This HuffPost Canada page is maintained as part of an online archive.

Sh*t Asians Say When Whitey Isn't Around

Remember when you were a teenager hanging out in your friend's basement, and even though their parents may have been super cool, weren't you relieved when theywent upstairs? Well, that's how we Asians feel when the last non-Asian person leaves the room. Once we have racial quorum, this is how we kick it...
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
Tetsuro Shigematsu

Remember when you were a teenager hanging out in your friend's basement, and even though their parents may have been super cool, weren't you relieved when they finally went upstairs? Well, that's how we Asians feel when the last non-Asian person leaves the room. Once we have racial quorum, this is how we kick it...

First off, anyone with outstanding membership dues must settle up immediately or risk forfeiting their Asian Discount Card on the spot. This is deeply humiliating for Asians, but annual fees aren't cheap. However, a one-month grace period is automatically allotted to the first person who pays for lunch. Ever seen a couple of Asians fighting over the bill? That's because both their accounts were seriously past due.

ANGRY ASIAN MAN

Once we have that business out of the way, we'll kick things off by discussing the latest posts by our favorite blogger: Angry Asian Man AKA Phil Yu, who is our Edward R. Murrow, forever ready to callout racist BS like how yet another Hollywood movie has the audacity to exploit another Asian story and cast it with NON-Asian actors.

This topic never gets old because it never ceases to amaze. Imagine hearing they were going to cast an adaptation of Little Women with all male actors just because. WTF?!

Angry Asian Man is a blog that only Asian people are allowed to read. It's not password protected, but the site accesses your computer's webcam to assess the size of your epicanthic folds. You know, chubby eyelids? White people are only permitted to gaze at the website if their eyes remain closed. Genius, right?!

ALL WHITE PEOPLE LOOK THE SAME

Sometimes we'll confide in each other that we think white people all look the same. If we're in any setting where there is a glut of older, white, baby boomer men, like politics, business, or any place that uses electricity, they all begin to blur together, and what we see is The Man from Glad®.

OUR RACIST ENCOUNTERS THROUGHOUT THE WEEK

Eventually we'll vent about all the racist incidents we experienced in the past week. As in: "Where are you from? No, I mean where are you really from?" Implicit in these questions is the inference that even if our ancestors built the CN Railway, we will always be perpetual foreigners.

DIRTY PANTY VENDING MACHINE

As a Nihonjin who is an otaku of bukkake, (and shame on you if you know what that means) no one can outflank me in sheer perviness. At parties, I will highjack conversations into territory so taboo it would make the Marquis de Sade pull out his iPhone and pretend to write text messages.

But the moment some white guy broaches the dreaded Used-Panty-Vending Machines-in-Tokyo topic, (and they ALWAYS do), I say nothing. It's not that I don't have an opinion or a hilarious anecdote to share, but I know as an Asian joining in, this is akin to a black man doing an impression of a monkey at an all-white party.

"The Code" prohibits me as a self-respecting Azn from reinforcing negative stereotypes about fellow Asians.

Only under the snow dome of silence with fellow Asians do the gloves come off. The way we joke about all the dogs we kidnapped and ate, the car accidents we caused, or the cephalopods we deflowered, and all the other racist meconium that can't be printed here would blow your WASPY cortex.

CONCLUSION

All of which isn't to say we don't love white people. In fact, two out of three Asian women agree: white men are preferable. But that doesn't mean we don't need our space, the way Walmart employees will always need their break room.

So the next time you see a group of Asians who pause in conversation as you approach, let 'em know you're wise to their ways by throwing down a couple of twenties on the table -- cancelling all grace periods on delinquent fees -- then lean in and growl: "Your Asian Discount feels to me a lot more like a WHITE surcharge! "

Jaws will drop. Then moonwalk your way out the door LIKE A BOSS.

Close
This HuffPost Canada page is maintained as part of an online archive. If you have questions or concerns, please check our FAQ or contact support@huffpost.com.