The Fairy Princess’s wings are fluttering a bit slower today, because, MANAA (Media Action Network for Asian Americans) via their founder, Guy Aoki, have taken it upon themselves to decide whether or not “Hapas” count.
Randall no last name, at Rafu Shimpo is giving this issue a wider bigoted stance by thoughtfully expanding on this topic with this amazing title – ‘Does an Actress Count As An Asian American if She Doesn’t Look it?” by Randall.
Does she ‘count‘?
Old Rafu (Randall, no last name listed) read Mr. Aoki’s column of bombastic bullshit and decided he would conduct his own very scientific experiment, with his vast knowledge of mixed race people and try and decide whether or not Actress, Chloe Bennett of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ‘counted’ as Asian American – he asked his wife.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Chloe Bennett
She said no.
Who get’s to decide? THEY do.(?)
Apparently, Hapas – of which the Fairy Princess is one,
we are the unwanted of the Asian American Community. Oh, what IS that word that they use so frequently with derision? What IS it?
Cher?
“We have a growing dilemma with Hapa actors. If they can pass for white, that’s often what their characters are. Yet the networks count them as Asian. As I’ve told them before, while that benefits their company to show how “diverse” they are, it doesn’t benefit the community if no one knows they’re part Asian.’ Guy Aoki (article)
A growing dilemma.
Well, yes – the Asian American population IS growing, but the numbers are not those of the “Purebloods’ to use Harry Potter terminology, it’s us Half-Breed Muggles that are cause for concern. According to Bloomberg, mixed race people identifying as Asian and Caucasian has INCREASED by 87 per cent in the last decade.
Oh my goodness, whatever WILL those “Purebloods” do if we get out of our cages? Although 87 per cent.…guess we are out.
WHY would we, the Asian American community, allow this kind of destructive thinking?
Everyone would rather protest MISS SAIGON, instead of looking at the intrinsic racism of the Asian American community and it’s way of having to put everyone in a box? Oh, wait of COURSE you would rather protest MISS SAIGON, it has a number where it addresses the issue of mixed race children.
Are ‘we’ really NOT going to reach out and slap MANAA and Rafu Shimpo for what is, actually, hate speech. It’s not any different than what Hitler used to say – are we going to, now as they did in Nazi Germany, start measuring our features for the purity of our traits? And if we, the Hapas, do not measure up to ‘their’ standards, we have to, forever after, be banished from the Asian American community?
No more noodles for us Hapas? That’s it?
It seems harsh. It seems….misguided.
What THINKING person would DO or SAY this? Who could endorse this way of thinking?
Norah Jones, you are mixed race – thoughts?
What IF….our hair is just a bit lighter?
Maggie Q – Go Ahead, tell HER she’s not Asian
What IF….our eyes are different?
Actress Vanessa Hudgens
What IF, we wind up on TV with millions of people dreaming of us at night?
Ian Anthony Dale – Hawaii 5.0
But perhaps, perhaps Hapas are not just focused on the small screen? Perhaps our plans of decimation of the Asian American Community go BEYOND the television, BEYOND the Broadway….maybe we are thinking BIGGER! Oh NO!
Wait a MINUTE, wait a MINUTE – what IF some of us become film stars?
Keanu Reeves – Matrix star
Nancy Kwan, from World of Suzie Wong & Flower Drum Song fame
Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Nominee, True Grit
Korean film sensation, Daniel Henney
WHAT IF….Hapa Actors take an even BOLDER STEP and change their look FOR A ROLE?
David Lee McInnis in IRIS
What IF….we decide to celebrate the OTHER side of our heritage and take a role THAT way?
Sharon Leal – Dreamgirls Movie – incidentally, she is the recipient of an Asian Excellence Award, which I know, because I was AT that ceremony – uh HUH
What IF we become SUPERMODELS?
Naomi Campbell – DUCK!
I want to be there when you tell Tyson Beckford that he ‘doesn’t count’ as being part Asian….tell his abs first, I’m sure his fist will answer
WHAT IF…we go into MUSIC and have the WHOLE WORLD dancing and singing along with US?
Bruno Mars, he wins GRAMMYS
WHAT IF WE ARE CROWNED QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE???????????
Miss Universe 1997, Brook Mahealani Lee
What’s that? The Fairy Princess is being too sensitive over SOMEONE ELSE deciding if she, AS A HUMAN, counts?
Maybe I should lighten up? Watch some TV?
To sum up what MANAA and Rafu are saying – Hapas do not count UNLESS a storyline is provided to fully expand upon the Asian-ness of their character on a show, which should be done the very FIRST time they hit the screen and repeated each and EVERY time they are seen.
What do they want, for the character to say, “Well, as my Chinese Mom said….” when they begin a scene?
