Home > Work > Whiter: Asian American Women on Skin Color and Colorism
1 " White women may tan at the beach or apply darkening lotions for a “healthy glow,” but whether any of them would trade their white skin for good is another matter altogether. Comedian Chris Rock, African American, said it best in his 1999 standup routine: “There ain’t a white man in this room that would change places with me. None of you. None of you would change places with me, and I’m rich!” Perhaps this is because light skin along with racial whiteness in the United States is associated with intelligence, wealth, national belonging, and citizenship, and impacts access to opportunities. Despite the tanning culture, Sriya Shrestha argues that “white people want to be white. "
― , Whiter: Asian American Women on Skin Color and Colorism
2 " Asian Americans have been stereotyped as highly successful, suggesting that the American Dream is their reality (perhaps more so than that of other racial minorities), though the uncomfortable truth is that there are wide economic disparities among Asian Americans. Some ethnic groups, such as the Japanese, Chinese, and Indians, have been described as “outwhiting the whites” in terms of economic success, while some Southeast Asian American groups who immigrated to the United States as refugees with few resources (such as Cambodians, Vietnamese, and Laotians) are trapped in intergenerational poverty; in fact, some of these ethnic groups lag well behind Latinx and African Americans in terms of socioeconomic status. "
