Yesterday, a white shooter killed eight people at three spas in Atlanta. Six of the victims were Asian women. Today, I feel grief for the lives lost (not just those killed yesterday, but the Asian elders who have been targeted and attacked all over the country), fear for my family's and friends' safety, and an overwhelming concern that this is not just "a phase," that violent racism against Asians may well be a permanent condition that my children and my community will have to contend with indefinitely.
Today, more so than on any other day, I feel that it is relevant to say what is on my mind, to give myself grace, and to take up space in the world. Actor, writer, and activist Simu Liu wrote a very relatable piece here about how our Asian immigrant parents practice being invisible: "Most of you reading this would not give my parents a second thought if you saw them in line at the supermarket or passed by them on the street. Like so many immigrants, they are a part of an invisible minority that came to a new country and promptly proceeded to make themselves as small as possible: they smiled and nodded at everyone (sometimes through tightly clenched teeth), paid their taxes, never caused a ruckus and never wanted to be an inconvenience to anybody." If you saw my parents, you would not think twice about how they gave up professional jobs on the other side of the ocean to earn a joint income of less than $50,000 a year in a country whose language they did not speak, because they were anxious about possible military action by China to subdue Taiwan. You would not know how my dad got up and drove me to an opening shift at Starbucks at 4:30am everyday when I was in high school, or how proud my mom was to see my sister graduate and get her first chemistry lab technician job that paid a salary. Our parents worked tirelessly with the sole goal of raising their kids in safety and to give their kids a chance at a professional life. Unlike many white American families, the dream of a working-class immigrant parent is not one of personal fulfillment; they project their life's hopes and dreams completely onto their children. This practice of self-effacement can sometimes impact the way children of immigrants show up in shared racial spaces. I know that for myself, I have to work hard to have the courage to take up space, especially if my perspective or experience are not shared by those of the dominant culture. And being small and invisible has not protected us from becoming scapegoats for America's problems. Today, of all days, I decided to cancel commitments in order to take time to grieve and process. I decided to make space for myself, and to be okay that it's going to come out incoherent at parts. Something about the way we are raised by parents who gave up so much to move to another country gives us the feeling that we need to work hard in order to validate their very real sacrifices. I think this is true of all immigrant families, not just Asian ones. (I've heard the same sentiment from my husband's good friend from college, who is a Guyanese immigrant.) The harmful myth that Asians are "model minority" was created to sow division between Asians and other oppressed minority groups. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood with plenty of Asian kids, and we occupied all parts of the academic spectrum. Besides being used as a pawn for white supremacy to shame/silence other races and to deny needed resources to the Asian-American community, I find also that being a "model minority" means that our academic success is never celebrated for the effort that it took to get there. From the outside, it makes us a faceless mass to college admissions teams, each student interchangeable with the next. At a job, we are tokenized as increasing "diversity" while we are expected to not raise issue with the status quo. Who really hires an Asian employee to shake things up? It's just not what is expected of us, based on racial stereotypes. My initial response to these attacks is -- how absolutely horrible that the aggressors target the weakest and most defenseless folks, again and again. What kind of monster attacks 80- and 90-year-olds? Do they choose to do it because they know that elders hold our community together? What about these women who are attacked -- what were their names, faces, and stories? Is the mainstream media going to mispronounce their names after humanizing their mass murderer, thereby continuing to add salt to the wound? One of the many things that I thought about today is how we must teach our children to not internalize the hate that others have for us. It is sad that I even have to think about this, but this thought came up when I was talking to my son about the events of Atlanta. It went pretty much like this: Me: "Yesterday in Atlanta, six women who are Asian -- meaning they look like me -- were shot and killed by a white person with a gun. It happened because... remember how I was saying that our former President did not like people who are not white?" Son: "Yeah, Donald Trump, right?" Me: "Yes, well, he was the one who poorly managed COVID and caused so many people to die from COVID. But just because COVID originated in China -- really, it could have started anywhere -- he calls the sickness 'China virus', and he continues to use that term, even yesterday on the news. People who voted for him believe him and they think that Chinese people are responsible for COVID and all the deaths, so one of those crazy people shot those six women who look like me, because they think those women are Chinese. Those women might not actually even be