These days, it feels like the news changes every hour. Well, NPR has a podcast that does that too. NPR News Now brings you a fresh five-minute episode every hour of the day with the latest most important headlines in episodes that are clear, fact-based, and easy to digest. Listen to NPR News Now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. I was interviewing current undergraduate students and I asked them about how they identified themselves racially. And one student, they said, I am a citizen of Waysha and I had never heard that. And I was like, tell me more, tell me more. I don't know about you, but when Alyssa Liu was doing her thing on that Olympic ice to MacArthur Park by Donna Summer, I couldn't escape the videos. I didn't want to escape the videos. And I still see her performance to State side by Pink Pantherous and Zara Larson go viral. She is such a phenomenon. Or as Chapel Roan puts it, a feminine omnod. You're absolutely right. Mika Ellison, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Hi, Brittany. So Mika is actually in It's Been a Minute and Life Kit Intern. Mika, are you an Alyssa Liu stand too? Oh my God. Yes, absolutely. I feel like she's really ushering in this new, more joyful era in figure skating. And she's also just kind of the people's princess, you know? 100%. But one thing about her sudden establishment is this like household name that was really interesting to me was that after she won the gold medal, I kept seeing all this discourse about her that didn't really have anything to do with her skating. I am so happy that Gen Z has such great Waysian representation with Alyssa Liu being the prime example from the Olympics. Everybody knows this is the year of abundance for Waysians. We're already seeing it with Alyssa Liu and Eileen Gu at the Olympics. Like I kept seeing all these posts that are like, it's Waysian winter or it's the Waysian century. And that feels like a continuation of something I've been picking up on social media for a while. Like this Waysian wave or Waysian fixation. Waysian fixation. Tell me about that. Can you explain what it is for people who don't know? Okay, yes. So for those who haven't heard, Waysians are people who are mixed white and Asian. And not everyone loves or uses that term. Some people say mixed Asian or part Asian, but I identify as Waysian. Okay, so what about the fixation part? So, Alyssa Liu is not the first person I've seen to be part of this like narrative of Waysian excellence. I feel like I've seen these like TikTok videos that have this royal tree of Waysia. Like it's a real place. Okay, guys, there's a lot of misunderstanding about who the royal family of Waysia is. So let me break it down for you. So first off, we have the king. The king is obviously Keanu Reeves. Like he's legend, been here forever. There's a whole hierarchy, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's kind of a meme. And I feel like I can say this. Waysians are kind of hot right now. 2026 is going to be the year of Waysians. I can just feel it. First of all, every time I go out in public, people are asking me if I'm Waysian. That never used to happen. Why do I feel like a celebrity now just because I'm Waysian? Like some of our biggest stars right now are Waysian. Alyssa Liu, of course, who's skated to a song by Leve, who is Icelandic and Chinese. And obviously Hudson Williams, star of Heated Rivalry. He's Korean and white. And that show, by the way, had over 10 million viewers, which is a lot. That's like nearing network TV numbers for a shoestring budget streaming show about gay hockey players. That is so wild. Or like in music, Olivia Rodrigo is our Filipino Waysian princess and has the most streamed album by a female artist on Spotify. It's because of me. Sorry. It's because of me. It's because of me. And beyond them, Waysians are kind of everywhere in pop culture. TV shows like The Summer I Turn Pretty, Industry, The Pit, Musicians Mitski and Michelle Zoner, the lead singer of Japanese Breakfast, are both also Waysian. And it's like it's not just that there are a lot of Waysians coming up in the culture right now. Usually Waysian kids born in the 1990s and 2000s, the kind of coming of age. What's really interesting to me is this social discourse and all the memes about it. I think it really says something about how attitudes around certain multiracial identities have changed. And like part of this is really celebratory. Waysians are talking about Waysians, finding community in the shared identity, but I've also seen some non-Waysians talking about us in kind of like a jokey way or sometimes a fetishizing way. And it's a little weird that a certain racial mix has become like the topic of conversation. Like it's this whole pop culture moment around Waysians. Yeah, I mean, I would agree. And as someone who's Waysian myself, I wanted to go deep on why this is happening now. I grew up in Southern California, which is like Waysian Central. So no one really cared that I was Waysian growing up. Like there are tons of Waysians in my school. I had Waysian adults in my life. So I wanted to know why people are suddenly talking about it. I know you've looked into this. I am really interested to know more. Let's do it. