Recycling as a personal hobby/responsibility seems like doing penance, or cleaning the kitchen when you should study: It’s unpleasant enough to give you the feeling of Having Done Something Virtuous, but rarely accomplishes anything worthwhile on its own. Though I have observed that getting into the habit of recycling and thinking about these things might lead to reduced tolerance for systematic fuck-ups, like being expected to buy loads of plastic crap. So there’s still hope…

I’m going to threadjack, now… just ignore me.

That’s really interesting, Phoenix. If it helps your kids feel a little better, even those of us who aren’t raised by white parents wonder if we’re “white inside” from growing up in North America, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns away from large South Asian communities.

There’s actually a number of slang terms for “brown kids who act white.” There’s “coconut,” which I already used. I would consider this the most benign, and I often hear people describing themselves this way. There’s “white-washed,” which is slightly meaner. And then there’s “ABCD.” It stands for American-born confused desi, and I’ve never heard it used nicely. The flip-side to ABCD is FOB, of course - fresh off the boat.

There’s also a ridiculous movie called “American Desi” that is really quite terrible, but every brown kid I know has seen it, and it really hits a lot of accurate notes in depicting youth brown culture. It’s not a feminist movie by any means, so you might want to watch it first if you’re careful about such things.

My kid’s peer-support network (they are now emailing each other for help with issues at school! yay literacy!) is planning a meeting for which the agenda is, Are we white inside because we’re being raised by white people?

Knowing that there is a slang term to describe ‘South Asians who “act white”‘ is helpful in that it gives them a starting point to discuss whether anyone is experiencing that as an insult or wondering what it means. So thanks. Their adult support is from elders in their ethnic community rather than the hipster youths like yourself.

It’s basically mocking earnestness, which is always available for mockery in my opinion. Can the writer completely hate ironic hipster humor? Hell no. That blog feeds into it.

Actually: I have to thank the SAHMs in my neighborhood for things like this. They DO monitor the trash and recycle pickups, they DO force the company to stick to their contract. They know what the company is required to pick up and if the pickup has been through and things haven’t been dealt with properly, they WILL call the company and harass them until the trucks return and pick up what was left behind.

And now we’ve got the gigantic recycle bins. They’re not the old-fashioned bins, they are large blue trash cans. We were putting out three or so bins every week–now we just fill up the large recycle can.

Please note that this is one area where white women are exempt from, but they should be exempt from other things such as voting and participation in Division 1 sports.

Sooo. hilarious. and ironical, too. The rest of the post is even funnier, what with the “yellow fever” remarks and all.

Or maybe it’s too much like the shit I hear every day to be funny, or seem satirical to me.

I know. “Where’s your sense of humor, it’s irony, it’s cutting edge”. Blecch.

Ahem. ON topic, great post, Amanda. I agree if something’s not really important but we want to say it is, it gets delegated to the Mommies. Like kids, for instance.

PrairieLily, I’ll bite: Fill in the blank for the ignorant white people: A coconut is to ‘_________’ as an oreo is to ‘black’ and a banana is to ‘Asian’. Help a non-brotha out here? I think this may be a helpful term for my kid and her new raised-by-white-fools support group, but I want to define it correctly.

PhoenixRising,

While I have heard the term used to describe my Latino/Latina friends, I’m using it to refer to South-east Asians. You know, Pakistan, India, etc. And now that I’ve gone and counted, I only got 18/69. I refuse to count the entry on tea, because that’s way more part of my culture than white yuppie culture.

How exactly are you planning on using it with your child? Coconut doesn’t have the same connotations as oreo, so I think it should be ok, but I’m curious.