Thursday, February 20, 2020

Week 8_Melanie Manuel _ASA 114



Melanie Manuel
ASA 114 001
20 February 2020

One of the themes in Bernard Scott Luscious’s “Into the Black Pacific: Testimonies of Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Displacements” is colorism and its role on the discrimination of Vietnamese Amerasians in Viet Nam. As a Filipina American, I am quite familiar with colorism. This hyperawareness of the color of one’s skin posits a strong sense of eurocentrism, where darker skin is looked down upon and paleness is celebrated and even preferred. I recall this as a process of conditioning that we continue to uphold even now, at least within older generations such as our grandparents and sometimes even our parents who put more value to lighter skin tones than darker ones. In recent years, I think the celebration of melanin and darker skin tones has been much more prevalent, but I remember how having tan skin was always commented on when I was growing up. I didn’t quite understand what was wrong with it, but these little comments had planted a seed of self-loathing, causing me to wish for much paler skin. It is a problematic practice that reifies white hegemony. A country like the Philippines still supports these skin whitening practices, as long as I could remember, there had been soaps that could lighten the skin, and now, there are also surgeries that will inject some sort of skin whitening chemical into your skin, though this is not always approved by the Food and Drug Association.

I am embedding this video that Refinery29 did to inform its viewers about this practice. I have also included a photo a skin whitening soap that is used in the Philippines and often advertised.

 

Works Cited
Luscious, Bernard Scott. “Into the Black Pacific: Testimonies of Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Displacements.” Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas. Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Image Used
https://www.mybenta.com/classified/130158/skin-whitening-bar-(luxxe)

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