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Loos and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. And a reminder, if you love It's Been a Minute, which from the sweet comments you all have been leaving, it sounds like maybe you do. Be sure to follow or subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app. That way you get new episodes the moment they drop. It's not like there haven't been people who are white and Asian before. So why Waysians right now? Okay, yes. We'll get to that in a second. But first I want to put forth a theory. I think there are different waves of Waysians in US history. And the one we're in right now is the most culturally powerful, let's say, of all of them. Okay, tell me more. There's a book, China Town, Truck Mysteries, that looked into census data from New York at turn of the century, where they noticed that there's actually more intermarriage between Asian men and white women than there were between Asian men and Asian women, partly because there were laws against Asian women immigrating. That's Leilani Nishime, a professor of communication at the University of Washington. She studies multiracial Asians. And so there were large numbers of mixed race Asian kids, but then we don't see them after that, right? They don't show up in the census later on. And the same was happening in California. Wait, why weren't they showing up in the census? Their parents basically just had to choose which race box white or Asian to check whenever they filled out forms, because you weren't allowed to check both. Ah, I see. So those were like the earlier waves. And then there was another one during the mid-century, mainly because of our wars in Asia. You know, coming out of Vietnam War and the Korean War, I think a lot of mixed race Asians were assumed to be the children of servicemen who were involved with women from Asia. I actually heard this assumption from Alexander Chi, author and professor at Dartmouth. He grew up in New England during the 70s. Growing up, the assumption was always that my dad was white and my mom was Asian. People would ask me about my heritage. And I was always correcting them and they were always so confused. Yeah. There is a kind of cultural script underneath that that's related to our military history that underscores all of this. So there's a pretty obvious piece of legal history that was important for Wajans around this time. It's, of course, Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court case that struck down Virginia's Racial Integrity Act and legalized interracial marriage. But the other piece that's maybe less well known is the Heart Seller Act of 1965. So that act abolished previous quotas against immigrants from specific countries, which were discriminatory against Asians for a really long time. And then the act also preference professionals with specialized skills. So that act opened the door and then some Asian country started to get rich. Lailani again. You see the rise of Asia as an economic force. First Japan and then Hong Kong and then China. Korea too. Right. And richer nations tend to produce more highly skilled professionals. Exactly. And not every Asian immigrant was one, but between 1980 and 2010, the Asian and Pacific Islander population in America increased four fold according to Pew. And Lailani thinks the increased status of Asian countries and Asian immigrants also changed how we see Wajans. I think the image of mixed-face Asians tended to follow that trajectory. And so they became much more associated with cosmopolitanism, with people who had the ability to move freely across the planet, people who were privileged. And I'm not saying that mixed-race Asians, like before they weren't all kids of soldiers and now they're not all kids of rich, you know, entrepreneurs, but that's the public image. So it's a much more kind of flattering, maybe public image or positive public image. And this is why I think Wajans that are coming of age right now maybe have more cultural power than they've had in the past. Asians as a whole are the most educated racial group in America. And also according to that same Pew survey from 2012, Asians were more likely than any other racial group to marry someone of a different race. Not all of us, but many of us Wajans have had parents who came with, married into, or fought to attain money, education, opportunities, maybe so they could pay for our acting classes or skating lessons. And that changing perception of Asians in America, plus the Wajan proximity to whiteness, probably explains at least part of why now. Wow, you give me a lot to think about with that. I mean, it's really interesting. It's not just a product of like a constellation of young celebrities, but like a whole geopolitical story. Hold on though, I feel like the adoption of Wajan as a term though, like I feel like that's kind of new. Like when I was growing up, there was a different term that I saw around or heard around, which is hapa. Did you ever use that? Yes, I was definitely in the tail end of what we'll call the hapa generation. For people who don't know, hapa is taken from this Hawaiian phrase hapa haoli, which means half white. So depending on the context, it can really refer to anyone who's half white, but hapa ended up being used to refer to mixed Asian people in general, regardless of percentages. And it was definitely super popular to use that term to refer to mixed Asian people in the past 30 years or so. I learned more about it from Rebecca King-Orian. She's now a sociology professor who studies the intersection of Wajans, social media, and pop culture. But back in the 90s, she was part of the student group in Berkeley called the Hapa Issues Forum. We