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What is a Blasian · Asian Adjacent

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's a new year and it's time for a new episode. Hi,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I'm James Lott Junior. Here's the first episode of the
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: year twenty twenty six for Asian Adjacent Again.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I'm host James Lott Junior.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: We we talk about things that are Asian and other
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and it's related to Asian. It's I'm you know, have
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: both in my life. We have a series once a
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: month coming out that'll be out later in this month
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to have a reoccurring thing with Pacific atrocities education. Very
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: excited about. That's about Asian history that's not talked about.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: But this was such a short one because it's something
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: that people come asking me. Some people didn't know what
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I meant when I said Balazian, and so I'm basically
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: just going to give you the basics of where the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: word came from and what does it mean. So what
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Blaysian means at its core. As a person who has
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: both black and Asian ancestry. Now in my life, I
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: have both. Now, I also, like I said, I was
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: co raised by Asian parents, so I have both things
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: going on. My grandchildren. I have two grandchilds of her
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Blasian because their father's Blazian black and Filipino. So Blasian
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: is the combinations of anything African, American, African, Afro Caribbean,
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  Speaker 1: or anything of the Afro diaspora, plus East Asian, which
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: is Chinese, Korean, Japanese, et cetera, Southeast Asian, Filipino, Thai, Viemanese,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: et cetera, or South Asian, which of course should be India,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Sri Lanka, United kind of stuff. So they took the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: two words literally lack Asian and Blazians. So there's some
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: folks will say they're Blexican black and Mexican, Buerto Rican
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: black and Puerto Rican, which I've used it for for
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: why folks, it's usually Eurasian if you're European, Asian, Amrasian
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: if you're American Asian. And I heard on the show
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Heated Rivalry, the lead of the league characters said as
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: as Asian, Caribbean, Caribbean Asian, and so I said, a
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Caribbean'm sorry, Canadian, Asian, Asian, Canadian. That's what I'm gonna say,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Caribbean Asian, Canadian. The shows in Canada and the mixed race,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: so there is use, you know that. But Blazian is
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: more of a fun term to say. It's why folks
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: say it, it's usually because they don't want to be
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: forced to choose. They acknowledge both identities. It's a safe word, right,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: just kind of safe. Pushes back the idea, of course,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: that you have to just kind of choose and it's
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: just one thing. Because I like Afro Latino, it has
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: its own cultural history. Some people feel by saying Blazian
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: is creating a whole new community invisibility for folks who
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: usually on each side have problems. You're not Asian enough
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: in the Asian community, or you're not Black enough in
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the black community. There's always that happens. Sometimes it's it's
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a nuance that not everybody who
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: is black and Asian, or African African or African American,
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  Speaker 1: Africaribbean and Asian likes Some will just pick aside. Some
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: will say I am Black and Filipino or African American
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and Korean, because you guys, remember, being being those things
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: isn't the same everywhere, and every Asian culture is very different.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: When I'm monolith, you know, Blasian person raised in Oakland
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: will how California will have a whole different experience than
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: a Black and Asian person who's raised in Tokyo or
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Lagos or London or even Indiana for some people, because
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: context matters. Some people, it's an empowering term because you're
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: embracing everything. Some feel as reductive. It does happen, you know,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things where peop don't want
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: to sit in a box and they don't want to
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: pick boxes sometimes.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: You know, it was where to come from. We don't know.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Specifically who said it first. I heard it growing up,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: and there was not that was the term. I heard
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: it in the two that and like, well the nineteen nineties,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I started to hear it a little bit late nineteen
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: nineties into two thousands, multi racial identities were becoming the
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: thing as we got more and more mixed up. If
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  Speaker 1: people were trying to find language that reflected both parts
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of their heritages or heritage. And I know that just
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: like smush names they call them. You know, if your
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: name is Joe and you were Tatiana, you're Joanna. You know,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: there was you know, back in the nineteen thous there
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: was team so and so and teams from the Hills.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Later morphed into uh Brande Alina, remember that one.
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  Speaker 2: You know, it just it just it's just it just
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  Speaker 2: takes two things from together.
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  Speaker 1: And but the one thing I think we could we
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: could honestly say it was not you know, the government
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: didn't name it, Academics do.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Not really name it.
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  Speaker 1: It's part of just everyday speech, and it just became
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: more and more common to say. So that's what Blazian is,
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  Speaker 1: especially just shorthand for work people who who live as
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Black and Asian heritage together.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: That's all. It is.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Some music for comedy, some music for seriousness, and that's
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: maybe on this show I will go through how this,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: We'll go through it each Blazian identity. That's what we'll do.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Asian Jason is on once a week.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Uh, and we're here, we're moving around the day, so
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: we're on. We're on every week now. We're just every
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: week we get an episode. And uh, I'm just I'm
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: excited to bring this to you.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: More to come. I'm James Lognior. Touch you next time.