How White Privilege Still Trickles Into Places Like K-Pop Fandoms: Observations From An AAPI In The BTS

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 2k

Genre: Smut, Dragon!AU

Summary: Jungkook has a dragon in his pants and he needs your help taming him. Do you risk getting burned, in more ways than one?

A/N: Hey, do people actually read this part of the fic? Or do they just skip right down to the good stuff? Do you feel tricked yet? Great, because now you can buckle yourself in and read about anti-Asian racism and how white privilege manages to prevail in K-Pop fandoms! People abuse the tagging system on Tumblr anyway, so I might as well use that to my advantage since no one cares about the “stop Asian hate” tag anymore.

By the way, if you’re mad, you’re just proving my point that people only care about their oppas, but not about Asians who are being affected by hate crimes in their communities. Let’s get started!

How white privilege still trickles into places like K-Pop fandoms: observations from an AAPI in the BTS ARMY

I’m a second-generation Asian American millennial who grew up without much Asian representation in Western media. Seeing K-Pop’s incredible breakthroughs gives me both delight that Asians are finally being recognized as respectable artists and immense anger that fans seem to adore their oppas in Korea, yet they don’t give a shit about Asian Americans being targeted and killed. I wanted to share my experiences in the BTS fandom as an AAPI and how I’ve witnessed white privilege creeping into K-Pop fandoms, which celebrate people of color.

This lack of compassion is a byproduct of fetishization - taking only the good, surface-level parts of a culture while completely ignoring the bad. People consider themselves an ally simply because they enjoy Korean music or dramas or films. So they think that they don’t have a responsibility to VERY EASILY reblog a post here and there about awareness. That because they find Asian men attractive, they’re suddenly exempt from accidentally perpetuating racism. The bar is on the fucking GROUND and people still manage to dig below the dirt.

Asians have always been portrayed as exotic or foreign in American TV and film, and this view has been completely accepted by our society. In recent years, K-Pop artists have had to field the dumbest interview questions by Western media outlets and no one bats an eyelid. One could argue that oh, the interviewers are just trying to be respectful because they know things are really different in America. I’m sorry, but asking “Have you tried In-n-Out yet?” is not breaking any fucking cultural barriers.

It’s become so normalized to not take AAPI discrimination seriously because “it’s really not that bad” or because “Asians just can’t take a joke” or because “Asians are so privileged, they’re basically white (~newsflash~: we aren’t white).” When people dismiss “smaller” issues with microaggressions and fetishization, they can then turn around and deny race was a factor in bigger problems, such as not labeling a mass shooting or a cold-blooded murder anti-Asian hate crimes.

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