{"id":96,"date":"2012-02-02T09:09:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T09:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2012\/02\/why-arent-people-talking-to-me\/"},"modified":"2012-02-02T09:09:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T09:09:00","slug":"why-arent-people-talking-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2012\/02\/why-arent-people-talking-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Aren’t People Talking to Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Today I\u2019m responding to Rebecca Cusey\u2019s blog Let\u2019s Talk about Race Baby: \u00a0A White Girl Experiences Minority<\/a>, where she talks about being a minority in her \u2018hood, and her perception of Blacks\u2019 loudness.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"A couple years after we moved to a pretty White Boston suburb, my bi-racial 5th<\/sup>\u00a0grade daughter shouted to a Chinese boy while biking, \u201cWell, you know I don\u2019t have any White friends!!\u201d<\/div>\n
Frankly, she had almost\u00a0no<\/em>\u00a0friends since moving to town.\u00a0 I attributed this to her extreme shyness, introversion, striking prettiness (shy+quiet+pretty=girls think you\u2019re stuck-up)<\/em>, and moving after most girls already made their friends.<\/div>\n
But she clearly thought it was her race. \u00a0She saw herself as the only Chinese kid in her class. \u00a0While this wasn\u2019t totally true, it was almost true\u2014most other Asian kids were boys.<\/div>\n
Rebecca Cusey just blogged\u00a0Let\u2019s Talk about Race, Baby: \u00a0A White Girl Experiences Minority<\/a>, where she explored both how it feels to be White and a minority in her \u2018hood, and her perceptions of Blacks\u2019 loudness. \u00a0I\u2019m taking her up on her dare!<\/div>\n
I grew up in the majority since Hawaii is 70% Asian\/Pacific Islander, but I\u2019ve been on the other side ever since moving to the Mainland for college.\u00a0 A challenge of being the minority is you never quite know what\u2019s really going on with others.\u00a0 When I was an average looking, low on the social scale adolescent in Hawaii, I just attributed where I stood to my bad hair and overly intense geeky personality.<\/div>\n
But on the Mainland, everything was called into question.\u00a0 Is no one talking to me because I\u2019m boring\/unattractive\/have spinach in my teeth or because I\u2019m the only Chinese girl in the room?\u00a0 Am I dateless because of me or because White\/Black\/Latino guys think all Chinese girls look alike (as one guy said)?\u00a0 Or conversely, do some guys want to\u00a0date me ONLY because I\u2019m Chinese and they have \u201cyellow\u201d fever?<\/div>\n
Years ago, I wrote a dissertation on\u00a0The Interracial Friendships of White and Asian College Students<\/em>. \u00a0 Although my original proposal included studying 4 groups: \u00a0White, Asian, Black and Latino, after I collected surveys from 20 Blacks and 16 Latinos, an advisor warned me off the record that I would commit academic suicide if I studied any group other than my own and Whites.\u00a0 \u201cWhites are fair game for everyone,\u201d he explained.<\/div>\n
The White and Asian elite Eastern university students often talked about the importance of \u201ccomfort zones\u201d in friendship.\u00a0 At the time, most friendship theory emphasized the importance of similarities in forming friendships.\u00a0 My research raised how differences, especially cultural ones, repel.<\/div>\n
Loudness was one of those repellants.\u00a0 In fact, the students reported an expressiveness continuum from quiet to loud as:<\/div>\n
Asian\u2013> \u00a0White\u2013> \u00a0Latino\u2013> \u00a0Black<\/strong><\/div>\n
Although Asians, Latinos and Blacks have similarities\u2014all racial minorities, all from collective\/communitarian cultures as opposed to White individualistic culture, all low in power in our country\u2014White and Asian students felt intimidated by their louder brethren. \u00a0They perceived that Asians and Whites hung out more because they were quieter, and Blacks and Latinos hung out more because they\u2019re more expressive.<\/div>\n
I\u2019m not a quiet Asian. \u00a0I\u2019m drawn to Black and Latino friends precisely because I enjoy how different their culture is from my own. \u00a0In my line of work, it\u2019s also my job to initiate with students, faculty and the staff I supervise. \u00a0But when I\u2019m \u201coff duty,\u201d the lone non-White in the room, and find everyone talking in groups to everyone but me, I can feel like I\u2019m back in college, shaking hands with a fraternity brother who\u2019s winking at a White girl across the room.<\/div>\n
With fellow moms in my suburb, mostly I think it\u2019s my fault\u2014I work, I rarely can volunteer at the kids\u2019 schools, I\u2019m congenitally bad at small talk (especially White suburban mom chit-chat).<\/div>\n
But like my daughter, sometimes I can\u2019t help but wonder.<\/div>\n
This first appeared on What She Said<\/i><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I\u2019m responding to Rebecca Cusey\u2019s blog Let\u2019s Talk about Race Baby: \u00a0A White Girl Experiences Minority, where she talks about being a minority in her \u2018hood, and her perception of Blacks\u2019 loudness. A couple years after we moved to a pretty White Boston suburb, my bi-racial 5th\u00a0grade daughter shouted to a Chinese boy while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Aren't People Talking to Me?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today I'm responding to Rebecca Cusey's blog Let's Talk about Race Baby:  A White Girl Experiences Minority, where she talks about being a minority\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2012\/02\/why-arent-people-talking-to-me\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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