content warning(s) (CW): discussions of antiblackness, cultural exhange between asian folks/black folks, music, car culture, cursing/swearing
i live in tacoma when i’m not stuck in the overwhelming space that is olympia. i’ve lived there for a while now, and my experiences of living in tacoma inform a lot of my understands of the stuff that we’ve been studying in this class; we’re learning everything academically, but i live this shit, to be blunt. some folks will know what i mean when i say that—others will never truly understand, which sucks for y’all, but it is what it is.
i’m writing this post while listening to dean ft. zico, two korean artists/rappers/musicians, while they sing/perform the song pour up. the high hats tapping in the background hold my attention and get the gears in my head to turn with the beat, and while listening to this song, bobbing my head to the music while typing this up, i remember that this music wasn’t created in a vacuum. the korean community didn’t just start producing hip-hop music out of nowhere—they had to get it from somewhere, someone. as the familiar sounds of 2010 era music flows through my ears, as we reach the end of the song, it reminds me that there’s a lot of cross-cultural interactions between asian and black communities.
after watching the debut (2000) film in class this friday, as well as reading peter bacho’s dark blue suit, i’ve been a lot about the dynamic between the asian community and the black community, and the cultural interactions between the two groups. there’s a very specific way in which asian folks (and all non-black poc communities, consequently) navigate the binary of black and white race relations, which we’ve talked about a few times in class and is something i’ve seen play out before, especially as someone who lives in the 253. because we are in the proverbial middle of the race binary/race spectrum, asian communities either follow the paths set up by white supremacy and try to identify as hard as we can with whiteness and/or the model minority myth, or we rebel and subvert whiteness by practicing our cultural traditions, coming together with our communities, but often at the expense of blackness and black culture. we saw it happening while watching films like better luck tomorrow, the debut, and in books like dark blue suit, and probably some other texts that i’m not remembering while writing this. with better luck tomorrow, we saw it the most with virgil’s character; his persona was very much crafted in a way to make himself as different (from whiteness) as possible by embodying parts of black culture, such as his clothing, his vernacular or the way he spoke, and his use of the N-word, unprompted, completely of his—and the director’s—own volition(s). the same thing applies with the appearance of street racing and car culture that is displayed in both better luck tomorrow and the debut. ruben’s cousin augusto, or gusto for short, and his gang of pinoy boys during the scene outside of the gym where rose’s debut party is going on inside are surrounded by many other filipino folks with cars at their hips, chains on their necks and hip hop playing from the speakers of their cars while ruben and gusto duke it out on the basketball court. we see in their fight later that night as well the complexity of their understandings and practices of their filipino cultures, the class between ruben’s struggle to accept his filipino-ness and decision of hanging out with as many white people as he can and gusto’s resentment of whiteness (and of his mother’s decision to marry a white man, but this is my analysis of their relationship) and subversion of whiteness, embracing his filipino heritage with the appropriating blackness as a part of that dynamic.
in dark blue suit, especially, we saw the tension between asian and black communities, if only for a short moment. buddy’s character drives aaron away with his frustration of not seeming to fit in to either “side” of the race spectrum, screaming at aaron for answers. “what about me?!” to be honest, i’m glad that aaron disowned buddy in that instance; it sucked that aaron had to go through that bullshit interaction. buddy was a shitty friend anyway, and never had anything nice to say about aaron all throughout that chapter.
i think there is solidarity practiced between non-black and black communities. i think that’s definitely possible; there was a strong sense of community between asian and black folks in seattle for a time, for example, during the time when bruce lee and jimi hendrix were attending school before their rise to fame. i see these things play out at home, between friends, between classmates that i remember fondly from my middle school and high school. i see that between me and folks that i know and communicate with in our community here at evergreen. i believe, though, that in order for these communities to really cooperate well with each other, we as non-black people need to realize that we have a certain amount of power, a certain amount of privilege that grants us a lot of leeway to fuck up, and i think for the sake of many people, we need to hold ourselves accountable when we fuck up, or are called out for anti-blackness and internalized racism. it would be good for all of our communities if we could practice that, and not just say it to say it and make ourselves believe things will happen by saying words without putting actions behind them. also, understanding that we are inherently antiblack as non-black people, and at the same time cannot speak for the black community because we don’t know anything about what that experience is like. it’s all very complicated, but manageable nonetheless.
i think, for the sake of relating this topic back to my essay topic, this can definitely apply to the anime community and, more specifically, the cosplay (read: costume play) community, but that’s something i plan on writing up after halloween is over. i look forward to writing that post next week, and i hope this post was coherent and that people take something away from this post for future understandings—that is, if anyone reads these besides me. haha