That Brown Girl

When I was a kid, taking standardized tests always meant filling in the Asian/Pacific Islander bubble for the question about my race. Now, as I begin to apply to jobs and graduate school, ‘Asian’ is its own category – often with subcategories listing various East and South Asian countries. (I’m sure Pacific Islanders are similarly relieved to not be lumped into the Asian group.)

As May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, I’m working on a series of posts about famous Asian Americans here and for Brown Girl Magazine.

Asian and Pacific Islanders officially encompasses all of the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island).

Happy first day!

I don’t like Valentine’s Day for the usual reasons. Designed to make women feel bad, encourages conspicuous consumption, don’t really like the smell of flowers, etc.  So of course, I join the masses in denigrating Hallmark for promoting the holiday.

But I might a take a hiatus from hating after seeing this year’s Valentine’s Day commercial which features multiple interracial couples. Even as advertisers include non-white actors, they so often create the black couple, the Asian couple, the Hispanic couple. It’s lovely to see these couples, especially the teenagers.

One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the Pew Research Center, according to this NY Times article. Celebrate love!