“You’re racist, he’s racist, she’s racist, your family is racist, they can’t be racist cuz black, and most importantly, you’re all racist, except me.” Yeaaah ok, right.
When I hear that, I wonder why the height of human existence right now in the US is all about who is and who isn’t racist. I would prefer civility above all else. This sounds like every unhinged individual who can’t effectively communicate an issue and defaults to the blanket labels of “racist,” “fascist,” and “Nazi.”
Hearing the word “racist” thrown around today more than in the ’80s (or any other decade in recent memory), especially by White individuals, I can’t help but wonder how much racism they’ve actually experienced firsthand. Yet, the Black community seems equally willing to embrace this framing.
I write this for Japanese nationals observing from a country that is 97% ethnically homogeneous. From that vantage point, American race relations must look like an absolute clown show: a system that completely disregards Japanese boundaries and distinct identity.
As a Japanese American growing up in the middle of the country, I was an extreme statistical anomaly without even knowing it. As a kid, I had no concept of demographics. I just remember looking at a map of the United States at Samuels elementary, seeing Colorado right in the center, and using pure kid logic: well, it’s in the middle, so that can’t be bad. Beyond that, I had no clue whether being there was a good or bad thing, nor did I wonder why I was the only Asian in my class and one of only a handful in the entire school.
In my manuscript, I write about how experiencing prejudice as a kid confused the hell out of me. It took several decades to make heads or tails of those experiences, and I still can’t say for certain they were caused by racism. When I faced what felt like unfair treatment, it didn’t come from White teachers; it came from a Black teacher and a Brown teacher. I don’t attribute it to racism, though. Oddly, the Black teacher didn’t treat my sister that way, so maybe she just disliked me (I can’t recall if she was also the one who said, “I thought all Asians were smart at math until I met you”). As for the Brown teacher, I sat next to two Latino kids in assigned seats, and whenever they talked, she told me to shut up to quiet them down. It happened more than once, and I remember it to this day simply because of how ridiculous it was.
Society explicitly tells you some things, but leaves out the rest. People might tell you to your face that you’re good-looking, which is how I know what I know indirectly, but no one lays out the unspoken rules of race, bias, and social hierarchy. Those, you just have to figure out on your own.
Decades later, slightly smarter and slightly wiser, I still struggle to pinpoint when I actually experienced systemic racism versus natural human bias. Of course, from my kid days well into adulthood, from Colorado to San Diego, I’ve had people yell racist remarks at me while riding my bike (yes, it was a BMX with Skyway handlebars and mushroom grips). It was common enough growing up. But beyond those literal drive-by slurs, things aren’t so black and white. Because of that complexity, ‘racist’ is one of the least used words in my vocabulary.
Yet so many others, not just White individuals, but as I mentioned, the Black community, toss it around flagrantly like an Oprah giveaway: “Now look under your seat, you’re racist!” For the former, I wonder how much racism they’ve truly faced firsthand; college-aged students today never lived through the era of “No Italians, No Jews, No Blacks.” For the latter, screaming ‘racist’ doesn’t diminish prejudice when public behavior actively fuels it, especially when police body cams and their own social media posts show them openly bragging about and implicating themselves in crimes.
I know from my experiences that people have natural biases. They want like-cultured (from music to hobbies, just look at how the World of Warcraft otaku demographic attracts very similar individuals) and like-minded people, which often means racially and ethnically the same when it comes to potential partners. I know this because when I took a sex education course in high school, an anonymous poll asked if you would ever date someone outside your race. FYI, we only had a handful of Black students from our side of town, but this was during desegregation. The class was still predominantly White, so “outside their race” could have heavily implied Black, or maybe they were thinking, “Greg, he’s Asian, so yeah, no.” When the teacher read the responses, I remember it being 99% or 100% “no” for the females and around 76% “no” for the guys. I don’t know for sure, but I wish I could remember if some dude looked around the room, saw me, and thought, “It sucks to be you, dude.” Then, nearly two decades later, OkCupid released data showing that Asian males and Black females are the least sought after.
Now, does any of this matter? It doesn’t, because as I learned early on, yelling or crying about racism doesn’t help (it also doesn’t help getting an ATV when your neighbor has one). Instead, it’s like any obstacle you encounter in life: you have to be smart enough to work around it. Regardless of how liberal or progressive people claim to be, at the end of the day, I have way too many experiences that prove otherwise. To an outsider in Japan, these dating statistics might look like petty American drama, but they show how deep these unspoken racial lines actually run.