Chinese, but they look Asian, like mama. Do you understand what I am saying? This is important." Son: "..." Me: "I am telling you this because we have to be careful when we are out and about, to protect ourselves, since we are Asian." Son: "I am not Asian, I am just white." Me: "Well, you are both Asian and white. People who look at you will think you are Asian, because you look like me." Son: "No, I am not. I am only white." (shows me his skin) Me: "Why do you say this? ....Is it because you are scared that you could be hurt for being Asian?" Son: (looks away sadly) "Yes..." Me: "It's okay, I understand. I am not saying we will get hurt. We just have to be careful. And most importantly, I am not telling you what happened to say that I wish I weren't Asian. I am very happy and proud of being Asian. Think about it; you speak two languages. It's a beautiful thing. I am very happy about who I am, and you should feel proud of who you are, too; but I feel angry that other people are trying to hurt people who look like us." Thinking back about our conversation, I can think of many complexities for my son. Someone of his dad's race gunned down six women of his mom's race. There is a lot to unpack and to work through there, especially if these events continue to occur. (My husband and I do our own share of unpacking at home between the two of us. Race is a continuous dialogue for us.) Speaking of self-hatred that can often develop within Asian folks (I don't think I personally suffer from this, but in high school I did wake up everyday trying to pull my nose so that it would over time grow more European -- and hence I definitely worry about the same self-erasure that my children are bound to experience sometime during their lifetimes), here is an excerpt from Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings, which I read a chunk of before needing to return it to the library. This excerpt is from a New Yorker book review, and it reminds me of all the ways that Asian-Americans internalize the judgment that others have for us. “In the popular imagination, Asian Americans inhabit a vague purgatorial status... distrusted by African Americans, ignored by whites, unless we’re being used by whites to keep the black man down.” Asians, [Cathy Park Hong] observes, are perceived to be emotionless functionaries, and yet she is always “frantically paddling my feet underwater, always overcompensating to hide my devouring feelings of inadequacy.” Not enough has been said, Hong thinks, about the self-hatred that Asian-Americans experience. It becomes “a comfort,” she writes, “to peck yourself to death. You don’t like how you look, how you sound. You think your Asian features are undefined, like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all the Asians? you rant in your head.” I don't feel competitive with other Asian folks, but in Ali Wong's book Dear Girls, she made a similar observation that Asian folks can sometimes feel like they need to outshine other Asian folks in shared spaces. As a parent, I definitely worry about my children growing up to feel this way (rather than kinship) towards other Asian folks -- a hidden impact of white supremacy boxing us in. Racism against Asian-Americans comes in many forms, and it was present long before Donald Trump (although, make no mistake, his "China virus" and "kung flu" rhetoric fuels the anti-Asian flames and xenophobic tendencies that are already embedded in American culture and history). Recently on Twitter, someone remarked that all schools should learn about Lunar New Year, not just those schools with Asian students. Similarly, students with no classmates of Asian descent should still learn about Asian history in the U.S., because Asian-American history is U.S. history. Every school in the U.S. that is offering French (a colonial legacy) should be swapping it out for either Chinese, German, or Arabic. This is so reasonable, yet such an unimaginable ask; the systemic omission of relevant cultural learning is racism, and it is the reason why Donald Trump's anti-Asian rhetoric is so effective. Wondering what you can do on a daily basis to dismantle racism? Ask to see your child's school's syllabus on integrating diverse stories and histories. It's not enough that we individually educate our children at home about our own cultural and ethnic histories; we should be advocating for widespread quality education for all children in our communities. Needless to say, organizations should be taking a stance in the on-going crime against Asians, similar to how organizations around the country took a stance during the BLM protests of 2020. Your child's school should be sending out a statement; your companies should be making a statement. The lack of action on the part of organizations to do so, especially in geographical areas where Asian folks reside and these crimes are happening, is complicit and reinforcing the forced silence and invisibility of our community. It implies that our struggles don't matter even to organizations that recognize black plight, and that crimes against Asians are somehow of lesser significance, when it is clear that we are literally dying. Lastly, two links that I found to be helpful today: an excellent educational resource to use in schools and a spoken-word piece that embodies all the rage that I cannot myself articulate. Brace yourselves, friends, for a long fight ahead.
1 Comment
Nancy Chaney
3/22/2021 03:54:04 pm
Hi Mimi,
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About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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