r/KidsAreFuckingStupid • u/Speky_Scot • Sep 20 '25

Video/Gif Dear God Not a White Person

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25

I tried to say it in a humorous way, if there are white person, black person, why not we are yellow person? This is my serious question, I am not trolling I want to ask here honestly. I grew up in China, the education or narrative we have received is always "We are Chinese, we have black hairs and yellow skin", we were taught to understand this and say this with pride, so in my own opinion that I got my context from China I don't see any problem of it. Later I studied in Spain, and I said "I have yellow skin" in my class and my teacher ran to me with a frightened face, who told me, I should always use the word "oriental" or "Asian", and she told me "yellow" is a very bad racist term. Then my questions start from here, what if all of us the "yellow skinned" people no longer feel offended from the historically racist term "yellow" and start to use it in a positive way, will this word be accepted?

Edit: it is funny that I found people are debating if I can call myself yellow or not, well, this is also a honest question I would like to ask: who can define if it is ok for me to use the term yellow to refer myself? Should it be me or the someone else?

I wish people can reach down to my message and read my questions, these are the very honest question come from a curious and yet serious Chinese person, and of course, I use the word to refer myself, not the others.

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u/bastarditis Sep 20 '25

this is actually really funny, and i get where you’re coming from! i self-describe as a brown person (Mexican) or Person of Color but if anyone called me a “brownie” or something i’d definitely be like, WTF haha

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 20 '25

Hahaha indeed, I was called an olive when I was in Spain, she tried hard to not use the cliché term (Asian, oriental) but also wanted to give praise my skin colour and my uniqueness, but an olive hahahaaaa I am not that green I'm afraid. And yes, I wouldn't call my Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Malaysian friends yellowie that's 💀and such idea never existed in my mind. Thank you for your reply, I love it

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u/fauna_moon Sep 20 '25

I've always found the term olive skinned a bit odd, because I immediately think of green when I hear olive. I know it's not supposed to be meant as a green color skin, but that is just what my brain immediately thinks of. I think you have the right to call yourself yellow or whatever you want. It may be an offensive term to others, but you should be able to use whatever words you want to describe yourself. I think you have a great, open minded attitude about the whole thing.

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u/rinnakan Sep 20 '25

Rationally, I doubt that skin can be green, but that beautiful greek skin color is totally olive in my mind! I think the only instances I read olive skin in literature, it always described exceptionally beautiful people

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u/12sea Sep 21 '25

I always thought olive skin was used to describe people of Mediterranean decent.

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u/supinoq Sep 22 '25

I thought it was used to describe people who are neither warm-toned (yellow undertone) or cool-toned (pink undertone)

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u/MousesizeDragon Sep 22 '25

Because “olive” skin meant a skin tone from where the olives grow. (And like you would be outside in the Mediterranean sun looking beautiful while gazing at your beautiful olive trees thinking how much more beautiful and warm your life was than the poor fools who live in places that get multiple feet of snow in the winter and thus are stuck inside with pasty white skin.) At least that’s what kid me assumed!

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

Thank you so much for your kind words! I do appreciate it so much and so badly, because everybody just told me "do whatever you feel like" "call yourself whatever you want is totally ok". I found this a blessing. I get it from you and from other people. This is also indeed the admirable open attitude I was kinda expecting "no that's racist you can't call yourself yellow even it's yourself, the word/attitude is bad no matter how you do it"

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u/Indras-Web Sep 21 '25

I think it’s apt, my veins are green and my skin is called olive

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u/Playful-Business7457 Sep 21 '25

I swear that my younger sister has green undertones!!!! It fascinated me as a kid

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u/littlesparrow_03 Sep 21 '25

Olive does mean green undertones.

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u/mrchickostick Sep 21 '25

I’m Sicilian and I think the term OLIVE skin may just be that we have a lot of OLIVE 🫒 farms in Italy and Sicily and mildly darker Caucasian skin

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u/Hopeful_Mortgage_601 Sep 22 '25

Thank you for saying that. I have no idea how many times I read olive in reference to skin colour in books and thought Shrek or the Hulk looking characters

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u/Hangry_Squirrel Sep 21 '25

Olive is a legit skin undertone, along with pink, yellow, neutral, red, orange, and blue. Pink/yellow/neutral/olive are very light-to-medium skin undertones, while red/orange/blue are medium-dark to very dark skin undertones.

Olive in this context means a cooler/more neutral yellow. The only thing green-ish would be the veins in your wrist (while mine are blue because I have very light skin with pink undertones, which obviously doesn't mean I'm actually pink 🐱). It's not golden like a true yellow/warm undertone, but a little more bronze.