At a macro level, statistics from employment to dating directly counter Hollywood’s woke agenda. Just look at how few of these Hollywood types actually date or marry outside of their race, regardless of how often they race-swap characters on screen. Look at A-listers like Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively, Margot Robbie, Emma Stone, Scarlett Johansson, Cillian Murphy, Christian Bale, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh, and Julia Roberts: they are all in same-race relationships or marriages.
During my time as a hiring manager, one of the largest staffing agencies described the preferred hiring practices of a “bro company” who built one of the “hottest staff of females.” Do I call that sexist, or simply a bias toward hiring people who are like-minded, like-cultured, or serving self-interest? I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist. One of my most recent experiences was with an actual racist who made constant race-based remarks, claiming he would pay minorities less because we wouldn’t know what to do with the money. Yet out in the IE, in the country-music-listening city where Sean Strickland was born and raised, I didn’t experience any outright issues myself, even if several employees and family friends made racial remarks.
What a foreign audience must understand is the American illusion of progress. In the ’80s, anti-Japanese hostility was so intense that a Chinese American, Vincent Chin, was murdered in Detroit. Now, in 2026, after a localized fatal shooting involving a Hong Kong American named Chikei Rick Chow, outrage among Black Americans boiled over, and Black individuals began targeting Asian-owned businesses. Not just Chinese businesses, but all Asian businesses. Because to the American mob, what’s the difference? “All y’all are the same.”
This is the exact same flattening I see when non-Japanese operators slap Japanese branding on products, concepts, and restaurants while stripping away what makes them authentic. Do not think your distinct Japanese identity protects you here. Targeting every Asian business over one man’s actions is like protesting the conflict in Gaza by vandalizing a Greek restaurant cuz blue and white flag.
Asians don’t get the benefit of the doubt this system claims to hand out. We get penalized for the opposite. Work hard enough to get into college and that becomes the mark against you instead of for you. I found out what that selective attention actually looks like up close. During Stop Asian Hate, I worked alongside Karl Palma, with the mainstream media and GoFundMe acknowledging our efforts, and sympathy everywhere. Then the story changed, the attackers turned out to be Black, and the same outlets that couldn’t stop covering the issue seemed to go silent overnight.
Not a shocker to me, because I wrote this with a primary focus on the White and Black dynamic, the same dynamic the US media tends to see things through. As for Asians in the US, the vast majority of us do not identify with a monolithic color code like “Yellow.” My homies, that I know, all identify by our specific ethnic background. While I address how Asians fit into this dynamic, Japanese Americans (Nikkei) in particular experienced one of the greatest racial injustices in modern American history through executive internment, which my father and grandparents endured at Rohwer, the same camp where George Takei was held.
They lost everything, including a brother who was hit by a truck inside the camp. Post-WWII, they continued to face discrimination through redlining and limited job opportunities, all of which I uncovered while researching my manuscript.
That same selective attention and my own personal history are part of a larger pattern I’ve watched for decades. I have figured out the backstory of how I came to be born in Colorado, why Asians lived here, and why my dad and I lived around Black Americans. I’ve realized that just because decades pass doesn’t mean society progressively improves. People arrogantly believe we are at the peak of human civilization simply because it is 2026, but their lack of humility actually has us regressing. With all the technology and information available, people are still easily manipulated because they love the “easy button”: they simply choose a side. Calling someone like Elon Musk, or just about anyone who does not agree with you, a racist over simple disagreements is a regression to sheer stupidity.
I am also more than 51% sure several other civilizations have come and gone over the course of this planet’s 4.5-billion-year history, and civilization is not linear. Unfortunately, most lack the humility to realize they aren’t on the right side of history, despite their claims. That very arrogance causes the problems we face today. We have learned nothing from the past. Words, culture, and biology have lost their meaning because people arrogantly believe they are the epitome of human existence. Facing this, I can’t help but think of and respect the Hindu concept of the Yuga cycle, a framework that measures the creation, gradual decline, and eventual destruction of the world. Yeah, cyclical, so guess which period we’re in? (psst, the Kali Yuga, or destruction, materialism, ignorance, and widespread conflict).
At this point, I have seen enough. Dealing with the fools who think they can dictate who is or isn’t racist is the dumbest thing I have experienced during my time on this planet. It’s entirely fake, and the word is utterly meaningless now. I prefer to be around anyone who isn’t throwing that word around. Even if they have their biases, I hope they are the moderate type who aren’t outwardly obnoxious, because true civility starts with humility.
