and I thought I was racially marked before

[jinian]

It is definitely really weird to have people feel up your hair. Awkward, laughing, freaking out -- it could easily have shaded into bullying. Even if it's one person* whom you like, and even if you're weirdly positioned in the conversation as having the socially-better hair texture. (Is it actually true that some people's hair is so strong it can poke into their skin, or were they messing with me? I kept the terminology at "strong" rather than anything less positive, because wow was that fraught.) She says she wants her hair to be so soft, too. I pointed out that it mostly correlates with color and that stronger hair doesn't break all the time, but she was not dissuaded. I settled on, "I'm sorry, I can't help you," which at least made everyone laugh.

(It was also very strange to be touched at all; I want that a lot right now, actually, but perhaps not in a disturbing, charged context, okay?)

I keep thinking that more white Americans should experience this racial-minority thing, but I'm still creepily advantaged, there's no escaping it. Besides, I don't think the jingoists I grew up around would react to it by understanding the overall dynamic, interpreting it for their situation, or gaining that much empathy.

* Only one woman in the room at the time; the men had more sense or reserve for whatever reason than to try it. I am not ruling out the possibility that I may be mobbed by female labmates at some future time.

Comments

[oyceter]

BUT JINIAN WHITE HAIR IS SO EXOTIC!!!

Sadly, my experience with white Americans experiencing being a racial minority in Japan is that they are all affronted and think Asians are really racist. =(. I remember when I was doing homestay there, two white guy friends of mine were talking about how foreign they felt (this is after me and a friend from Taiwan had argued with them about the fact that maybe some people don't agree that the US is the bestest country in the world), and I just glared at them, unnoticed.

[jinian]

YOU WANT TO PET IT I KNOW YOU DO

Thaaaat's the reaction I was afraid of. Maybe if we get them when they're little. And kick their racist-ass parents to the curb.

There's one thing it's doing to me that I hadn't expected -- when I see a white person my brain kicks into MAYBE WE HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON, and I automatically want to talk to them. Which, duh, maybe happens to some people where I am from too! Hadn't felt that one before.

(My hair is exotic enough that I am having to research carefully a place to get it cut by someone who knows how to do it, which is a salutary experience in that "it is like this for some people ALWAYS" way. And yet I'm still being told it's "good hair" in so many words.)

[oyceter]

Ahahaha! I actually did with my white roommate in college and I was really surprised by how different it was from the East Asian hair textures I've encountered.

Oh man. I think it is even more pronounced when your primary language is different from the one of the country you live in, but I really grok the "Oh thank god another Asian person" thing.

But yeah... I really wish people would take stuff like this and, you know, apply to existing power structures as opposed to concluding that racism is everywhere! Therefore it's fine to be racist!