Sometimes, when you respond to someone asking an earnest question, it can be a chance to inform, rather than fight. If you give them a chance, you can let them see where you’re coming from.
I mention this because I’ve seen somewhat similar questions asked, and they are immediately responded to in an attacking manner with accusations of ignorance and privilege. This is not to say that one should never point out another person’s privilege when valid, but I don’t like to see this done right off the bat when the person hasn’t been given a chance to hear the explanation.
Of course, with written online interaction, it can be hard to tell tone, so I’m never sure at first if someone is being sarcastic or will come back with an “AHA! Gotcha!” response, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt in these situations.
Anyway… I am interested if anyone knows of any Asian-American/AAPI groups related to humanism, secularism, skepticism, or non-theism. As someone who is new to my city, has never started an organization, and who doesn’t know of many Asian-Americans in those communities, I feel like creating such a group would be very difficult at this point. But I am thinking about the possibility of creating an online community, unless someone can point me in the direction of one that exists already. Creating an online community would still be a challenge to me as well, but at least it would seem more feasible, given that it would include a much wider region than just Los Angeles. I’m mostly discouraged to do this, as I think I only know one Asian-American skeptic (though I haven’t keep a tally, so I could be wrong about that). And, at the same time, that’s part of why I want to do it. I’m guessing there must be more of us out there. I may not get any immediate responses to this post, but perhaps someone will stumble upon this later in a similar search and we can become online friends or collaborators.
Thanks to the American Humanist Association facebook page for the help and to the person who asked the question.