Oriental film and Shah article By Deanna Stilwell

"The ethnic categories that my respondents selected for themselves reveal a desire to challenge tendency in dominant discourses to lump all Asian ethnic groups into the racialized category "Asian." (pg. 15)

I can relate to this quote from the article because it’s hard growing up knowing your ethnicity and it being accepted in one location and then going somewhere else and having to adapt. Although you know what your ethnicity is, you want to fit in. Since, people refer to you as Asian even if you don’t like it you grow to accept it because that’s what others accept you as and you just want to be accepted. I used to say I was half Asian because no one in my town knew what Thai was. Instead of changing how people thought I conformed to their ideas. Being biracial I always hate when people refer to me as one race or ethnicity instead of both. I don’t let others define me as one, I correct them and tell them I’m both Caucasian and Thai. It doesn’t matter to me whether they believe me or not, it matters that they know and I made them aware. It’s hard to accept your ethnicity when others are telling you something else.

Orientalism the film was eye opening in the sense some of the same issues are still relevant today. I want to say as a country we’ve gotten better with oriental issues, but I don’t think we have. We have become some what more aware, but there’s still many problems. There aren’t as many bystanders as before. People are starting to stand up for others.