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Portrait of a Young Woman, Jean-Etienne Liotard 

I have this one white friend.

And - [mocking] I have this one white friend, I’m not racist. And like - where was I even going with this? [laughs] She’s not even my friend, she’s just someone I know. Okay, whatever, ‘kay, so this one white person that I know - [under breath] (I know a lot, my entire town is white.) Anyway, um, one day, she comes up to me, and she’s like,

“Jenny, what are you?” and, you know, that’s like white person talk for like, [sarcastic mocking] “what FUCKING country do you come from? Like obviously you’re not from here.”  And I’m like, “um, I’m Chinese.”

And she’s like “What? You’re Chinese?”

And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know why that’s so much of a surprise.”

And she’s like “Well, I thought you said you were Asian.”

And - [deep breath] [pause] there was a moment, a good minute and a half, where I left my body and ascended onto another plane, and I screamed into the abyss of that plane [pause] because she did not know that Asian and Chinese are… I, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t even… you know, whatever.

So, return to my body, from the [pause] other plane of existence in which I scream. A lot. And I tell her: “You know, China, China, you see, the country that I’m from, is a part of Asia.”

And she’s like, “Where’s Asia?”

[whispers] She asked me. Where Asia is.

And I say, “Well, Asia consists of, you know..” and I list the different Asian countries and she’s like “Whaat?”

And I’m like [sarcastically] it’s, it’s this thing, you know, that you learn about in like third grade geography. It’s a continent! And she’s like “A continent?”

And I’m like “Yes.”

And she goes, “so it’s not a country?”

I’m like, “No.”

And she’s like “What’s the difference?”

And I’m like [deep breath] “America, you see, has like North, Central, South, so like, take somewhere from Canada; they are North American but they’re also Canadian…”

And she’s like “I don’t understand.”

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