How do we gatekeep Asian community? Should we?
Consider NBA player Isaiah Hartenstein. Black dad white mom, grew up around blacks, has black mannerisms, but is white as A4 paper and engaged to a white woman. Is he allowed to represent or speak on behalf of black people? Will his children? How about Darren Criss, wasian but looks white, married into whiteness, family completely whitened in 2 generations. Does he speak for us?
Why this matters
The elephant in the room is that a ~50% outmarriage rate means monoracials won't be a majority in the next generation. The risk of not gatekeeping "Asian" is that we allow our political voices to be hijacked, have disparate interests pulling us in different directions, and enable the gradual erasure of Asian identity e.g. casting of WMAF hapas in Hollywood.
We can see glimpses of the future among Japanese Americans which due to assimilation pressures and unique immigration patterns, have an outrageous 70% interracial marriage rate. They are scattered and not politically unified. It's already hard for monoracials to keep heritage language, let alone a Yonsei quapa. The end state is Native Americans: all that's left are whites that are 1/16 Cherokee or whatever.
If the mix is say Jewish, a similarly strong culture that requires diligence to pass down, it's simply not realistic to expect kids to carry that burden, let alone their even further mixed children.
There are also historical classist/colonial implications. White expats in Asia sent their kids to expensive international schools, have cushy lifestyles, and marrying them is seen as aspirational. GIs would abandon the Asian women they impregnated, foisting the offspring of their sexual colonization on locals. In the modern era, you have Asian actresses, writers, filmmakers by and large marrying into whiteness — is it a conflict of interest if the people defining Asian-American identity in popular media are all having half-white kids? Can they in good faith represent monoracials if they have a vested interest in their half-white kids succeeding?
Consider the below, who is more Asian?
- Heritage: adopted monoracial vs hapa raised in asia
- Patrilineality: Eileen Gu with white dad but speaks mandarin vs Alysa Liu who is fully americanized
- Colorism: wasians who can blend in vs blasians who stand out more
- Partner choice: hapa that marries back into asian race vs into whiteness
- Appearance: asian passing WMAF hapa vs white passing AMWF hapa
The hardline position is racial purity, which our heritage countries already practice, but westerners may not find palatable. Taiwanese-Okinawan heartthrob Takeshi Kaneshiro is sometimes criticized for looking too Japanese. Nettouyo on Japanese Twitter accuse any Japanese politician they dislike of having a Chinese grandparent.
Ultimately we cannot avoid this conversation. The Asian community's political voice, networking, and resources should not be a free-for-all for anyone to just plunder at will. The question is where do we draw the line?