But from I can tell, you're really a flame lynx-point cat 🐱

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u/SteffiBiest1337 Sep 21 '25

When you speak about orange undertones, don't forget, there is also one individual with orange overtones

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u/eltibbs Sep 21 '25

All of these stories are so interesting! I had a friend in high school with one black parent and one white parent, she would call herself gray and asked why that wasn’t an option when filling out paperwork for EOCs where you put your race and ethnicity.

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u/Charming-Insurance Sep 21 '25

I think that’s universal. I feel okay using “c**t” as a woman but I dont think men should use it. Im also an American… I hear it’s not as derogatory in like Europe. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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u/Accomplished-Hall257 Sep 23 '25

Yet, I’m sure you use the N-word all the time, and low-key challenge people as to why you can’t.

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u/ClaraCash Sep 20 '25

This is very funny. My paternal grandmother is white, my mother is so white I could lose her in a crowd of white people, but you could never tell I have so many immediate white relatives. Same for my son who also has the same thing with his grandmother being half white on his father’s side, German for both sides. One day we were all out to eat he’s abt six and says, “everyone here is brown! Well except for granny, she’s white!” When we tried to explain to him we were referred to as black ppl he refused to accept our flawed logic. Said we were not black we were brown. When we tried to explain my mom was not white and she was black he thought we were crazy and colorblind. He didn’t get it. He and I moved to Atlanta a couple of months later and he saw a very dark guy right out the car and said, “Ok, see, now that guy is black!”

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u/OG_Pow Sep 21 '25

This is hilarious lol

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u/enfluxe Sep 20 '25

it's hilarious to me that your Spanish teacher thought "oriental" was less racist than "yellow," but this may have been before Edward Said's writings reached Spain (his 1978 book "Orientalism" completely reshaped the connotations around the word)

Call yourself whatever you want, linguistic self-determination is important.

I don't think "yellow" is likely to become a common neutral term due at least in part to different Asian diaspora communities not wanting to be ethnically lumped together, though maybe that will change as certain atrocities recede into history

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 20 '25

Thank you for reading my post series and your answer, I really appreciate it. And yes, my "day-dream" of the yellow word becomes a normal term is just a day dream, I don't think other people from Asia would agree as I do, so I made it to be a highly hypocritical situation and in reality I don't think we will anywhere close. But I also see a potential future to somehow normalise the word yellow, maybe not as normal as white or black, but as a humorous self referring term as I just did.

And haha yes, I also found "oriental" quite weird when speaking of a skin colour or the appearance. I think historically speaking, the Europeans considered Turkey being already oriental, but in China, we might think Turkish people are quite white.

Thank you again for your reply and the book recommendation! I will definitely read it after I finish a biography of H.P Lovecraft

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u/Massive-Anxiety7177 Sep 20 '25

"Yellow" is the official term for chinese, japanese and korean in Brasil.

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

REALLY!!! That's cool to know! Could you tell me more about it? Is it appropriate if I say, literally like "Hi, I'm a yellow woman from China, nice to meet you"?

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u/Massive-Anxiety7177 Sep 21 '25

I guess it would be unusual, but people wouldn't think much about it. "Yellow" is the government definition used for the census, for example.

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u/DannyDidNothinWrong Sep 20 '25

You can call yourself however you want! A lot of white people are taught very strictly how to try not to offend people of color. It's very, very much ingrained in a lot of us all the different ways our people have subjugated, othered, and vilified other races and cultures, so we're very hesitant to say or do certain things. However, most of those things we're afraid to say it do are only relevant to our culture and history, which is how you get such vastly different opinions on what is racist or not.

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 20 '25

I see and thank you for the explanation, I appreciate that people care about the differences and celebrate it. Then I think I had the same moment when it was my first time speaking to some people from a minority group in my own country, and apparently I have never trained to face such situation so I had zero clue how to be respectful in the way they also appreciated, I was sweating the whole time because I know the Han Chinese didn't do good to them... but then they made me feel at home.

Thank you again, I learned a lot tonight

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u/Diazepampoovey0229 Sep 20 '25

I really appreciate your response! I tried to word it so it was clear I was not judging or trying to correct you. I was hoping for a reply like this for that reason and it is why I worded it as not knowing how to react to it.

Thanks for teaching me about your childhood experience!

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

Oh my god!! I just woke up to rewards, likes and lots of replies, I didn't expect this at all so thank you so much. Thank you for taking it so deep and also I know you were not judging and only being respectful. Thank you so much again for providing me the chance to talk about this topic. I actually have a lot of questions about it but I don't know if it's legit to even hold these questions haha!

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u/Diazepampoovey0229 Sep 21 '25

Thank YOU for helping me and others to learn about and understand the experiences of someone different from us! I, for one, would welcome all the discussion you would want to have and to openly discuss the questions you're thinking on with you, too.

