Banana effect

Met up with a friend I haven't caught up with for a while over the weekend. He's a fellow "banana" (Asians who are "white" on the inside, but still "yellow" on the outside), and in a way it's enlightening.

I don't think I've always been a banana. I used to hang around with the Asian group all the time when I was in undergrad. Granted I was one of those who actually have friends outside of the Asian circle, but still not entirely a banana. Although how much of it as basically peer pressure and trying to fit in I'm not too sure.

I suppose somewhere along the line I just didn't really feel like I belong I guess. Particularly in the Hong Kong circle, where everyone is the same. Everyone's watching the same programmes (Chinese ones, mind you), listening to the same music, wearing the same clothes. It's all a bit too much. Heck, they even have the same hairstyles. For someone quirky and hate conformity, it's all a bit too much.

Sometimes I'm worried that maybe I am rascist myself. It's strange. It's possibly because I just can't really stand people with a narrow view, or just being plain shallow. And for some reason I have associate these traits with being Asian. Don't get me wrong, I know there are people who doesn't quite fit that discription. Then again chances are those are bananas too. Sometimes I do wonder whether it's because the way people act in an over-populated is just, well, different.

This sort of thinking almost drive me psychotic. I know I shouldn't really generalise people like that. (And I know a lot of good friends of mine who doesn't fit that description, as well as non-Asian conforming to some sort of "social norm"... actually in a sense the whole world is slowly conforming to s social norm and in a way that's kinda scary.) In a way I wish I don't have to automatically classify people base on they appearance. Given enough time with anyone you can see that everyone is a friend. But ARGH! Just catching myself stereotyping people sometimes is very very worrying.

Sometimes I would like to blame on the way our brain classify things, sometimes I would like to blame the world telling us being asian is a bad thing, but at the end of the day, it's still myself judging people when I don't have a right to.

This almost self-hate attitude towards our own enthic group is just one of the paradoxes of being a banana.