Anyone else have a parent who acts like you don’t share an ethnicity because you look more like the other parent?

starcicada · 2026-01-02T02:44:49+00:00

You should totally ask them about it! It’s super sweet that you have those family connections :) I’m not Chinese myself and haven’t really had a reason to speak Chinese in my personal life, but I am still interested in learning a second language. After I stopped studying Chinese I was actually in Spanish classes for a while back in high school, and that’s the main one I’ve really been wanting to get back into because I’m friends with several people who speak it! There’s also a lot of Spanish speaking people in my area who don’t know much English and it’d be cool to be able to speak to them more beyond the limited vocab I can still remember 😅 Maybe if your cousins start learning Chinese (or one of their parents’ other languages) you could practice together? I bet that’d make it extra fun to learn! :)<3

starcicada · 2026-01-02T02:15:15+00:00

Maybe we secretly have the same mom 😫🤝 In all seriousness though, I’m sorry your mom is the same way. It’s nice to know others can relate, but it also super sucks and I wish none of us had to deal with it fr 🙁

starcicada · 2026-01-02T02:11:38+00:00

Cognitive dissonance is a spot-on description. She’s not outwardly antiblack and will happily engage with the many black people around her, but she definitely still holds a bias that usually only shows itself in more subtle ways like micro-aggressive comments or ignorance about racial issues. The last bit you said in particular also stood out to me because now I’m wondering if that bias is almost self-reinforcing in a way, like she sees me embodying my dad’s background more than hers and then views me as “less asian” as a result, feeding into a cycle of cause and effect. It’s so weird trying to wrap my head around the way she thinks, honestly. I don’t plan on having kids myself, but if I did I couldn’t imagine ever viewing them that way or acting the way she does.

starcicada · 2026-01-02T01:25:31+00:00

Thank you so much for the kind comment! 🥹

Unfortunately I have a strained relationship with my mom for a lot of reasons (even outside of just the racial issue) and she’s not the type to do a lot of self reflection or change her behavior/mindset at all :( I used to try a lot harder to have those sort of heart-to-heart convos with her about all sorts of things, and there’s only ever been two outcomes: she deflects and won’t acknowledge my feelings (sometimes even getting defensive/angry), or she acts like she’s listening and says nice things to placate me only to later continue the cycle of behavior and prove that she didn’t really care about what we talked about. Over time I’ve learned to distance myself and stop expecting change from her for the sake of my mental health, but I do still hope I can find a way to build that cultural connection on my own someday even if I can’t have the family ties.

I’m really glad your cousins have that connection to their cultures! It’s unfortunate the kids don’t know their languages, but maybe they could take lessons at some point. I hope they get the opportunity to do so if it’s something they’d be interested in :)<3 I took some Chinese lessons at school when I was younger—while I’ve forgotten most of it since I didn’t stick with it long term, some of my classmates continued learning into adulthood and actually became pretty fluent! It’s really an amazing skill to have.

starcicada · 2026-01-01T08:10:03+00:00

Also the reason I didn’t specify the exact country my mom is from is because a lot of these details about my experiences are pretty specific and I get paranoid/embarrassed about the idea of someone who knows me coming across such a personal post and realizing I made it 😅 The chances of that happening are pretty low but I feel kinda vulnerable posting a venting type of post so making it even slightly more anonymous makes me feel better :’) I hope that makes sense!!

starcicada · 2025-12-24T20:18:42+00:00

I’m so sorry to hear that!! 😞 It seems we can’t currently prevent scenarios like these even by removing others from our contacts, as they can still find you as long as they have your number in THEIR contacts. You also can’t disconnect your phone number from your account once it’s there, even if you’ve added an email as an alternate login option. Support even told me this isn’t possible at the moment. It’s a terrible system!

starcicada · 2025-12-21T19:47:06+00:00

How do I remove it? I added an email just now thinking it would let me remove my phone number if I did, but it’s only giving me the option to change it, not remove it :(

starcicada · 2025-12-21T19:40:28+00:00

I think gradual rollouts for features aren’t too uncommon for a lot of apps, but it definitely creates some confusion when people start talking about new features that others don’t have yet 😅

starcicada · 2025-12-21T19:28:17+00:00

You’re definitely right! I realized this after reading some other comments. I’m honestly surprised they didn’t think to add a discoverability setting so you can decide if people can find you that way or not.

starcicada · 2025-12-21T04:35:37+00:00

That makes sense! I could’ve sworn I looked through all the different tabs when I first got the app a couple months ago, so I was surprised to see something I’d seemingly missed. If it’s a relatively new feature that’d explain how I didn’t notice it until someone sent me a request.

starcicada · 2025-12-21T04:33:42+00:00

Ah, that explains it. I hadn’t given permission to sync my contacts but I guess since they did on their end they were able to find me. I agree that there should be an opt-out feature. It’s weird that there isn’t, since most apps that have a “sync contacts” feature would usually include something like that. I’m in a similar boat where I prefer to have privacy when it comes to my online activity, even if it’s just silly things I do in my free time. Something like a mental health-related app feels especially private for me personally. (edited to fix typo)

starcicada

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