my whitest demeanour

My Whitest Demeanour is a poem about my struggle to reconcile the sudden wave of anti-racist clicktivism that swept white people's Instagram feeds during June, with a lifetime of internalised racism. The struggle to reconcile my desire to be proud of my Asian-ness, with a lifetime of internalising the thought that I would be treated better, listened to more, hassled less and given more opportunities if I appeared less Asian and more white.

Suddenly you are a preacher  

A professed ally, teacher, sister! ‘We’re all in this together!’  

You shout on your feed, 

In bright bubble letters, 

In aesthetic pictures, 

To tell me ‘You should love your culture!’ 

Be empowered! 

But forgive me – I cannot take sincerely 

Your proclamations of solidarity; of love and racial parity 

When it betrays everything you taught me 

About what it means to be me – 

A girl who should go back to her own country  

Or else you deserve to place your hands on me,  

Stalk me.  

Suddenly you paint a different story,  

Dismissing everything you’ve told me all my life. 

Learned inferiority, whiteness my greatest priority, 

An obsession sewn into me,  

With a monopoly over me, from that very first time when you said,  

‘Oh, she’s pretty for an Asian’. 

From when you,  

My best friends,  

Jumped to his defence to invalidate me with  

‘That’s not what he meant!’ Michelle,  

It wasn’t racist, don’t make it about this –  

To shut me down, and dismiss my ability to comprehend  

My own reality, the very one you taught me 

From infancy.   

From when you called me a ‘disgusting creature’ 

For ‘bringing the virus over’  

Even though I was already wearing my whitest demeanour  

To try and escape your contempt for  

My Chinky features.  

So bear with me when I clamp my lashes  

And pile on the mascara; 

Not responding to your rallying calls for Asian power   

Because I know that your professed appreciation  

Of Asian culture – your ‘love’ of the Qipao 

And everything Other  

Doesn’t extend to me and my mother. 

Michelle Firth is a writer and creative who is passionate about the arts as a mode of expressing shared experience and empathy. She is currently reading Social Anthropology at the University in Edinburgh. You can find her through Instagram at michelle.moira.