The controversial Atlantic article “My Family’s Slave” by the late journalist Alex Tizon sparked a range of emotion and discussion. Tizon writes about Eudocia Tomas Pulido, a Filipina domestic worker his family enslaved for 56 years and how he felt about her contested role in the family, even after her death. Reactions ranged from sadness…
My mom is Taiwanese and my dad is Chinese, but many people only see me as Chinese. This was more of an issue when I was growing up than it is now, but usually when I tell someone in the U.S. that I’m Taiwanese and Chinese, they reply with, “Oh, so you’re Chinese, right?” As…
In a sea of Southeast Asians on campus, I am a minority. I am underrepresented. I am Laotian. Oftentimes, people misidentify me as Vietnamese. While I do not find that to be an insult, it functions as a reminder that I am not able to relate or identify with a cultural group on campus. Laos…
We’re all tired of whitewashing. We’ve seen it before, and we’re seeing it today. From John Wayne’s portrayal of Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror” (1956) to Scarlett Johansson as Major Motoko in “Ghost in the Shell” (2017), we are not strangers to the common practice of Asian and Asian American roles being handed to white actors/actresses. Despite the…
On June 3, Daily Bruin writer Kelly Yeo published an article titled, “Asian American activism on campus: an in-depth investigation,” in The Quad, a part of the Daily Bruin. What at first seemed like an exciting investigative report from a publication that rarely reports about our communities was actually a problematic personal narrative that failed to live up to its self reported “in-depth investigation” status.
Whitewashing in film is when white actors are cast in non-white roles.