Orientalism - Tumblr Posts

God okay I'm just. So fucking tired. So here's a list of resources to educate yourself on issues within Star Wars. In light of the Bad Batch Finale and the announcement of the second season, it's vital that you educate yourself about the racism and other issues present.

Reminder that you cannot be in the middle. You are either racist or anti-racist. If you do not practice anti-racism and choose to stay "neutral", you are only supporting a system that constantly perpetuates racism and harms people.

And if for some reason, you think I'm overreacting; for some reason, you think I'm sensitive; for some reason, your first instinct is to get defensive and lash out; you really need to do some thinking as to why you want to scream at POC who just want the right to be recognized and seen. Who just want the right to not be erased.

And if you think this is "not good enough" because they're "just blog posts" or whatever - don't bullshit me. Even if I posted a shit ton of scholarly articles you wouldn't have read them anyway if you're coming at me with excuses for why you think the discrimination is okay. These posts are accessible, and well-written, and straight from the lived experiences of the many minorities and the allies that want to amplify their voices. I'm not asking you to take everything at face value. I'm asking you to do your own research and engage in some critical thinking instead of blindly accepting what you're given.

*Disclaimer: while I have read these sources, i read some a while ago and if there's an issue you have with some of them let me know!

(If your post is listed and you want me to take it off the list please dm me and let me know!)

The Bad Batch

#unwhitewashtbb carrd - with extensive resources here that speak about the Māori people, their culture, and the current issues they face. If you care about them, then read these resources and amplify their voices.

Petition to #unwhitewashtbb

Why you're actively supporting racism if you decide not to support anti-racist movements because you "have beef with someone" who's an anti-racist

The importance of speaking about #unwhitewashtbb, from a Polynesian fan (With another post by them!)

How Kanan is whitewashed

Clone Whitewashing #1 - how the SW crew most definitely knows how to animate dark-skinned clones with proper facial features yet chose not to

Clone Whitewashing #2 - with really clear pictures of the whitewashing

Clone Whitewashing #3 - with an extensive Temura Morrison reference sheet

Issues with Echo's design

Reasons why the take that "Omega is light-skinned because she's based on Temura Morrison's sister" and the take that "Polynesian people can be light-skinned too you're just being racist" are absolute shit takes (similar post, #2)

How Fennec Shand is whitewashed - the intricacies of her design

Fixed Fennec Shand design

How Temura Morrison has previously also been whitewashed in SW media

The Clone Wars

Islamophobia in Barriss Offee's portrayal, from a muslim woman.

How Barriss is muslim-coded, from a muslim woman.

The Mandalorian

"Bleaching" Temura Morrison

General Resources Around Star Wars

Orientalism in Star Wars

The Islamic Origins Of The Jedi

Ableism in Star Wars

Sinophobia in Star Wars, from me, a Chinese woman.

Resources about AO3 and racism

POC are not a monolith: why it's not ok to say "light-skinned minorities exist" in response to calls to stop whitewashing

How whitewashing has affected SW as a whole

John Boyega and Racism

Orientalism in SW Music

Feel free to add further resources in reblogs or just send them straight to me and I'll add them!

Oh, and by the way, if you think "it's just fiction you're just overreacting this doesn't hurt anyone": news flash: it sure does.

CBC News: Anti-Asian Racism in the media

Role of Media in anti-asian racism

NPR: Hollywood colorism

How the media fuels anti-black racism

Ways anti-indigenous racism is expressed in media and in other ways

NBC News: Rise in anti-asian racism

Resources on anti-black racism

What I've listed above is only a single drop in a massive ocean. There are so, so many other minority groups who are also suffering that I haven't listed. I haven't even touched on homophobia, on transphobia, and I've barely touched on ableism, not to mention that there's so many other issues out there. I haven't talked about the issues with how the Tuskens are portrayed, or how Watto is portrayed, or how Jar Jar Binks was portrayed, or how Kelly Marie Tran was treated, or how Trace and Rafa Martez were treated, or how the fandom hates Mace Windu, or how Poe's backstory was butchered, or much, much more. If you have more resources, please please please share them in the reblogs. It is impossible to encompass everything in a single post, but we sure as hell can try.

Alright. I've given you the resources. I've given you my time and energy. It's up to you now to educate yourself. It's ok to make mistakes - we're constantly learning and unlearning. It's ok to need to take breaks, and to save this for later because you're tired and the world is going to shit. We are human.

But it's not okay to stay willfully ignorant. It's not okay to constantly try and belittle the trauma and struggles of minorities just because you've been okay living in a system that's built on oppression. Educate yourself.

One more tip: when reblogging or sharing your own resources, flood your tags with everything to do with Star Wars. Flood the Crosshair tag. Flood the Hunter and Omega tag. Flood the tags, because this is relevant to their characters and to the entire saga, and fans need to know.

Including tags of the people I posted resources from under the cut!

