#WhichAsianAmI
Hi everyone, it’s Asyi (it’s pronounced “Ah-Shi”). Geeks of Color’s very own creative designer. I have never written a blog post on here since I mainly make all the pretty stuff for the page. However, this week #WhichAsianAmI got popular on twitter for a while. If you didn’t know, the hashtag was created by yours truly. With the help of Geeks of Color, so many people were on board with it! Even Rahul Kohli which I’m still geeking out over.
The reason I created this hashtag was to show the world that Asians do not all look alike and that we are not all just Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. This idea came to mind when I kept seeing Karen Fukuhara being fancasted as Mulan for the live action series. Karen Fukuhara is an amazing actor and I absolutely LOVED her in Suicide Squad. However, Mulan is a Chinese warrior and casting a Japanese actor is… just not right. It will be almost as bad as when Ki Hong Lee was casted for a Vietnamese character named ‘Dong’. Yeah, that actually happened:
Source: slanteyefortheroundeye.com
Asians are not interchangeable. We all have our own different and unique cultures. Some cultures might have similarities but that doesn’t make them the same. Chinese culture differs from Japanese culture. Indian culture differs from Pakistani culture. Malay culture differs from Thai culture, so on and so forth.
The hashtag is still going strong and I’m so proud of the Asian community around the world for participating in it. I’m also seeing so many other types of Asians I never knew about! Even I am learning new things with this hashtag! It’s also bringing people together which makes me so happy! We’re building bridges across different Asian cultures from different countries and I’m so glad this hashtag blew up the way it did. I couldn’t have done this without the help of Geeks of Color and the other POC geek pages who helped spread awareness of it.
Keep it going guys. Be Asian and proud! #WhichAsianAmI
