I was out shopping once when a man came up to me and asked for a favor. The kind samaritan in me asked how I could help him, but I certainly would’ve just walked away if I knew he was planning to hold up a dress against my body to imagine how I would look in it. Noticing my shocked expression, he quickly tried to justify himself by telling me that his girlfriend was Asian and he just wanted a visual of how the dress would look like on an Asian girl. Because every single Asian girl has the same hair, face, body type and height, right?
“There’s flowers on it too,” he pointed out, oblivious to my shock. “Asian’s like flowers, right?”
At the time, I was too paralyzed by shock to respond to the man, but what if I had the power to change that? What if we could all go back in time and say what was really on our minds? What would you say to the people who yelled out Asian slurs as you walked by? What would you say to the kids at school who automatically assumed you were good at math or the people who laughed and asked if you could even see out of such small eyes?
This past weekend, BuzzFeed released a video called “Asian Americans Respond To Racist Comments” where Asian Americans spoke out about their experience with racism and how they would respond now. Check it out below:
Have you dealt with racism and wish you had the opportunity to respond? Let us know!
