Episode 34: The Margins And The Meetup
The Wasian Meetup went viral. The reactions were immediate, emotional, and deeply divided. But what was really going on?
In this episode, we take a thoughtful, academically-grounded look at the viral Half Asian Spring meetup — a gathering that brought together mixed white-Asian people during AAPI Heritage Month — and ask what the controversy surrounding it can teach us about race, identity, and belonging in North America today.
Using frameworks from ethnic studies scholars and social activists, we explore:
Mixed-race identity and liminality — what it means to live between racial categories that were never designed to hold you
Affinity spaces — why marginalized communities need spaces of their own, and what makes those spaces meaningful vs. exclusionary
Racial triangulation — how Asian Americans are positioned in a complex in-between space relative to both Blackness and whiteness
Colorism and visibility — why some mixed-race identities are hyper-visible while others remain erased, and what that reveals about whose proximity to whiteness is being celebrated
We also sit with the tension between the desire for recognition and the fear of fragmentation, exploring why building community for someone is not the same as excluding everyone else.
This is a rich, honest conversation that holds complexity with care.
Episode Sources
The Multiracial experience: Racial borders as the new frontier - Book by Maria P.P. Root
Mixed Race Amnesia - UBC Press
Introducing Don DeLillo - Book by Frank Lentricchia
Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of colour - Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans - Clair Jean Kim
Unequal Freedom: How race and gender shaped American citizenship and labor - Evelyn Nakano Glenn
Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness - Bell Hooks
Quiz Sources
A Statistical Snapshot of Asians in Canada - Statistics Canada
Study: Portrait of the Chinese populations in Canada - The Daily, Statistics Canada