It’s a new era in Asian America, and the TikTok generation is running it.
Scroll a few times on your For You page and you’ll easily come across several Asian “It Girls” bringing in millions of views showing off ancient beauty rituals. A few more swipes up and you might find home cooks packing bento boxes or musicians mixing ’70s Bollywood songs with viral pop hits.
The panic of opening an ethnic lunchbox in a crowded cafeteria is dead to them. It has been traded in for videos of their moms’ recipes narrated by artificial intelligence. The teasing endured for expressive classical dances is in the rearview mirror. They’re now making money doing the same dances on the internet.
What was once a burning thirst for representation has been satiated, even drowned, on the internet, young people said. And for a generation of Asian Americans raised on social media, whose culture has always been ill-defined, stereotyped, asterisked, relegated to the sidelines and viewed in the shadow of whiteness, coming into their own means putting a heritage they once tried to bury on full display.
“They’re moving through the world in a way where they don’t feel like they have to explain themselves,” said Christine Bacareza Balance, the director of the Asian American studies department at Cornell University. “There’s an enjoyment of being Asian American.”
They’re moving through the world in a way where they don’t feel like they have to explain themselves.”
— Christine Bacareza Balance, Cornell University Professor
Existing in two worlds, often in conflict with each other, isn’t a new concept, experts said. But there’s something different about the way those in the internet generation are navigating life. Social media in many ways has set them free from the rigidity of white society’s standards; they’ve created their own spaces, their own stars and their own expectations for how their lives might look.
It isn’t what their parents came from; nor…
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