Am I Woke? – My dilemma with Unwoke Asian and their fallacious comments
By: Nguyen
Am I woke? I don’t know. I’m still learning and growing as a young adult (almost hitting my thirties … not sure if I’m young or not LOL). However, I think I have seen “unwoke” Asians throughout my life and how they interact with each other, otherwise known as “virtue-signalling”, on social media. They usually “preach to the choir” about the injustices within Asian-American issues, but do so by speaking to things that do not contain any substance (e.g., the lack of quantitative and/or qualitative evidence) or coherent logic. Many “unwoke” Asians rely on personal attacks (ad hominem), generalizations, and/or anecdotal evidence (based on their own personal experience or they give a few rare incidents/circumstances instead of making a sound argument). I hope I don’t sound pretentious when writing this blog post (sorry in advance!). Read More
I’m a type of individual who enjoys good (as well as not-so-great) movies. When I first saw the trailer for Crazy Rich Asians (2018), I had mixed feelings. Should I watch this movie because it had an “Asian-American Cast”? Should I buy tickets to show my support since we all know that there is a lack of “Asian Representation” in mainstream media..? Or should I not watch it because it does not “really” represent the Asian community as a whole? Since it is a story about “rich” Asians. Perhaps, we need a film like Black Panther (2018) or Get Out (2017) that investigate the dynamics between Asian-America and their conjunction with white America. This trailer reeks of a movie studio wanting to exploit “Asianness”, rather than expose the racism in North America in which Asian-Americans are struggling. Sigh. I am in a predicament in which I want an Asian-American lead protagonist to succeed in the box office, yet the movie I feel is not really about “Asian” identity. I have some concerns that I want to talk about. 