were young. It was the 90s. We were trying to carve a space because I think a lot of us had gone to a lot of the Asian American student groups, but we often were sort of looked at strange or in some cases even rejected from Asian clubs because we weren't Asian enough. I met all these other mixed race people and particularly mixed Asian people and lots of people with my mix on founding Hapa Issues Forum was really, really kind of empowering and we had great success. But then people started to be like, wait, isn't referring to mixed Asian people using an Indigenous Hawaiian term maybe cultural appropriation? And the general consensus was kind of, yeah. We were accused of appropriating and probably it's true we did appropriate the word hapa. Part of the reason I think that word appealed to us in the early 90s was it wasn't, you know, so like fractionalizing yourself in terms of, you know, I'm half this or half that, a quarter that. Even though a lot of people like Rebecca and myself liked and used the term, it did fall out of favor a little bit. Interesting. So about when did you stop using it? I would say middle school, early high school. And then after that, we just kind of didn't have any other labels. So when Wasion came along, it was very exciting. Here's Rebecca again. When I talked to people about the hashtag Wasion thing, they actually love the trend. They love the hashtag because it allowed them to see other people like themselves. Did you ever feel that way? Well, as I mentioned, my whole life have kind of been surrounded by Wasion's. So it's not exactly new to me. And I will admit that having a label is kind of nice. But the thing that feels new is seeing more Wasion stories. We are going to take a quick break. But first, if any of you are finding it's been a minute for the first time, welcome. I hope you're enjoying this show and that you come back every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning for brand new episodes. And every Tuesday, a video episode. Yesterday's was on the fact versus fiction of being a kept woman. And trust me, it's the exact kind of girl math a lot of people need. You could find that video on Spotify or YouTube, or just listen to the audio wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up after the break. It's sort of representation without kind of like a deeper potential impact on folks. I mean, I think the implicit message is that like, we can see race. Race exists, but we don't talk about it. Stick around. So Wasion's have been around for a long time. We're not new. But we've been kind of incognito. There was actually a website that listed all the Asians that you did know are Asian. And people would always like try to add to the list. And then there was people that you weren't sure about, but they were making the list anyways. That's Leilani again. In her research, she found mixed Asians have often just kind of assimilated into whatever category people decide they look more like. So one of the examples I use was Keanu Reeves, probably the most famous one. And I talk about how early on in his career, in the roles he was playing, he usually had white parents. But what feels newer to me is that we have characters and stories now about people who are specifically Wasion. Like all of the sisters in the Netflix movie to all the boys I've loved before, and the spin-off show Exo Kitty, or Hudson Williams in Heated Rivalry. Oh, yes, I've seen all of these things. Check, check, check. Heated Rivalry specifically, huge for Waisians. Like, I really think I started seeing all this stuff, all the memes about us when the show came out. And I can't see for sure which, but Hudson Williams playing Shane Hollander either precipitated or accelerated this focus on Waisia. I remember there's like some photos in the show that are like, I think him as a kid, and he looks in the photos exactly like my brother. I had a moment of like, wow, that's Chris. That's Alexander Chi again. I think the sense I got of him was, of him projecting that sense of like, being mixed in an environment that's predominantly white, knowing no one's going to care around you to get the difference right. And so instead, you're just trying to like, quote, unquote, do your best, you know, which is one of those ambiguous benchmarks, like when you're dealing with a racist and misogynistic and homophobic status quo, which is, I think, part of what the show is about. It's really interesting to hear that from his perspective. I was definitely picking up on the significance of Shane Hollander being Waisian in it, but hearing that personal dimension, it just adds a new layer to a show that I already really liked. Yeah, for me, it was one of the only times that I've seen a show like care that a character was Waisian. Those stories did fall a little bit into that stereotype that Leilani was describing earlier about this privileged, rich Waisian. But anyway, even though I personally have enjoyed the Waisian label, seeing all the Waisians come up in culture, I think there are some people who still see casting Waisians as kind of a cynical ploy. In terms of streaming, it's like, again, you're trying to capture every piece of the pie. That's Samantha Texan, a PhD student at USC who studies streaming platforms and representation. You don't want to buck the white audience. So that's why those corporations are kind of going after us. Like, you're the safest body to have. You are indeed just Asian enough to be properly