Oh no they didn't...

Yesterday, as I was taking a study break, I mindlessly jumped to my celebrity gossip page to get my daily fix of what our precious celebs gloriously have done today. In doing so, I click on a recent entry in which one of the members decided to post an entry on a recent Japanese cover of the 30 hottest men in Japan.

Despite my personal opinion of many of these boys looking a little too girly (which of course, is only culturally defined by American society because obviously Japanese culture thinks this sort of look for men is very masculine.), I was thoroughly impressed by the fact that someone felt it necessary to blog about asian celebs. Although I knew there really wasn't anything wrong with an Asian celebrity blog, it felt odd for me to see it... which I guess means something seeing that I AM Asian.

Apparently, for many of the other readers of the site, having pictures of 30 asian celebrities splashed onto the usual white-dominant celebrity site was absolutely ludicrous, seeing that they posted comments like "Disney > any Asian person," or "Thats a hell of a lot of asians..." And so this had me pondering what exactly about having Asian celebrities on this celebrity site is so "off"? Is it because they're from another country? Maybe the fact that the entry was about a foreign population was what was so "weird" for people... but that wasn't it, the celebrity site has TONS of new entries about models and celebrities from England, France, Spain, whatever.

How come people don't complain when they see a bunch of white celebrities in a post? Where are the, "Gee, that's a whole lotta white people" comments? Why is the fact that having simply 30 asian faces in one blog suddenly "a lot" when the whole site is filled with white faces and in a sense, "never enough."

The thing is: wake up call! America is filled with Asians, Blacks, Latinos, etc. Our celebrities should reflect our demographics. Why is having more than just one token minority suddenly "too much"?

Well, that's not very cool, is it?

Sigh of relief...

So here I am at 7:19am, totally distracted from studying for my Ethnic Studies midterm (which, btw, I am completely unprepared for) because I have decided to create a race blog. I guess this stemmed from the many times throughout my experience in Berkeley -- and maybe just living-- in which I've felt there is something seriously wrong/racist about certain situations. And yet, no one seems to point them out, including myself. And as I go home, ponder and relive the seemingly offensive event in my head, I just get more and more frustrated because who am I supposed to complain or tell these things to?

Alas, I've decided a blog. I've been inspired by Kristine, who is an avid sex-blogger -- if one can blog about their everyday experience with sex, I'm going to blog about my everyday experience with race. Of course, I am an Asian American female, and this blog is going to be biased in that sense-- but hey, anyone who speaks about race has their own bias and that isn't a reason to not speak about it. Maybe if we all spoke up a little, we'd all realize that race isn't the problem, society making such a big deal about race is the problem.

I'm not trying to preach or convince others to stop doing what they're doing. Who am I to do so? I'm just attempting to make sense of what I see and hopefully get others to also see what I see.