"You wouldn't walk up to a white person and say 'what kind of white are you?'"
Teen Wolf actress and YouTuber Arden Cho has opened up about racism.
In a new YouTube video titled What Am I?, Cho discusses her experiences with racism and her frustrations with ignorance.
The Korean American says that she is constantly asked “what” she is at least once a month. She adds that she’s been told that she isn’t Korean but also gets asked whether she’s North or South Korean.
“I’m so tired of people telling me what I am and what I’m not,” she said. “I’m so tired of people saying you have to look a certain way to be American.”
An angered Cho questions the inappropriate nature of asking people where they are from, saying it’s a “personal question”.
“I just want to put this out there,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what I am, or what you are, or what anybody is. If you are friends with someone and you’re like ‘hey, what ethnicity are you,’ that’s cool. But you wouldn’t walk up to a white person and say ‘what kind of white are you?'”
Reflecting on her upbringing, Cho says she has experienced all the racial slurs reserved for Asian people.
“I’ve grown up with racism my entire life,” she said. “I’ve been bullied, sent to the hospital, beat up, I’ve been called a Chink and a Gook, every single racial slur an Asian person can be called, I’ve been called it.”
Cho ends her video advising viewers not to open with “let me guess, are you Japanese?” next time they encounter an Asian person.