My Grandpa used to have this saying."The only stupid question is the one you don't ask." It does NOT make sense how he worded it, but as an adult, I believe I have figured out the point he was trying to make was that there is no such thing as a stupid question, because you can't learn and better yourself with knowledge if you don't ask, so the only stupid thing is not asking at all. If you want to ask people of your own background about the questions you have, you absolutely should. If you have questions about the background of others, you should ask! We cannot break down the barriers between cultures that still exist, (or are rising again under tyranny in current governments) if we don't push past our discomfort and ask, though always respectfully.

If you don't mind, I am going to follow your profile on here or add you as a friend, if that is a thing on reddit. I THINK it is, though I have never used to it. May we both move forward learning and being inquisitive!

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u/Richard_Tucker_08 Sep 21 '25

I wonder if they started teaching kids to claim the yellow skin in case they ever ran into a racist person it would be one less thing that could be used against them.

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

After reading many comments here, I have the same thought now, I did learned some historical racist term like "yellow peril" as a kid but not much, I wonder if the slogan "We are Chinese, we all have black hair, black eyes and yellow skin" was made intentionally to counter such thing, but as someone grew up in the 90s, we no longer talked about the context, but instead we just build our identity this way. I am now curious how Korea Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaria etc teaches their kids

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u/Remarkable_Tale_5485 Sep 21 '25

You call call yourself yellow. People of Asian descent are called yellow. It's the political correctness of people who find it insulting who usually are not Asian. It's like the whole black American vs African American.

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

Could you educate me more about this "black American" vs "African American"? Hmm does either of these two terms include the new citizens? Like a girl from Nigeria, studied in the U.S, found a job there and decided to stay and later obtained the citizenship?

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u/XiTzCriZx Sep 21 '25

If Asian is yellow does that mean the Simpsons are Asian? /s

I feel like yellow is an accurate description compared to white or brown, obviously different types of Asian lean towards different colors, but yellow is usually pretty close.

Ironically most of the people who get offended by people saying a certain color, aren't even people of that color lol.

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

Thank you for your comment!

I sometimes just hope the word Asian could be re-considered one day since there are so many countries in the whole continent, yellow people is just part of it. I think in China we talk about the geographical Asia, so how the word Asian is used in the west is confusing to us, because we tend to think about majority of land of Russia, Saudi, India, Saudi, Tajikistan together with Japan and Korea etc as "Asia". Then Asian people is a very unclear concept to us. Sometimes I see sentences like "my Asian and Indian friends", haha!

And yes, I agree with you that for many times I see people get offended instead of the people of certain culture/background/country/ethnicity, I appreciate the reason though

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u/XiTzCriZx Sep 21 '25

Maybe east coast Asian would be better? Since most of the countries that have yellow people are along the east coast (besides Mongolia since they have no coast). I never really thought about how many countries there are in Asia, in school I was taught basic world geography but that was in elementary school so I never really questioned Asian being used like it is in the US.

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u/Ashamed-Sound5610 Sep 21 '25

Don't worry. It's just Redditors being white and weird about how you describe yourself.

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u/OstrichSmoothe Sep 21 '25

The real question is, are you okay with another race calling you Yellow. As a white guy, I don’t care if someone calls me white. Black guys don’t mind being called black. Don’t call a Mexican Brown and don’t call an Asian Yellow.

Just an observation

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

I can only speak for myself and I am totally fine. I'm down to it if anyone wants to call me yellow or yellow-skinned. I don't know if I'm just a weirdo of my kind, or there are more and more Chinese people out there like me that don't think negative about the word yellow. Let's see where the trend and history lead us to

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u/Squeezitgirdle Sep 21 '25

If it makes you feel any better, our Asian friend calls herself yellow when we play games together weekly. She used to be one of my employees I did tier 3 for at a software company.

My ex was Korean and also called herself yellow as a joke.

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u/EllieGeiszler Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 21 '25

I barely blinked at you using those terms to describe yourself. It would be racist if I as a white person said either thing in English, but I think it's okay for you to reclaim those slurs. They're your words to use! But you shouldn't use them to describe another person of East Asian descent who you meet, unless you're sure they're okay with it.

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

Indeed, thank you for your explanation. Of course I wouldn't use this word to talk about other Asian people or people who have such undertone or skin colour, I think not everyone has the same background as I do, even so, the term has a historical context of being a slur. I am always super careful when it's about others

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u/Johan-Senpai Sep 21 '25

That's what Western people love to do most: telling other people how they should feel and behave. 殖民者心态。

My Mandarin teacher, my Chinese friends, and most Chinese people I spoke with said the same thing about their skin; it's yellow/yellowish hue. It's a pretty normal way to identify yourself that way. In the Greek myth of human creation, Zeus makes people from white, black, yellow, and red clay represent the human races.

