[personal profile] december_solstice
This applies to the common unpopular crowd, the black girl in a predominately white school, the nerd, the bright minds that no one seems to understand.

I admit, I'm enjoying the fact that I "fit-in" here. NYC is a melting pot. It;s progressive. Liberating. It's like seeing your soul materialized into a city. I don't only FEEL the part. I look the part. And, we all know, looking the part makes life a ton easier.


Being a little fat white girl in Hawaii is tough. Even though I'm biracial, I never learned my mother's native language. I don't fit in with my own family. I'm too "mainland". My mom is white-washed. In all aspects of the word. She lost her native tongue due to a sense of internal hate for her own race. She is born and raised in the Philippines but talks like a white lady from the suburbs.

In Hawaii, locals dislike "mainlanders" in general, but for most it's more of a poke fun/mockery than an actual deep disdain for white folk. Though Hawaii's colonization is of course part of it, it's also the fact that tourists are often snotty and rude white people. Gentrification is part of it. Rich white folks moving in and making it too expensive for native Hawaiians to buy property. Ha'ole, a Hawaiian word meaning "without breath", used to describe James Cook, is also used for other white people.

This isn't some kind of pathetic reverse racism claim. I am an ally, and locals should speak out. They should dethrone the politicians. They should run the show. They should be involved in the decisions made for the citizens of Hawaii. Plain and simple.

On the other hand, I'm still human. A shitty human at times, but human none the less. No one likes being an outcast. My reason for leaving Hawaii has nothing to do with this. I left because I could not grow there. I didn't fit in. For reasons not related to the color of my skin. I think the culture, along with my living arrangements (LOTS of racism in my household) was only further perpetuating racism within myself and making me a shittier person.

I was in love with a black boy. My grandma still hadn't accepted the fact that my Mom married a ha'ole (a white guy from California). My best friend was a cute Mexican girl who cussed in Spanish, and my Dad hated her. At the same time, I was hating my own diversity. I did not embraced being hapa. I thought being born a mix plate was a death sentence.

Go ahead and pile on a rebellious nature, a hatred for authority, and an overall anti-god, anti-state personality, I wasn't fitting in. At all.

It's as if NYC is finally welcoming me home.

Date: 2015-09-27 06:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ringlat.livejournal.com
As for how it will be from now on... Well I think a lot of Christian stuff is seen kind of like "that thing my grandma does". Ex. my wife's grandma goes to church - for a knitting group and for singing at Christmas, I'm not sure if she does anything else. Her kids only go to church for the singing at Christmas. My wife's generation only goes at Christmas if they happen to be with the parents or grandma.

And I think a lot of people are realizing that Christianity is "bad", as in it comes with a bad culture. When you hear of religious people you tend to hear about crazy Islamists and crazy American Christians for example, or religious cults. Normal, average people who may or may not be Christian see stuff like documentaries or bits of news about America on TV and they hear about these crazy people. So I think that in our generation it's turning a lot more people off, or people feel like they're sort of "too busy" for the kind of religion where you have to go to church every week, etc.

(I have heard of a few crazy religious people here - they were all either foreigners or they were actually just crazy, like they must have been abused as kids or something)

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