to throw at them next time I get stopped?
I can just imagine it:
“Excuse me, are you Jewish?”
“Excuse me! Were you looking at my ass? ”
I feel guilty thinking about how embarrassed the poor guy would probably be if I accused him of sinning and checking out a woman who wasn’t dressed in an ankle length skirt and long sleeves rather than doing his religious duty. That’s probably taking it too far. But then again, going to the extreme of caricature is a tactic we’re using in the project - blow it up for entertainment so that everyone can see what’s was so ridiculous in the first place. And once you start thinking about it, there’s a lot of ridiculousness to point out.
Growing up in Illinois I just didn’t have that much exposure to racial stereotypes. It was a whole process of discovery when I got to college. At Barnard, the “what are you” question melted away and to my slight dismay I realized that for the first time in my life I kind of did look like everyone else. No longer surrounded by blondes, African Americans and a handful of Indians and Chinese (this was the makeup of my high school), everyone just assumed I was Jewish---how many short curly brown-haired girls do you find on the Upper West Side, right? I missed my rare-specimen status, and in college it became a game of proving I was different.
Once in my intermediate Chinese class where I said “wo baba shi zhong quo ren.” (My father is Chinese.) My teacher actually stopped the lesson, looked at me and broke into English to say “Really?” I got used to carrying around a picture of my family to prove my Chinese-ness. This happened when I joined the school’s Chinese Lion Dance Club as well. I remember recruiting junior year and being the token “white girl” to attract more diversity to the team. There actually was another half-Asian girl, even half Jewish, I believe, but she looked ostensibly more Asian, and had grown up speaking Cantonese. I still carry that picture in my wallet and pull it out from time to time, literally pulling out the “race card” when I need it.
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