@royalhandmaidens @queen-breha-organa @milfcaptainrex @milfchewbacca @bisexualmikisayaka @fixyourwritinghabits @starilicious @jester-mereel @milfbailorgana @cafffine @milfcommandercody @thecyndimistuff @shoulderpads-mcgee2

(If I'm missing a tag and you want to be tagged please let me know!)

you just fundamentally cant take the orientalism out of the "asians doing capitalism better than us is scary :c" genre

the western view of geisha is so funny because it’s completely wrong 

like

white man sExY oRiEnTaL PrOsTiTuTe (ugh) fantasy:

actual geisha:

real geisha are entertainers and performers, not sex workers. I think the term most people are looking for is oiran, high-ranking japanese courtesans. both are/were (in case of oiran) talented artists and successful businesswomen who deserve respect. but orientalism doesn’t care for cultural accuracy! just hypersexualization of East Asian women! 

the racism in fs is...astounding to me. specifically im bitching about how asian skaters can’t skate to asian music because the judges don’t ‘understand’ it or the artistry. like apparently some motherfucker (Joe Inman) was saying hanyu Yuzuru was lucky to win pyeongchang gold with seimei because japanese music in unintelligible to westerners?? please. I didn’t know jack shit about Abe no seimei when I saw the 2018 olympic free skate as a stupid teenager who’d never been outside fucking North America. yet I cried as I watched it. you don't have to know fuck all about the folklore or the cultural/historical context to feel passion or raw emotion, to appreciate the interpretation. after I finished watching seimei I still didn’t know shit about the guy, but I knew the program, the skating made me feel some kind of way. there’s a bazillion ‘swan lakes’ but let me tell you to this day I don't know shit about fucking swan lake. I can still tell when a skate has good artistry. your average american probably doesn’t know jack shit about swan lake either, same as Abe no seimei, but they'll still prefer swan lake over seimei. like don't try to tell me it's ‘only’ because of cultural differences that you're gonna score swan lake higher, just admit you’re racist. we know. and the absolute stupidity of this is that asian skaters performing a western piece will get scored higher and people will feel the artistry is better. what kind of dumbass logic is it that an asian skater will have a better interpretation of a piece of music from a different culture than of one from their own? you dumb fucks. I hate how skaters have to conform to western culture/standards in order to be taken seriously. are you so convinced of your own fucking superiority? of your own importance? the world doesn’t revolve around you. is someone else’s culture not as, idk, valuable as your own lukewarm white history (and how the fuck can you measure a culture’s value)? there’s over a billion people in china alone yet the country the entire world has got to pander to is the u s of fucking a? ‘cultural differences’ and ‘unintelligible’ my ass, it’s just soft imperialism. reminds me of how kpop is seen in the west. if the entirety of america can bop their bussy to despacito they can also bop it to bts. but nooooo the orientalism just has to get in your way of enjoying amazing cultural exports. you don't have to understand it you just have to appreciate it, which is why that fucking racist bullshit falls apart when you poke it with the critical thinking stick. and admitting that you can't do your job properly is so embarrassing, especially when you admit it’s racism standing between you and competence. i’d say the isu should fire any of these racist chucklefucks who say asian culture is unintelligible and that impedes their scoring, but we all know the isu is a joke that’s also comprised of racist chucklefucks. 

no but it’s actually hilarious how american media is like ‘oh my god...yuzuru hanyu so gay...so effeminate...so gayyy’ and he literally has thousands of women all around the world in love with him. he’s literally living the white macho cishet man dream but he’s the antithesis of everything that cishet white manly man stands for. 

when people call kpop groups ‘engineered’ and ‘machines’ and emphasize their ‘sleek moves and perfect synchronicity’, call the industry a ‘factory’ and call idols ‘robotic’

a chinese person on tumblr dot com: man I love chips

some fucking clown: don’t you know chips are banned by the Evil Chinese Surveillance StateTM? how can you make jokes like this? you must be a spy sent to infiltrate tumblr, which is clearly china’s number one source of american intelilgence. justify your existence to me with a 5000 word essay about the failings of the CCP or I’ll doxx you.

its not racist to acknowledge that china and russia have lgbt censorship and that a lot of asian countries are homophobic. however it IS racist to pretend america isn’t homophobic as well and pretend this makes you morally superior. saw that one Alex Hirsch tweet about Disney trying to get the lgbtq market then turning around and censoring gay relationships for russian and chinese markets. like. don’t blame american problems on Asia. america never needed russia or china’s help to be homophobic. yall are plenty homophobic on your own. don’t go ‘well if it weren’t for those damn commie censors I could have my queer rep angry emoji’; just. just stop. american fundamentalists and puritans are to blame; white conservatives are to blame. russia and china have been america’s convenient big bad bogeyman for decades now because racism lets you pretend your own country isn’t completely fucked up. don’t delude yourself into thinking this is just ooh backward asian censorship instead of a deep-seated problem in american society. if russia and china didn’t exist you still wouldn’t have your goddamn gay rep.

Being Asian on the internet is hard bc someone w a name like...IDK Akihiko or Jungkook interacts w my post and I gotta squint like...are you ACTUALLY Asian or are u white and racist and just totally unaware of the meaning and very specific racism Asian ppl receive abt our names.

9/10 times it's the latter or like a kin thing or smth and it's like...please I am begging u my Asian soul gets a bit shaved off every time I see a selfie of some "Ju-won" and they're snow white.

BTW white ppl can and are encouraged to reblog this!

I hate weeaboos so much my blood boils every time I see yet another fucking tiktok about some non-asian living in korea/japan (probably an “english teacher”) and its like “oh everybody stops to stare at me on the street bc im a foreigner and today I went to a quaint little cafe and now im using asian beauty products teehee" like shut the fuck up. look me in the eye and tell me the reason u moved to korea is not bc ur have an asian fetish. nd they'll be like “no<3”...ok then so why do u want to live in korea “I like kdrama” KILL YOURSELF FOR REAL

I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

id in alt

this is like an 1800s orientalist guy to say. The Easterners They Have Just Too Strange Customs Because Of Their Foreign Culture... We Cannot Hope To Understand Their Minds Or Communicate With Them

it's almost like global south's reality is some sort of aesthetic concept for white people.

some day i'm going to write an essay about how padme naberrie is the most hindu character in all of star wars in terms of aesthetic and culture, and i will lament on how george lucas did absolutely nothing with hinduism and hindu moralities just so he could have his tragic love lamp.