A Pale Shade of Yellow

If you’re reading this blog post and you’re Asian American/Canadian, there is a very good chance you are from the Bay Area, Southern California, New York City or Toronto — cities with a high density of Asians. It’s easy to forget that there are other parts of the country, and for the select amount of Asian Americans that grow up in, say, the Midwest or the Deep South, it’s a very different experience than the experience living on the coasts.

Take, for example, Patricia Pham of Joplin, Missouri who produced a short segment for Current TV talking about the difficulties she experienced with alienation, adolescent issues, and identity conflicts from both white and Asian people. As to the name of the pod, called A Pale Shade of Yellow:

I tried hard to be white, and there were people who hated me to trying to be too white. And then I tried to be yellow again and there were people who hated me for being too yellow, so I tried to be a paler shade of yellow to please everyone, and there were people who hated me for being a little too white; and so I tried to darken up a bit and there were people who hated me for that too.

So all I’m left with is something in the middle; not yellow nor white, not one thing or another. Just something halfway in-between.

It’s the teenagers dilemma and a sociologists wet dream and troll fodder for the usage of the phrase “trying to be white” — but when you’re growing up as a teenager in Joplin, Missouri, you don’t necessarily care whether you’re too white or too Asian; you basically want to be accepted. And that’s what hit me like a ton of bricks about this video.