[Text ID : A red text Risograph print sits a on a red background. The title reads “Don’t Call Me Wasian,” subtitled “a hapi kid’s thoughts on the power of words when defining identity and community (HAPI - Half or Hint or Heap of Asian Pacific Islander).”

The full text reads “It is a beautiful thing, to feel seen, to feel known. To find the ambiguity of who you are clarified into community. To have a way to say, I am this! This is me. We exist. Together. I felt this many years ago under a different word. Hapa, the Hawaiian word for half, briefly chosen as an umbrella term for mixed Asian Pacific Islander identity, until concerns that its widened definition was a dilution, an appropriation, marked a sticky smudge of apology on its use. So I understand the sentiment, the desire to find belonging in a word like Wasian. But still I reject it. Let me tell you why. The question of whether Asians could assimilate into whiteness has long played out in the history of the United States.* Any centering of whiteness continues that conversation. With an identity like “wasian,” White Supremacy will happily take us as its perfected model minority, but once we have been othered from our true community - interwoven kids of every background - we will simply be another identity consumed by White Homogeneity** at the expense of our cultural family. This does not mean we are not “white.” This does not mean we are not “asian.” This does not mean we cannot seek out and find community at the intersection of those experiences. But as our impact grows, it becomes our responsibility to unite our community using terms that are as easy to share with our friends and family as the food we passed across the kids table growing up. By the current economic and social trends of the US, mixed kids with white and asian backgrounds will be more affluent than other backgrounds. We will be more plentiful. We will have more high profile visibility as a result. That level of influence is a privilege. Now is the time, let us use that privilege to uplift our entire mixed and third-culture community. Let us intentionally say, this is our community - vast and diverse - unflattened by “white,” ungeneralized by “asian.” The term “wasian” will still have its place, but if we want to build a truly strong mixed identity, it is time for other words to take the forefront. So, my beautiful happimo, who are we? Will we choose to be White? Will we choose to be Asian? Or will we choose to define and build the beautiful multicultural more we always have been and always will be?”

Footnotes- *see Ozawa v. United States and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind

Today, Joshua Bassett's memoire book, Rookie, came out. And I've been so inspired, I thought it was time to start recording my own thoughts.

I've had tumblr blogs in the past, but I've never posted for anything not fandom related. I hope to find other artists and young'ish adults like myself who can relate.

I am a gay, half white half Japanese, male living in Los Angeles after living here my whole life.

I like to do art on the side, and my first job was working at my local mom and pop style running store.

I like working with kids, and I see myself being an elementary school teacher once I'm more settled down.

Along with Joshua Bassett's book and music, I have been really inspired by Heated Rivalry. I really appreciate the new rise in half Asian / mixed background stories, and I really appreciate how Chase Hollander's character in Heated Rivalry is also a gay, half-Japanese, autistic individual like myself. I even especially like how Shane is indirectly portrayed as autistic, and I see so many similarities between himself and I.

Seeing characters like Shane on the big screen makes me realize I would like to contribute to making and sharing my own stories, and hopefully interest and attract the eyes of the next generation of children or fellow adults as I also navigate adulthood.