06.12.08
Minority women and the issue of getting along
A lot of the times when I see another Asian girl that is a stranger on the street, for some reason I automatically act hostile towards them. We exchange unapproachable glances, and in my mind I am judging them by the way they look, the way the dress, who they are with, and sizing them up to see if they are any threat to me. Why do I do this? Every Asian girl I have talked to admits to doing this.. Actually, scratch that, every minority girl I know acts this way towards someone of their own race. Why?
It seems Asian and minority men don’t face this same hostility with each other. When I asked my brother if he felt the way that I do towards Asian girls he asked quite shocked, “You actually feel threatened?” I got similar astounded responses from my Asian guy friends as well. Why do they not judge each other as much as Asian women do?
Perplexed by this issue, I turned to my friend Soumya (pronounced like Sonya with an “m”–Somya), a beautiful girl from California who happens to be Indian as well. I asked if she felt threatened at times, and she said yes. We were both surprised by our own responses. It seems that while many girls feel threatened or hostile, rarely do we acknowledge it. Even when we acknowledge it, we don’t even know exactly why we feel and act this way. For me, the actual reason may be a little frightening. It reveals an intense insecurity about our identity as minority and Asian women.
Soumya and I came up with a possible reason for our reaction. Since we share similar backgrounds, I am not claiming this reasoning as a universal answer, but perhaps it will help you in figuring out why you react the way you do. Soumya and I both come from upper middle class wealthy families with parents who immigrated from their respective countries on student visas and scholarships. After the rags to riches transformation of our parents, we were raised in the suburbs surrounded by American pop culture and led two lives: our cultural one with family and family friends, and our school one in a white American society. Eventually we became masters at excelling in the “white” social scene through personality and looks. However, we both recognize that at many points and times in the friends we have made, we each have been the minority novelty: “This is my Asian friend. Isn’t she hot and funny? She’s the hottest Asian I have ever seen. No other Asians are like her.” I am sure many of us have heard similar lines when we were introduced as parties and to other friends of friends.
Soumya and I, it seems, had become exceptionally vain and proud of our differences. Since we recognized that our novelty as a minority allowed us to achieve a level of popularity, it led us to prize our uniqueness. Our fear is that our value and uniqueness is by race only. If my friends decided to talk to another Asian girl, I feel that they will quickly discover that she can be just as good looking and funny and engaging as I can be — if not more. Thus, this fear leads me to automatically become threatened by the appearance of another Asian girl. It seems that I have little faith in my position within my friend group. Furthermore, that I have very little confidence in myself that I would automatically fear somebody better. This is both startling and depressing to me. Do I not trust my friends enough to believe that they see me more than just an exotic Asian girl? The thing is, I know that they do–that they love me. However, I feel objectified when they refer to me as their Asian friend. Is that seriously my only selling point worth sharing to new strangers? Why can’t they refer to me as their funny friend or charming friend? It seems that by acknowledging me as my race, they are saying: You are not equal.
Therein lies the ultimate paradox that Soumya and I discovered. The racial differences that limit us, make us feel insecure, and makes us feel worthless are the same differences that we have benefited from. Our racial novelty has given us a degree of social success, but we hate its implications. Thus, Soumya and I agree we judge and size up other minority women to see how big of a threat they are to the status quo of our social standing. We fear that we will be outshone.
In regards to gender differences–why males don’t feel the degree of hostility–Soumya says it best, “Guys have sports to bond over, but what do we have? Make up? Clothes? If these are our similarities then no wonder girls compete. These are tools to make us look better than the next girl; what we share are the tools we use to compete with one another. A dual with stated weapons of preferences.”
I size up others out of my own insecurity, but I have felt the glare as well. I wonder why other girls do it too? Is it really going to be a case-by-case reason, or are we all responding to our insecurity in our place in a white society?