Abolish Wasia
EVERYONE READ EDWARD SAID NOW
PREFACE: I have no interest in negotiating or coming for how any individual mixed Asian person identifies with or expresses their life experiences, cultures or racial background. I AM CERTAINLY NOT ATTACKING DEAR HUDSON. I think most people who have a sense of their cultural or racial experience don’t necessarily see it through a radical critical race lens, but that’s kind of like, my whole thing. I also have a specific perspective and analysis on it as a mixed person myself. As always, regardless of our individual orientations to race, we can learn to understand its larger structural and historical contexts and interrogate the things we’ve internalized and participate in, and again, that’s my gig, as it is that of many others who may or may not agree with me. OK wow this is an annoying fucking disclaimer, bye!
I won’t lie, I was (semi-) on the Wasia train for many years now, it has been kind of a running joke of mine as it has been the internet’s. When Hudson Williams (who, for the record, I adore and am a big fan of) blew up and crashed onto the scene and people started to call him the Prince of Wasia, I scoffed and joked with friends that I’m the official global cross-cultural Ambassador of Wasia, and the one true ruler of Wasia is in fact Michelle Branch.
Wasians in media and subsequent discourse around their mixed identity and race is not new in any way, and it crops up periodically. For me it all started by realizing how many of my favorite artists, including musician friends of mine, are half white, half Asian, or lead by someone who is, like Miki Bereyni of Lush, Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or the aforementioned OG queen of Wasia Michelle Branch, whose music I have loved since I was a tween. Then as I aged I got into artists like Mitski, Miya Folick, Sasami, and made friends with the leads of Chicago bands Stressed Positions and Side Action.
This was just an observation though, nothing more, and I didn’t get into these artists specifically because they were half white and half Asian of course. I just simply saw them as people of color doing shit I really loved, being non-white people in overwhelmingly white diy and punk spaces. This is why I even knew about many of them at all—when you’re a person of color in these scenes, especially when you’re a young kid who is just getting into rock, alternative, punk, metal etc music, you’re going to seek out any artists of color regardless of background. If there was one thing about me, I was going to know whenever any person of color was in a genre that we’re often not recognized in.
Wasians are easily erased, as is the narrative. But is that the whole truth? I mean, yes, this happens, and it causes insolation, identity crisis, upset and distress to many. But—and I say this as sensitively as I can considering the aforementioned—isn’t it also true that they could always easily assimilate?
Certainly many mixed Asian actors, musicians and artists and other public figures have always proudly and openly claimed their Asian ancestry, especially if their Asian parent/mixed Asian parents and family was already prominent. But many others don’t really speak about it because they don’t have to, and it is easy not to because of how they look. This likely benefitted them in the industries they work in which is as we know are generally all racist as hell. These Wasians could easily distance themselves, whether consciously or not, so as to escape that racism, in ways other people of color, mixed or not, especially Black ones, cannot
Now you might be thinking, “Briana, why are you in it? You’re not Asian at all!” True, I am famously, even notoriously, not Asian! Part of the “why” is my attempts at penance for participating in the Wasian wave, because that shit has become very embarrassing and probably always was. But on a more serious note, it’s because the whiteness and colorism, as well as the fetishism and orientalism, of this Wasian moment can’t be overlooked.
My perspective is naturally influenced by the fact that I am mixed myself, albeit not “White parent” mixed, rather generationally mixed, like Creole people. My mixed identity exists within the context of mestizaje, the context within which all mixed identity and its politics exist within Latin America.
Even though we had no connection to white family members having been mixed for generations, in my family there was still this expectation to also claim European ancestry as much as you do African or Arawak ancestry (although it is questionable if we have any of the latter at all, much less recent connections). I was told this explicitly that I’m “just as much white as you are Black.”
It was a really dumb goofy concept I’ve long rejected, but contextually, that is how mixed identity is seen in Latin America, and mixed people specifically light ones benefit from it immensely. There’s social and structural incentives to “mejorar la raza,” which is to keep on mixing and having kids with lighter and lighter people until your family line becomes white. Mixed and light people are seen as a prize and tools to continue lightening up your family.
I know it’s different with mixed people who don’t necessarily live in the specific context of Mestizaje. I’m not claiming any time a person of color has a child with a white person they’re trying to whiten or lighten up their bloodline either. But it is universally true that whiteness, and close proximity to whiteness, is the standard, and that greatly influences our romantic and sexual preferences. It is true that being mixed, specifically if you are light, passing or ambiguous, is socially and structurally esteemed above other people of color, especially those who are dark skin. In the very least it grants social standing and access in white spaces. Regardless of whether mixed people especially light and “passing” ones are erased or not, our identities exist within this paradigm.
Erasure and assimilation are sensitive topics when it comes to being mixed. People will accuse you of wanting to distance yourself from your non-white ancestry even if they have no proof of it and everything you do is proof of the contrary. This can be personally hurtful especially if you actually are outspokenly proud and identify strongly with being of color. But again, our demographic is highly annoying. Plenty mixed people ARE doing exactly that, wanting to assimilate or distance themselves, seeing their whiteness as superior, and are disinterested in to straight up antagonistic to other people of color, especially dark skin ones, regardless if some of them too are also mixed. Regardless, as mixed people, specifically light ones, we have to understand ourselves and our identities within this larger context. How we can still be captured or used by whiteness, especially if again we are white and light. How our identities implicate and are inextricable from anti-Blackness, especially if you are non-Black.
The questions I have to ask the elected officials of Wasia are the following: Why is being mixed with white seen as unique from other mixed Asian people? Why is being mixed with white the galvanizing force uniting mixed Asians and not just being mixed Asian regardless if it isn’t with a white or mixed white parent(s)? What about mixed Asians who have two parents of color, don’t look ambiguous, or who are brown or dark skin? Why is the Asian part of “Wasia” primarily Japanese, Chinese or Korean? Do you think people who are “full” Asian don’t also experience the type of cultural and colonial disconnect, orientalism, racial ostracization etc that you do, but with much less access to whiteness? Are they all always excluding you or are you excluding yourself? (Sorry, these are a lot of questions, but inquiring minds truly need to know!)
These are the key was our mixed identities intersect—even as we are still fetishized and experience racism that can be pronounced and brutal, even as we experience anti-Blackness, orientalism, racial ignorance, violence and relative colorism in society and within our own families. It’s still easier for us and we are still seen as the ideal, as the prize.
I can understand that being Wasian is a unique experience when you have a recent and living parent and family that is white. It has its own struggles and people who experience it can be easy find affinity with others who do as well. I also don’t think blanket claiming all mixed with white Asians look or are white, or aspire to whiteness, is a correct or fair thing to say. But even within those understandings and confines of being half white, half Asian, there’s still a lot of potential for difference and diversity . Like is your white parent a weirdo with yellow fever? Does your white parent and family actually make the effort to support you being fully enmeshed in your other parent’s culture? Is the experience of being Wasian really automatically the same just because you’re one half Asian, one half white, especially if you come from different countries, class backgrounds, orientations to your Asian heritage and culture etcetera? Aren’t these generalizations by the Great Country of Wasia its own type of erasure?
That what unites Wasian has more to do with whiteness than Asianness than we would like to admit.