When they begin EVERY scene?
Hello “Number One Son” part Deux.
So that the Asian Americans at home can feel comfortable. So that the Asian Americans at home – sitting on their tukus, – can point to the screen and feel better about the fact that if they find the Actor or Actress ‘hot’ that it is ONLY because the Actor/Actress is Asian? Because why? You are afraid of finding people attractive who are not Asian?
Wow.
So as a Hapa Actor, we need to have a full array of t-shirts with our Mom or Dad’s photo emblazoned across them in order to ‘count’? And we need to appear IN them every time we are in public?
So me, I do not count – and the people above do not ‘count’.
But my son, who is 1/2 Korean, Chinese, Irish, & Welsh, would count – but only if he stands with his Korean American Dad, but not with his Eurasian Mom. And they would totally not count my adorable nieces because they are Hapa but have blue eyes?
I should have Russell Wong kick each and every one of your asses – twice!
Romeo must kick your asses!
Dear Purebloods – let me tell you something straight – the ONLY people that need to ‘count’ Hapas, is the US Census. Hapa actors are under NO obligation to wave an Asian banner every time they appear.
The fact that you cannot tell what a Hapa person looks like means, actually, that you are cloistered in a limited world, where you do not get the full benefit of what it means to be an American, what it means to be a World Citizen, and what it means to be a Human.
If you are a mixed race person of a certain age, it is because two people came together despite what society told them, and celebrated their differences and their mutual humanity. And if you are a mixed race person of a certain age, you have been THROUGH IT. So have your Parents. Your entire Family.
I salute you. I SEE you.
We are mixed race people, and we get to reap ALL, repeat ALL, the benefits of ALL our Heritages. We do not CARE if you are not comfortable with US, because you have made it your LIFE’S WORK to deny that we exist. Hapa Children have LONG been shunned – historically – by Asian Communities, so it is with GREAT humor that I tell you why you are so worried…
Because WE are Asian America 4.0, and we, like ALL upgrades, are making the Asian American community faster, and more efficient.
This makes you afraid? Well go ahead then, go ahead and be VERY afraid.
In closing, I want to address the Network Angle – that they count Hapa actors on their Diversity ‘report card’. They have every right to do so.
I say that as a former Vice Chair of the Asian American Subcommittee of SCREEN ACTORS GUILD, and as a former SAG National EEOC member.
Heritage is Heritage. If you declare yourself, if you ‘come out’ as Asian American, then you ARE Asian American. You ‘get’ to count, and you are counted. I count you, and so should the Networks.
Period.
Drop the mic and take us home, Audra McDonald….
MANAA and Rafu Shimpo can Kiss my Hapa Fan Tan Fannie!
(And BTW, I worked with MANAA Member, Aki Aleong years ago – and Mr. Aoki – HIS name was changed. So if you are going to go after Chloe Bennett for the same thing, why don’t you ask Aki why he changed his)
fairyprincessdiaries 
Chloe Bennett is Asian American? Yay! Woot! I look totally like my Chinese dad and the only bit of my mother I can see is the bridge of my nose. If I had had a bro or sis who’d picked up my mother’s genes, would we need to have a race war or sumthin’ to make the purebloods happy? What happens when the purebloods have mixed children or grandchildren. They ging to disown them? We’re not ossified in time, preserved in aspic. We all walked out of Africa anyhow 70,000 years ago.
Speaking of Chloe Bennett, I think Ming Na who is also on Agents of SHIELD must be half White too like Chloe Bennett, possibly Portuguese or so, since she was born in Macau. She looks more Eurasian rather than Asian. And Russell Wong, who is mentioned in this post, looks like he could depict her brother in some episodes even though he tends to look more Asian than Eurasian. They look like the could be siblings on that show. Talk about adding another Hapa to the show.
Hey Princess, love the blog. Just wanted to say, I agree that the ‘name change’ issue is totally up to whoever it is – in this business, change your name to whatever the hell gets you more work! – but I’d also add the following:
I don’t necessarily think it’s the community being racist and trying to ‘put everyone in boxes’ but the *industry* most definitely does. Certainly you see casting breakdowns which specify ‘Asian only’ (well, over here they say ‘Chinese or Japanese’ as Asian = Indian) or ‘Caucasian only’. Who gets to do what, or ‘count’ as x or y is all determined by the stereotype-tinted eyes of casting directors and producers.
