i present: binky cat
oil on 8”x10” canvas board
ppl on twitter liked this i hope yall do too <3
panty and stocking matching icons pt 2 !! ~
like / reblog if you save any <3
PSA: Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne Are White Characters.
(Did that clickbait get your attention lol?)
Anyway, Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne are white.
Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne are Chinese.
Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne are characters of color.
All of these statements are correct at once, because Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne both have mixed heritage!
INCORRECT: "Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne are nonwhite."
Fact: Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne ARE white through their white fathers. As are Jade Nguyen, Lian Harper (¾ white), Artemis Crock (in the Young Justice and Stargirl TV shows), Connor Hawke, Rose Wilson, and Irey and Jai West.
Understand that Eurasian hapa kids are not universally perceived as "insiders" by Asian people. Just as white people can usually take one look at us and see that we're Asian, Asian people can usually take one look at us and see that we're white. Just as white people often see us as "outsiders" and "not actually white", Asian people also often see us as "outsiders" and "not actually Asian".
It's true that many hapa lean more strongly into their Asian heritage and culture, and many lean more strongly into their white/European heritage and culture. It's true that a few hapa pass as totally Asian, a few pass as totally white, some appear like a perfect 50/50 split, and most appear somewhere in between. So it's not unrealistic for hapa to identify more strongly with one part of their heritage, over the other part. (And this may be extra true for superhero comic hapa, who are often introduced as fully formed super ninja ready to follow in their long-lost white dads' footsteps, after conveniently spending their entire childhoods somewhere out of the way. I digress—that's a whole other discussion lol.) But this doesn't change that we are mixed, and the shared experiences of mixed kids can be quite different from the shared experiences of non-mixed kids on either side.
So to recap: characters with one white parent and one Asian parent are both white and Asian. These characters are NOT nonwhite, and their white heritage often affects them in very significant ways. Writers treat Eurasian hapa characters differently from other white characters and Asian characters. The media representation of Eurasian hapa people isn't interchangeable with the representation of all Asian and hapa people.
