For this week’s online assignment in 300 words or more: Explore your reactions to one of the readings based on your critical thinking and experiences. Were there key claims/arguments/ideas that confused you, resonated with you, or made you wonder? If so, state these key claims. If you are responding to the poem, be very clear and explicit as to what the poem is about and what it is doing? Then, respond to at least one classmate’s post in 200 words or more by 5 pm on Tuesday. 

Post by 5pm Tuesday, Mar 1st. If you post your reading reflection after the deadline it will make it difficult for your colleagues to read and comment before our Wednesday class and your post will be substantially marked down. You will need to complete this discussion post requirement to receive your Monday attendance points.

Important Note: Please be mindful always of your engagement with everyone in our class. Consider the social significance of identities (class, gender, race, etc.) and the ways in which such differences may be affecting the ways in which you (and others) are participating. 

Answer:

I read “Stand Up” by Cathy Park Hong, and I really want to focus on the part where she talks about the anti blackness, colorism and homophobia within the Asian Community and how being queer or dark skinned will make you looked down upon in the Asian community. When Hong talks about how the Asian community have been inflicting the same type of hate and racism towards black or brown people, or even people of their own kind with darker skin, it reminded me of the Colorism that we have within my own ethnicity (the Filipino Community).This is an issue I have personally experienced within my own family and it comes to show that the standards that the Asian Community have placed among themselves has been set so high, that it is sometimes quite infuriating. They are willing to bring down their own kind if they do not fit that standard. I am a Filipino and I know a lot of women back in the Philippines take iv glutathione for skin whitening because the beauty standard over there is to have really pale skin. Some people are just naturally pale but a lot of Filipinos have brown skin, and a lot of them are seen as poor or not beautiful for having darker skin. That beauty standard has also been harmful towards so many people all over the world by belittling so many of their OWN people just because of the color of their skin. Colorism has affected the Philippines in so many ways and it all started when Spain colonized the Philippines, viewing white Europeans as “greater’, and all of that still affects Filipino communities in the Philippines, and even in the US, today. This concept has made many people to feel ashamed of their natural brown color, and purchase products that will whiten their complexion.