diverse, but also not properly diverse all at once. And that kind of bears out in the data. According to the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report for 2025, 22% of leads in streaming films were multiracial. That's the second largest share behind white people. And that includes other types of multiracial people, of course. But the share of non-mixed Asian leads was 2%, which is obviously way, way lower. I mean, 2%? That is low. It's kind of crummy to think that for Asian Americans in order for them to be seen, they have to have some white heritage. But that also, I will say, that feels like a problem for black entertainment as well. Right. And also at the same time, I think a little Asianness is kind of palatable for white people, actually. K-pop is huge, Squid Game was huge, anime is huge, even on the culinary level. And this is my own opinion. But I feel like Americans are not as afraid of Asian foods and ingredients, and they're even kind of trendy. Yes, there was that whole TikTok drama about whether there are too many white people shopping in H Mart nowadays. And then, you know, black people, we were in the comments like, okay, well, can we shop at H Mart? Like, what's going on? I think that discourse was embarrassing for everyone. But anyway, going back to Waysons on Screen, I feel like on one end of the spectrum, you have a character like Shane Hollander, who's shaped somewhat by being Wayson. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have Waysons on Screen that are just kind of there. Here's Jacob Campbell, a graduate student at the Ohio State University, who studies higher education and representation. It's sort of representation without kind of like a deeper potential impact on folks. I mean, I think the implicit message is that like, we can see race, race exists, but we don't talk about it, or it's not something that we need to like spend narrative time on in this, you know, TV show or whatever it may be. And you might say, okay, why does it matter? We have Wayson people on Screen, and it's great. Does every story need to be about being Wayson? And like, the thing that happens when you don't acknowledge Waysonness is that more often than not, these stories end up treating Wayson people exactly like white people with all of the attendant privileges, like in the summer I turn pretty. Okay, I'm very familiar with Miss Belly Conklin, the character of the summer I turn pretty. But how do you think the story treats her like a white character? Yeah, so Belly's obviously Wayson. We see both of her parents enough that it's pretty obvious. But the whole story is this kind of her being in this wealthy country club environment, where most of the other characters are white and wealthy, including both of the love interests. And that kind of stereotype of that privileged Wayson just goes unspoken here. The fact that she's mixed Asian just doesn't really come up, even though like for me, it totally would. I think there's this idea that if Wayson people look white enough, or if we fit in well enough, we'll eventually just assimilate into whiteness. This is kind of model minority idea that's often attached to non-mixed Asian people too, that if we're well behaved and white acting enough, Asian people can just assimilate. But that's not actually how things work. Sometimes Waysons get those privileges attached to whiteness, and sometimes we don't. It's interesting to hear about this because like most of the mixed discourse I've been privy to has been about mixed people of black and white heritage. There was a whole fixation in the 90s, Mariah Carey alone had people doing all sorts of thought exercises about race. But one of the things you're saying here is this idea that Wayson people can kind of have both ways that doesn't really exist for mixed people of black and white heritage, like even for people like Mariah Carey, right? Even the knowledge of her black ancestry, it changed how people in the industry viewed her. Of course, that has to do with the One Drop rule. It's the legal history in the US that ruled that if you had even a little black ancestry, you know, AKA One Drop, no matter how far back it was or how you look, you are black. There was no moving in between unless you completely hid your ancestry. And a lot of mixed people of black and white ancestry identified primarily as black, thinking of like Barack Obama or Halle Berry. Like they might have a white parent, but they're black. That might have changed recently. I think there are a few more descriptors that people might use now. But that idea of assimilation or moving back and forth between is not often as accessible for people of black ancestry. Exactly. And that's another thing the Wayson fixation misses. There are a lot of mixed Asian Americans who aren't white at all. And they tend to have very different experiences with representation. A lot of times their Asianness is still invisible. And they really can't have it both ways because people just sort them into the other category. Myra Washington is an associate professor at the University of Utah. She's black and Korean. And she says in her experience, even standing next to my Korean mother, people will be like, no, no, I don't. Okay, maybe I can in the eyes, maybe I see the Asianness, right? But then, you know, they get confused and they're like, but if an Asian can look like her, then that means what I know of Asianness needs to expand because it defaults to what can we