Teens Are Now Trying To Change Their Race And "Look More Asian"—RCTA Trend Explained

Trends are always popping up and finding new, impressionable victims. In the past couple of years, several TikTokers were found to fake mental conditions ranging from multiple personality disorder to Tourette's syndrome. Now, TikTok users have discovered a small (but growing) movement known as "RCTA," which stands for "race change to Asian." In this case, they usually mean Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.

The term was popularized after Rachel Dolezal made headlines for faking her ethnicity. Dolezal, a known black activist, was the Branch President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She thought everything was going well until a reporter asked her one day if she was African American. Dolezal hesitated and said, "I don’t understand the question." The reporter pressed, "Are your parents white?" This prompted Dolezal to flee the scene.

Shortly after this televised confrontation, photos of her white parents were released to the public, including images of her as a young, blonde girl. Many accused Dolezal of appropriating African American culture and performing "blackface." She then resigned from her NAACP position and was no longer a professor at Eastern Washington University.

RCTA Explained 

RCTA individuals join private groups on Discord, a popular instant message platform, to discuss all things transracial. It's become an online meeting ground for "race changers" to post their progress photos and discuss ways to change their appearance. TikTok users discovered the groups and infiltrated them to record their discussions. Many of those who join appear to be minors.

Besides makeup, one of the ways they alter their looks is by listening to subliminal sounds, which often contain affirmations related to changing a specific feature. The question is, why do adolescents want to switch races? The K-pop fandom's tendency to romanticize Korean culture could offer an explanation for this. One young girl on TikTok revealed why she wants to be Korean in her video. "I hated being only black and I didn't feel comfortable," she writes. "I want to live in Korea and not get hated on for being just black. I love Korean language so much. I love the Korean features."

TikTokers have been busy condemning and mocking the behavior of RCTA fans following their discovery. "Can you imagine if there was a movement online of Asian teenagers that wanted to look white? Cause, we all have been seeing those RCTA slideshows, right, it is literal communities of people who are trying to change their appearance to look Asian," says one TikToker, @lu2quared. "It is so weird and so creepy. It is fetishization, and it is racism."

Social media platforms have become a central part of teenagers' lives, shaping their opinions, interests, and even their perceptions of beauty. This influence is evident in K-pop and J-pop fandoms, where fans consume endless content of their idols, and in the process, they seek to emulate their appearance and style. Luckily, many young people agree that RCTA is strange and inappropriate, but those in the group feel it's completely harmless. Like Dolezal, they just want to feel good about themselves. They're going about it the wrong way, of course, but we live in a world where trans-anything is becoming normalized.

When Dolezal was asked if she felt she'd done something wrong years ago, she said, "No, I don’t. I don’t think you can do something wrong with your identity if you’re living in your authenticity, and I am. If I thought it was wrong, I would admit it. That’s easy to do, especially in America. Every politician, they’re like, ‘I’m sorry’ and then they just move on, and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, they apologized, and it’s all good.' Five minutes later, nobody remembers it. I’m not going to stoop and apologize and grovel and feel bad about it. I would just be going back to when I was little, and had to be what everybody else told me I should be – to make them happy."

Evie deserves to be heard. Support our cause and help women reclaim their femininity by subscribing today.