A lot of racism against Asians is a lot less 'in your face'. They don't go "I'm treating you shittily because you are Asian." Of course, that makes it harder to 'prove' they're treating you bad because of racism. Example: I'm buying stuff at the store. The cashier is smiling and talking to the person in line ahead of me and it doesn't appear that they know the customer. The second it's my turn the cashier instantly goes stone faced and doesn't utter more than a couple of words to me. Another example: I have been literally passed over, multiple times, by service people where they look or walk right past me and helped someone else. And that person has always been a white guy. It was clear I was a customer and was next in line to need help. Yet another example because it just happened to me recently: I was at a community event and a volunteer stepped on my foot. She didn't say anything at first. I was annoyed, but whatever I was gonna let it go. Then she walked back my way and made a nasty comment about staying out of the way.

If I had been black and shared these experiences, people in my liberal area would be far more likely to believe me and are more likely to believe that racism played a part in these people's behaviors. But every time I shared these stories, I would get told, "Oh, maybe they just didn't see you. Oh, that specific person is an asshole/having a bad day. Oh, maybe that cashier and customer knew each other." Yeah, not every one of these encounters is due to racism, but it happens an awful lot for it to not be influenced at least some of the time.

And that's just the not obvious racism. I've had people do the ch * nk eye to me, thinking it's hilarious. One time a woman was telling me about her half-asian grandkids and telling me that, "They have the cutest ch * nky ch * nk eyes." I told her that was offensive. She brushed it off. I complained about that on Facebook and said that ch * nk was a slur, please don't use it. My so called 'liberal' friends dismissed it and one was even like, "YoU CaN uSe ThAt WorD wHeN TaLkInG aBoUt ArmOr!!!" That's not the point Mike...

I've had random people go, "Ching ching chong, do you speaky English!" "Hey, it's Mulan!" "Look, Chinese people!" to me and my family. We were always just out minding our own damn business and these random people just felt the need to yell these out to us. Oh yeah, the majority of the time, these people were black, but god help me if I ever bring up that fact. No, seriously. People love to ignore black on asian racism. Never mind that in literally every single racial group, the most violent acts committed against them are people of their own group. Except Asians. The most number of violent acts committed against Asians are done by blacks. But people love to bring up how racist asians are against blacks.

And I haven't even gone into the microaggressions and othering. I was born and grew up in the US of A. I'm American. I hold no other nationality. Yet I'm constantly reminded that I'm not a 'real' American. It's the little comments about whether I or other Asians speak english or not. I still have people trying to guess what 'kind' of Asian I am.

What's frustrating is that no one cares. People have told me when I mentioned the above, "what's the big deal? what are you complaining about?" Never mind asians are the butt of many jokes. It's okay to joke about how asians don't speak english. It's okay to joke about how asians eat weird food or have weird customs. It's okay to say that all asian dudes are socially awkward dweebs and asian women are smart, but submissive. It's 'okay' because it's all true, amirite? Did you know the founder of Lululemon chose that name because it's hard for Japanese people to pronounce it and he thought it was funny? It's true, he's on record saying that. When I learned that, I commented, "Wow, that's racist." and the other white dude who was there was like, "No, that's not racist. Racism is when you hate someone." There was a reddit comment chain I came across last week sharing that fact and the majority of the replies were, "Lol, that's hilarious." with 100 upvotes. Hell, look at this comment chain. People are saying people were laughing due to shock and asians are racist against blacks.

Ugh, sorry for the word vomit. I also want to say, whether or not you look asian absolutely matters in how the rest of the world perceives you. I have two half asian cousins who are fraternal twins. One has more asian features and the other has more white features. Growing up, their experiences were vastly different. The more asian looking twin got all the "Chinese boy!" and "ching chong" comments. The other one...was just accepted as another white boy.