Growing up asian in a white conservative household
I was adopted as a baby from China. They always told me I was beautiful growing up, and were never aggressively racist. My mom even did little things like celebrating Chinese New Year and putting me in Chinese lessons when I was little. So it’s not like they weren’t trying. It was just the little things.
Stuff like ”[INSERT CELEBRITY] is really good looking, even though they’re asian!”. Jokes about asian people looking funny, talking funny, etc. Mocking accents and eye shape. Comments about how happy I should be for them “saving me” from China. Weird questions about my thoughts on race mixing. If my partner has a “thing for asians”. Microagressions, I guess. Typical stuff like that.
It makes me feel gross and othered. It doesn’t help that the area I grew up in is like 95% white, and I’d overhear comments like that sometimes. It’s just especially upsetting from my own family. I feel like a consolation prize for my parents being unable to conceive naturally. Or a trophy to prove that they’re “good people”. My mom has a bumper sticker that says “adoption: the loving option”. Am I wrong for being off put by that? Am I overly sensitive? Maybe I wouldn’t be skeeved out by it if it wasn’t for their comments growing up.
And I also feel gross that my partner, when I asked him about it, said he does have a “thing” for other races. Because it’s apparently hot to fuck someone who “doesn’t look like him”. Idk. I just feel disgusting.
I’m 26 now and I have no idea how to sort through his. Should I just try to be okay with it? Am I overreacting? Idk. It’s exhausting to even think about.