What I guess Mr Aoki is trying to say is that if you’re going to tick that box on the form which says ‘Asian’ (which is entirely up to you) and therefore occupy the Asian quota the studios impose, it does help for the visibility of Asians in the media if you identify with that part of your heritage in some way. Doesn’t mean you have to start eating with chopsticks or start every sentence with ‘Confucious say…’ (in fact, I would be furious if you did). But, over in the UK where Asians are practically invisible in all forms of cultural media, it would be really awesome if we could get any media coverage of someone Hapa who says something like ‘Yeah. I’m part Asian. It’s cool.’ That’s good for the WHOLE community 🙂
My guess, and this is only a guess, is that a lot of purebloods resent Hapas because they are just jealous. Jealous because they perceive Hapas as having an easier time than they do, even though you don’t. They resent you for having what they don’t, a foot in the door of white America. They resent that you have European features, and they don’t. They resent you because most of you are the product of an Asian mother and a white father, and even though they know nothing about you, they assume that you are a product of a colonial era sexual power dynamic. They resent you because they think your confidence comes from a sense of entitlement by virtue of being Hapas.
I know you from your writing and your work, and I don’t think they should resent you.
It’s fucked up, but I just think purebloods are just jealous. Go easy on them.
And it’s idiotic how people treat half-Asian girls as well as half-Asian guys for not acting like heterosexual Asians. Of course, half-Asian guys or any other mixed guy are usually the worst targets of jealous pure blood guys that are very prejudiced towards them for interacting with their pure blood girlfriends or wives. Pure blood guys are indeed more jealous of mixed race guys than vice versa. Imagine that on season 10 of The Bachelorette or any other dating reality show involving one girl and plenty of other guys.
Also, it’s not about having two parents of a different race but grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents too. White great-great grandparents in both sides of the family in my case that is. Even if my mother was purely White, yeah my brother and I would still look the same, except my brother is a bit more Asian-looking than me. And relationships and marriages to pure bloods are far more difficult for mixed people. Same goes for dating. You have to identify as one race. The bad part is that mixed people who date and marry pure bloods are more likely to get abused and/or divorced because of mixed, or blended, cultural expectations and upbringing that confuse the pure blood partner or spouse. People from interracial families or descended from them tend to be more modern and flexible whereas people from pure blood families tend to be more traditional and stricter which is why mixed people are more likely to experience abuse and/or divorce just like my half-Filipino/White American aunt on my mother’s side. Her husband was a pure blood Filipino and he and his family were very abusive towards her and they hated her parents for being an interracial couple. Her White American father is my mom’s bio uncle which makes my mom half Filipino and White-American, which I believe stems from a paternal great-grandparent being White. My dad is Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese. And then there’s my half-Filipino/White cousin who’s been treated terribly by pure blood White and Asian girls alike in the past because their parents wouldn’t let them date him and set them up with other pure blood guys. I bet his late White father is haunting those girls these days. Same goes for my half Asian/White ex. pure blood girls have treated him terribly and pure blood guys have ganged up on him because they were jealous of him, especially pure blood Asians and Whites. He couldn’t look Asian nor White. He was half Japanese and Irish. My mom hated him even though she’s half Asian/White but the only problem is was that she was raised more in Filipino culture and tried to hook me up with pure blood Filipino guys who were nothing but “bitches” instead while he was a nice, family-oriented guy.
Pure bloods are sometimes a problem for mixed people, depending on the environment you live in. And they are difficult to deal with.
Is this satire? If not, it doesn’t really address the issue: the entertainment industry claiming technical “diversity” but not having that “diversity” truly reflected on the screen. Can the studios or networks really boast about the ethnic diversity of a cast that includes hapa performers if the audience doesn’t know that those performers are part-Asian?
Things are slightly better now for Asian American actors, but I remember back in the 1990s how the creative team behind “Saturday Night Live” would swat away calls to include more APA regular performers in the cast by saying that Rob Schneider was half-Philipino, so that base was covered. But how many people knew that Rob Schneider was part-Asian? So, SNL could claim on paper that it had an Asian American in the cast without that fact being recognized by the audience. Stealth diversity isn’t good-faith diversity. Is that so hard to see?
And it seems a shame that this issue is setting Asian Americans against each other when the focus ought to be on the entertainment industry. It reminds me of the “Miss Saigon” casting controversy in 1990, where Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce was cast as a lead character described as “Eurasian” (in the musical’s original London libretto, no reference is made to this ostensibly Asian character’s European heritage). When the APA creative community objected to a non-Asian actor in the role, some mixed-race Asian Americans accused those community members of ignoring hapa issues. So, this situation ended up with APAs fighting among themselves — while a non-Asian actor got to open Broadway’s first Asian male lead in 15 years.
As one of your other commentators said, it’s the entertainment industry that puts APAs in a box, not those calling for more recognizably Asian actors in the media. I’m sorry that mixed-race Asian Americans who don’t necessarily “look Asian,” or identify as full-Asian, feel the need to disparage those who want to see more identifiably Asian faces in the historically racially exclusionary media.