Illustration by Lydia Kempton (IG: @lydiak_arts)
By Coline Coubat
The first time I heard the term ‘Wasian’, I was nearly 16 years old. Someone had whipped the word out to describe a celebrity, and it struck me that I had spent most of my life at that point without a term to define myself in the racial dimension in such a casual way. I had more or less accepted the reality that I occupied a space that was more often than not somewhere in between categories. Granted, while I had heard various labels in several languages by then — ‘mixed-blood’, ‘mixed-race’, ‘biracial’, ‘halfie’, ‘Eurasian’ — ‘Wasian’ was the first colloquial and apparently widely-recognised term people had come across to describe individuals and themselves when mixed-race White and Asian.
Then, at some point during the pandemic and ever since, the term experienced some sort of boom and has seen various trends, skits, and other content centred around being ‘Wasian’. While many are admittedly funny and speak to certain truths, I also couldn’t help but feel an uneasy sentiment whenever I saw individuals doing a ‘Wasian check’ or other trendy bits. The term felt like it was becoming more and more of a buzzword, like hitting a big red button which would guarantee a video or conversation a certain audience and warrant a particular kind of conversation in the comments which almost puts ‘being Wasian’ on a pedestal rather than add to the discussion on being mixed-race, whether it be humourously or seriously.
Google Trends for the search term ‘Wasian’ from 2004 till Feb 4th, 2026
This conversation also comes at a time when the representation of East Asians in Western media often relies upon the casting and work of mixed-race individuals who are Asian and white. By no means do I intend to convey that these individuals do not deserve praise for their hard work or minimise the difficulties they may have faced as people who are not fully white — they represent their cultures and shed light on an identity I never thought would be seen in mainstream media, and allow myself to see parts of a shared experience on the big screen, and for that I am grateful and recognise the power of the work they are doing.
Growing up, my parents always steadfastly told me I was ‘100% French and 100% Korean’, raising their eyebrows whenever any of their children introduced themselves as ‘half’ French or ‘half’ Korean. This was all in order to ensure pieces of our identities when it came to our mixed-raceness would not be minimised, at the very least at home, establishing an implicit understanding that we had as much claim over and responsibility to both of our cultures.
Perhaps due to this and the persisting lack of visibility and misrepresentation of Asians in media, I struggle with the erasure of whiteness in some of the individuals who are given these positions of representation and the foregoing of East Asian representation at a systemic level. Hiring mixed-race actors does not mean that the minority isn’t ‘properly’ represented, but it does scratch at the surface of a continuing significance of closeness to whiteness in being able to succeed in systems at a wider scale.
Mixed-race individuals often straddle the experiences of being a person of colour and being white. Anyone who identifies as a minority or being part of a marginalised group knows all too well the experience of constructing your identity depending on the context you currently surround yourself in — in the case of being mixed-race, in some places, you are more so seen as white, and in others, as a person of colour, and more often the latter than the former. Drawing from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s conceptualisation of intersectionality, it can also be understood that the experience of being mixed-race creates a unique position rather than one that pulls a little bit from each of the different racial ancestries’ circumstances.
As someone who spent much of her life up in heavily American environments, I understood that many of my peers and mentors would perceive my identity through the socialisation of the ‘one-drop’ rule, the law dictating any individual with even ‘a drop’ of Black African ancestry would be considered non-white, producing a binary in their construction of race and systemically codifying white supremacy. The ‘one-drop’ rule expanded to apply to anyone with non-white ancestry, including individuals with Japanese lineage in the U.S. during World War 2, leading to their forced internment. (In the UK, the conversation shifts as mixed-racedness seems more widely accepted as a constructed racial category on paper – but I feel uneasy entering the discussion due to my being raised elsewhere.)
I do not naively believe that mixed-race individuals, myself included, occupy the space of being white half the time and of being a person of colour the other half, nor do I believe one’s physical appearance, particularly when mixed-race, has absolutely no effect on how they are perceived by those around them. In the same vein, however, turning a blind eye to the reality we are faced with, where much of the representation of anyone not fully white often falls into the hands of those who remain close to the ‘standard’ that has been constructed and reinforced throughout history.
Various television programmes and films in recent years have had storylines focused on Asian characters as well as characters who are mixed-race. Again, whilst I do not minimise the power and weight of representation which pushes beyond the strict boundary of whiteness at the individual level, I also question the consequences of reducing the heritage of individuals to their minority background at a structural scale — are we not reproducing and reinforcing the legacy of the one-drop rule by placing individuals of mixed heritage in the positions of their non-mixed counterparts? – as well as the erasure of their whiteness which comes with this. Individuals who are ‘Wasian’ are exactly that: white and Asian. Ignoring or omitting one part or another in most (but not all) discussions, particularly that of representation, is disregarding a very real and essential part of the picture.
I do understand that this may come across as the typical line of someone not being ‘ethnic enough’ or ‘white enough’ to represent a particular story or experience, and this isn’t my intention — hence, rather than name-dropping specific individuals or referencing particular media texts, I’m trying to instead point at the larger scale of the issue and phenomenon. This isn’t about whether one specific actor is ‘Korean enough’ or ‘white enough’ to represent the story of one or the other. The conversation is not so much about ‘who is allowed to’ or ‘who isn’t allowed to’, but more so ‘who is, at this point in time, and why is that?’.
Should the representation of Asian minorities in Western media have reached a more advanced stage, perhaps the tension currently felt would not be as strong. Granted, while Asian leads have become slightly more common in recent years, it is primarily because previously there were essentially none in the general media. There still very rarely are primarily Asian casts, male Asian leads (particularly in the romance genre), or side characters that aren’t littered with stereotypes.
The conversation is an uncomfortable one as it also inevitably touches upon racial systems as well as their legacies, which heavily affect individual experiences in different ways, particularly due to the aforementioned cultural contexts, especially in a world in which categorisation has been so ingrained and the dictator of who is allowed what throughout much of history. I do understand the value in having a widely-recognised label for your identity in a society that lives off of categorisation; perhaps if I had grown up with the word ‘Wasian’ rather than stumbling over various languages with archaic, sometimes derogatory terms to try and find an anchor in my identity, the understanding and living of my identity would have been vastly different from the one I have.
I raise my eyebrows, however, at the increasing fetishisation and ‘clout’ being pulled throughout popular culture and social media across the word ‘Wasian’. While discussing difficult realities and experiences as individuals who are mixed-race is valuable and important, most content centred around the word ‘Wasian’ falls into a form of fetishisation – not limited to the sexual sense of it, but also in the importance and praise given to it.
Also worth noting is the disparity in experiences of ‘Wasians’ depending on their background, as individuals of South Asian and Southeast Asian ancestry are rarely recognised as being a part of the group – despite fulfilling the requirement of being mixed White and Asian as much as an individual of East Asian and White heritage. Thus, not only are they faced with the confusion of being mixed-race, but they are also the denied the use of a term which literally defines them
Ultimately, being mixed-race or ‘Wasian’ is not new to our day and age. The increased visibility and representation of the experience and identity has allowed for wider conversations and understandings of the unique positionality of being of both white and Asian background, but, as it currently stands, also necessitates discussion on the sensationalisation of the term and the buzzword it has become, as well as recognition of the erasure of pieces of an individual’s identity depending on what is most convenient for the narrative on a wider scale when it comes to representation.
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