barely American

I am watching a bad movie, laughing over popcorn when the woman screams and the man stays calm and tells her she's imagining things. I am watching a good movie, and the woman is afraid while the man tells her to get herself together. I am watching, and the woman tells people: "this man is violent, and I am not safe", and people roll their eyes behind her, snickering in her wake. I am watching, and the woman gets a restraining order that does nothing and saves no one. I am watching, and I am afraid.

My coworker tells me he used to just walk around at night in random cities talking to random people, joining random parties. I said I could never. He asks - what is there to be afraid of?

Entire Georgia county claims no mail-in ballots.

NYC, 2017

Weronika Dudka

A vast majority of Japanese people actually enjoy other people making an effort to spread and enjoy japanese culture, and encourage it. Many make businesses in deliberately taking pictures of people in kimono. A common omiage (gift) for foreigners from japanese people is traditional japanese things such as kimonos, tea seats, shisa dog statues, ect.

And to top it off, basically 80 percent of japanese customs, traditions, and food, came from other countries. Japanese is an integration of different cultures, like america. Japan takes influences from places like korea, china, russia, and europe. If japan stuck to itself, there would be no tempura, japanese tea, tea ceremonies, kabuki, japanese bread, japanese curry, j- pop, anime, cars, or modern fishing techniques. The picture is not “yellow face” they are not making fun of asians. In fact, it looks like they put extra care and research into their work.

Recently a museum in Boston came under a lot of fire for allowing visitors to wear a ‘kimono’ (it was featuring a painting my Monet of a girl – a white girl – in a kimono, and the museum had replicas made that guests of ANY RACE could wear to mimic the painting, Pageant-of-the-Masters style). After protests and heated debate, the museum closed the event.

I was living in Japan at the time, and out of all the *actual* Japanese people I asked, not a single one was offended by the event. Rather, they were excited that people half a world away were showing interest in their culture, and were sad that visitors could no longer enjoy the event.

This party, though somewhat silly in application, is an attempt at experiencing and appreciating another culture. The mom who put this together is not an expert on Japan, but she did her best. She got a lot of things right: there are few things Japan loves more than tea, Pocky, and sakura. 

Where do you draw the line for who is “allowed” to learn about Japan? If the girl were of Japanese descent, would that make it ok (even though her citizenship would be the same as the girl from the photo)? If one of the girl’s parents were from Japan, then would it be ok? 

Are you only allowed to make pizza if you live in Italy? If you’re an Italian immigrant? How do we decide these things??

You can’t say you want to dismantle racism and then in the next breath make rules – based on race – for who people can wear, try, or eat, especially when the intent is obviously to have fun experiencing a culture (as opposed to having fun by making fun of a race or culture, like blackface does). 

There’s a big difference between wearing a kimono and making a culture a costume, as is clearly being done by the young girl here. What is she learning, exactly? Because there are a million things wrong with how she’s dressed (including her makeup, which is based on yellowface interpretation instead of the actual geisha traditional style) and how she’s depicted if the goal is educational. This is like having your child play blackface to learn about the African American experience.

There’s a big difference between how Japanese living in Japan react to foreigners (particularly white people) wearing kimono versus how the Japanese diaspora views it. The former group benefits from ‘cultural showcasing’ while the latter has often been persecuted and discriminated against for it. (remember those concentration camps? anyone? no?) The latter group is the one with children that get called “ching chong”, told their food is weird and smells bad, that their faces aren’t the right shape, that they aren’t really Japanese, and then have their cultures repackaged and sold at a premium.