recognize you as and it is almost always black. I know there are Blazian or Latino Asian actors and athletes and stories. You know, I mean, I have a young person in my life who is Blazian, meaning black and Asian. And I am always on the lookout for Blazian people out in the world for her to look up to. But I'm not seeing the same kind of wider interest in like Blazian identity. Nope. Even like Kamala Harris, right? She ran for president. And I wasn't seeing people en masse being like, Blazians rise up. And I think that's because she was seen more as black, but also Americans more broadly tend to think of Asians as just East and Southeast Asian people like Korean, Japanese, Filipino and not South Asian, like Indian, Bangladeshi, et cetera. Totally. There have been a few waves of Blazian celebrities and visibility, but then we just forget. And also, some of the older white and Asian mixed folks I talked to, let's say from the Hoppa generation, don't actually like the term, Wazian. I feel like Anna went to her when she told her staff to find another word for blog. That's Alexander Chi again. I had a longer conversation with him about this word because he had a lot of thoughts about why it's maybe not actually so great. It's funny. I was just looking over a Reddit conversation where somebody was talking about why they felt the word offended them. And it was very similar to my own reaction, which is just being irritated that the W, which represents whiteness, is the first part. I've talked to a couple other people, and some people sort of have the same concerns as you of like, it sort of centers whiteness in a way that a lot of people find kind of annoying or aggressive. But other people are kind of saying, I talked to one expert who said she actually likes it because it's kind of acknowledging the whiteness in a way that might be good instead of just sort of saying mixed Asian. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that? I mean, I don't think it's good exactly. I do get the idea of having something better than mixed Asian, certainly as someone who has repeatedly referred to himself that way, just because it's a kind of pragmatic, bureaucratic expression. And really, bureaucracies, I suppose, are where these expressions have so often mattered. That's a really interesting perspective on this. Very interesting. Even though he's not a fan of the word, he did seem kind of resigned to it. And at a certain point, I suppose one has to give in to the widespread adoption of it. Like until there's something else that's new that replaces it, I suppose for convenience, it can be used. It kind of has a certain comedy to it. Like the word is a little ridiculous. In some ways, the easiest way to kill the word off would be to adopt it. So that it becomes so widespread that people are like, we need new word. Yeah. I think where I come down on it is I do actually like it. I think it names a lot of the uncomfortability I had as a kid growing up, because we would try to talk about mixed Asians, like you're saying. But that was so brought like it's so, depending on what you're mixed with, depending on your history, like if I feel like it started to get so difficult to talk about what mixed Asian was. And so I do think Asian, I have the same concerns you do a little bit about, I think the whiteness eclipsing, all of it. But I think it's good to have such a specific term to name a specific thing, I think for me, I don't know. In many ways, I think it's better to just to use it and pay attention to how you feel. It's so interesting to hear the two of you disagree. Like I have no dog in this fight, but I can see where each of you is coming from. But that's exactly what's so thorny about trying to find simple language to explain something as complicated and individual as identity. Yeah. And on the one hand, everything he said, I was like, yes, you are correct. The W is speaking first. But I still kind of like the term, even though I never want to paper over these issues or potential issues with the word. I don't know. I feel like Alexander said, we can just notice when we use the word and talk about how it makes us feel. And it does feel a little bit like, wow, it is the Waysians turn in the spotlight. And that is so fun. But at the same time, I do want there to be like context and actual depth to how our identities are shown. And I don't want to hog the spotlight. Plus, the thing about crazes is that they come and go. I think the solution, if there is one, is that this Waysian craze should kind of open us up to like the fullness of our experience beyond just this fun, but maybe fleeting moment of recognition. Thank you so much. You have shed so much light on the Waysian craze today. I mean, maybe if you keep going like this, you can you can make it to the Royal Family Tree with public Waysia. I know I'm so excited. Maybe I'll be the official Waysian correspondent. Only time will tell. Only time will tell. Well, Mika, thank you so, so much. I really appreciate it. I'm so glad you came on the show. That was Mika Ellison. In turn for NPR's It's Been a Minute and Life Kit. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Liam McBain. This episode was edited by Nina Pautuck. Engineering support came from Jimmy Keely. Our supervising producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. And a very special thanks to NPR's Emily Kwan for her support in making this episode. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.
