Alexander Chee

Okay, tell me more.

There's a book, Chinatown Truck Mysteries, that looked into census data from New York at turn of the century, where they noticed that there's actually more intermarriage between Asian men and white women than there were between Asian men and Asian women.

partly because there were laws against Asian women immigrating.

And so there were large numbers of mixed-race Asian kids, but then we don't see them after that, right?

They don't show up in the census.

later on.

And the same was happening in California.

I think a lot of mixed-race Asians were assumed to be the children of servicemen who were involved with women from Asia.

You see the rise of Asia as an economic force.

First Japan, and then Hong Kong, and then China.

I think the image of mixed race Asians tended to follow that trajectory.

And so they became much more associated with cosmopolitanism, with racism.

people who had the ability to move freely across the planet, people who were privileged.

And I'm not saying that mixed-race Asians, like before they weren't all kids of soldiers, and now they're not all kids of rich entrepreneurs, but that's the public image.

So it's a much more kind of flattering, maybe, public image or positive public image.

There was actually a website that listed all the Asians that you didn't know were Asian.

And people would always like try to add to the list.

And then there was people that you weren't sure about, but they were making the list anyways.

So one of the examples I use was Keanu Reeves, probably the most famous one.

And I talk about how early on in his career, in the roles he was playing, he usually had white parents.