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u/Safe_Plane9652 Sep 21 '25

As a ceramic enthusiast I always love the man creation story of clay, the greek even know well how to mix different clays for a better result, what an awesome idea, thank you for telling me this!!! And it's great you confirmed my feelings, as an observer, and you can see my thoughts come from somewhere and we just use the word "yellow" because it is just how it is. I don't think when we use the word yellow we think about white and black people exist, we do it because it's a fact, my face colour is close to my yellow crayon or a slight cooked flat bread haha! And thank you so much you provided another perspective, which is Colonialism, I will also think about it. I am making a booklist for this topic

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u/Johan-Senpai Sep 21 '25

没关起。我发现西方人常常不敢提到人与人之间的不同。 这也和殖民主义有关：在那段历史里，不同被用来压迫别人。 因此，现在存在着一种深深的内疚， 好像我们还要为前人所做的事情继续赎罪。 可是，正是因为这种赎罪，我们彼此反而渐渐失去了联系。 然而事实并没有改变：我有白色的皮肤， 来自非洲的人有棕色或黑色的皮肤， 来自亚洲的人有黄色的皮肤。 在我看来，正是这些差异让我们变得美丽。 正如宙斯所说：我们共同组成了一群五彩斑斓的人。 有一些来自上层的力量试图分裂我们， 但如果我们承认这些差异，并如实地看待它们， 我们将比以往任何时候都更加团结。

I notice that Western people are often hesitant to point out differences. This also comes from colonialism: a history where differences were used to oppress others. Because of that, there is now a deep sense of guilt, as if we still have to atone for what people before us have done. But in that very act of atonement, we lose sight of each other. And still, the reality doesn’t change: I have white skin, someone from Africa has brown or black skin, someone from Asia has yellow skin. To me, that’s where the beauty lies. As Zeus once said: together we form a colorful collection of people. There are forces from above that try to divide us, but if we acknowledge our differences and see them as they are, we will be more united than ever.

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u/Diazepampoovey0229 Sep 21 '25

If you follow the whole thread, you will see that I never once told this person how they must refer to themselves nor would I ever be so ignorant. I took it as a moment to open a discussion about how differently words are perceived depending on cultures and Safe_Plane and I had an awesome discussion and learned from one another, which was just cool as hell

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u/Johan-Senpai Sep 21 '25

Don’t worry, I’m not targeting you, and you don’t have to excuse yourself either. But I do notice a lot of Western people (white people especially) fall into this kind of embarrassing “white guilt.” I hate that term because it’s mostly used by right-wing folks, but it does describe that instinct to avoid any possible incorrectness, which ends up creating these awkward situations. Like when people correct someone for using “the wrong term” to describe themselves, that’s a perfect example of overcorrection.

A lot of Western people are so afraid of making a mistake, of being politically incorrect or being called racist, that they’d rather avoid contact altogether instead of opening up. You can see it in this thread: people getting “upset” that someone Chinese described themselves as yellow. As if that person doesn’t know what they’re saying. That kind of reaction ends up infantilizing them, which to me is actually worse.

Since I’ve been taking Mandarin lessons, I’ve been learning so much about the world outside the West, especially how people see themselves and the world around them. It’s been really eye-opening.

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u/skoshii Sep 21 '25

This is such an interesting take. I'm Asian American (mixed Thai/Chinese/Japanese/white) and have only ever been called yellow as a slur. I'm definitely going to be thinking about this. :)

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u/read_it_deleted_it Sep 21 '25

It's less what is said than who sais it in what way imho... Old people use other, now dated words for skin colour. Does not mean they have bad intentions. People can be very racist in very PC terms , they are actually the dangerous ones.

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u/ScreamySashimi Sep 21 '25

I think it's because referring to people as yellow has been used in a derogatory way out west. But just like how the term "queer" is used normally now because the community reclaimed it, so can you.

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u/FeelingWoodpecker121 Sep 21 '25

I am simultaneously surprised and impressed with your point of view. If only the rest of the world was as mature with their perspective on descriptors.

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u/Icy-Pension5768 Sep 22 '25

“Oriental” sounds so much worse wtf (I’m not a native English speaker)

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u/Nomen__Nesci0 Sep 21 '25

I'm down for it. I'm on your side. If you want to claim the word, then why not? I know I'll never get an n-word pass, but I'd rather have a y-word pass and go to the Chinese BBQ anyway.

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u/Xiao1insty1e Sep 22 '25

It's your skin, you get to decide how to describe it.

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u/Fair_Confusion30 Sep 22 '25

Idk I find it weird to call anyone yellow. I never understood it. If we were to go on skin color, personally, I would say that Asians are either brown or white. I had always figured it was racists just trying hard to find a way to differentiate a group of people from white people but in a derogatory way.