I'm rewatching Khemjira, and I paused the episode to write this post. I missed this the first time I watched it (I must’ve been too excited about the almost two-hour airtime), but this time around I was like, wait, what?!

In episode 8, >!the girlies (Jin & Da) are in the library talking about potentially moving to the U.S. because Da wants to study at a university there. Da tells Jin that they would be free to live together, and that no one would judge them the way they do there (in Thailand)!<.

**Racism in 1947**

Mind you, the year is 1947. Here, in the States, was the Jim Crow era. So, while Da and Jin weren’t Black, they weren’t White either. They would’ve faced heavy racism. To be frank, during those times, many White (people in general, but I said White because that’s who held the power) people most likely didn’t care to differentiate the type of Asian one was, so in their eyes, you were either Japanese or Chinese. The anti-Asian racism was heavy then because during this time, 1942\~1946, was the Japanese American internment (forced removal and imprisonment of people of Japanese ancestry). A few years before 1947, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, but its effects were still felt. In some instances, Asians were forced into segregated spaces because they were "not White enough.”

😮‍💨

**Homosexuality in 1947**

Gay and lesbian folks faced police harassment, criminalization, stigmas, and a whole bunch of other shit. In 1947, Truman passed The Lavender Scare, which was an executive order that basically said any homosexual government employees were a security threat. 🙄 Baby, make it make sense! Anyway, there were no federal protections, and homosexuality was treated as immoral and pathological. Major movements started years later.

So, no Da, you and Jin would not have been free of judgment, and you would’ve added a host of other issues. 

Khemjira is still one of my favorite shows, and I recognize no show is perfect. It’s just disappointing that with all the research that went into this show, the same wasn’t done for U.S. history. I get it. It kills the fantasy that lots of Asian nations have about this country, but when historical paths cross, it’s your duty as a storyteller to be accurate. 

I tried to link some of these events if anyone is interested.

**A/N**: A wise one (someone in the comments, lol) once said, "A character's words are not always the show's words." Sorry, DMD, for not giving you the benefit of the doubt 😂.

**References**:

[Timeline: Japanese Americans during World War II](https://www.nps.gov/tule/planyourvisit/timeline-japanese-americans-during-world-war-ii.htm)

[Chinese Immigration and the Chinese in the United States](https://www.archives.gov/research/chinese-americans/guide)

[Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race During the Cold War](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg35j)

[The Lavender Scare](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cold-war-lavender-scare-and-lgbtq-activism.htm)

Khemjira & U.S. Historical Ignorance/Romanticizating the U.S.