Joel Kim Booster

and Latino Americans like a monolithic ethnic group or a racial group in the same way that African Americans are treated as, you know, a cultural sort of block of people.

And it's just not the same because both Latinos and Asians

Most of our culture within even America still is connected to our specific ethnic identities and communities rather than as a racial group.

There are people, when I say I'm Asian American, that say that's not even a thing.

There is no such thing as Asian American culture.

And like I think like Tony Hinchcliffe saying that Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage is a really good example of this on the Hispanic Latino side, because there were so many people that were like, oh, he's losing the Latino vote.

Like he's like this is this is the end of him getting the Latino vote.

And you have to understand that like the the person who cares the least about Puerto Rico being called an garbage island is like a Dominican person.

You know, like it's just not they don't they don't have the same.

It's not the same.

And you can't approach it the same.

And it's I feel that specifically as someone who identifies really as being Asian-American first and having and coming up against people who, you know, it was very difficult for me until I moved to New York and started meeting queer Asian-Americans, you know, queer Koreans, queer Chinese people, etc.,

Because when I would come up again and meet, you know, Korea, like second, third generation Koreans, Americans, it was really hard for them to connect with me and me connect with them.

Like I did not I did not feel welcomed by most of the people.

ethnically identifying Korean people that I would meet through college and high school, even in Chicago, because they could smell on me that I was not ethnically Korean, that I did not have those ties to the culture, that I didn't speak the language, I didn't have the background that they had.

And it wasn't until I moved to New York and I started meeting a huge amount of queer Asian people that I really felt in touch with that side of my heritage.

No, and you can't you can't approach them like that, because obviously African-Americans are an outlier for a very specific reason, because they came to this country in a very specific way and formed a very specific culture together because of the way, you know, for those specific reasons.

And, you know, we just didn't come here in the same way.

or some things that you are.

It's hard because like, you know, being a transracial adoptee, you experience racism and then you come home and there's not really anyone who understands it on the same level as like my friends who experienced racism growing up and then could come home and process it with their families who also experienced racism.