Let’s cut straight to the point. Crimes against Asians have been on the rise since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a fact. Anti-Asian fear has been rampant, and the mocking of Asian cultures and identity has been going on for too long.
There are no words for what happened in Atlanta last night, with a domestic terrorist attacking a salon and slaughtering eight people over three shops. But I have a problem with the social media fight against Asian hate.
It’s the same thing. It’s the same thing I’ve read a year ago. It’s the same thing over and over and over and over. I’m tired of the repetition. I’m tired of the fact that no matter what we do, there is nothing that will fundamentally change in this nation for someone like me. An Asian.
Support for Asians flare for a week, then it disappears from the conversation until another Asian has been pushed, has been shot, has been mugged, has been killed. The support for Asians would once again fire up but will die down until another tragedy. It’s a cycle that gets nowhere.
What is significantly worse is my desensitized attitude towards the hate. I used to flare with anger when I saw all of the anti-Asian hate, but it has boiled down to the same posts I see on Instagram over and over. I see the faces of fellow Asians bruised or hospitalized, but I feel no more anger nor pain. I feel no more fire for a fight. It’s just a blank face as I tap away to other news. I’m not ashamed of feeling that way; in fact, most of my fellow Asian friends and family have felt the same way towards the tragedy in Atlanta. It’s another shooting; that news is not new to us. We are students in the United States, after all. It’s another anti-Asian hate crime; it’s most certainly not new to us. We have all faced some sort of direct or indirect anti-Asian hatred.
Most of the social media posts I have seen were informational. I saw posts that promoted certain fundraisers for the families that were affected by the shooting. I saw lots of fury at the words of “he was having a bad day”, and I saw so much desperation in the words of Asian friends that I have, begging for support for our movement.
And then I saw posts of simple words such as “stop Asian hate” printed on a motherfucking artsy Canva design. That was it. It is all so fucking performative that it makes my fucking blood boil. I do not want to see “stop Asian hate” ANYWHERE without any information attached to it. I do not want to see fake solidarity in the name of clout.
But this shows that we have fundamental problems here that we have yet to solve in the United States. Not only is there active hatred for minorities in the United States, the same minorities are being pit against each other to compete for justice and equal treatment. It doesn’t have to be this way.
While unloading groceries that we have ordered, my sibling asked me:
“There is so much attention for Black Lives Matter, yet Asians are also being attacked. Where is the attention for us? Where are the protests and movements for us?”
They raise a fantastic point: my sibling here is an ardent supporter of BLM and has defended the movement time and time again. But they believe that there is no active reciprocation for what we have shown for BLM. I can’t disagree with them.
Thinking for a moment, I responded:
“I understand what your point is, and I agree, it’s a lot of bullshit. But oppression isn’t a competition. Everyone deserves justice and equality. Have you heard of intersectionality?”
They shook their head.
“Intersectionality is including everyone in your movement. Intersectional feminism, for example, includes Black women. Asian women. Trans women. Things like that.”
“Well yeah, obviously. That should be given.”
“But it’s not. People are still out to actively discriminate and separate people from their movement. We all need to realize that we are all in this shit together. We get nowhere by infighting. By fighting amongst ourselves as to who is the most oppressed, the oppressors get away with it.”
I wanted to get one point across: we are all in this shitshow. We are all being oppressed. We are being oppressed in different ways, but we are nonetheless being oppressed. Drowning in the deep blue sea makes you as dead as you are if you drowned in a pool. There is no need to compare trauma and oppression. The “I have it worse” argument does not help you, does not help me, and does not help the people who are actively suffering.
The amount of anti-Asian racism in the overall Black community is absolutely insufferable. I believe that the Black community can do better than this and take a step back and actually understand our fight. We may have been portrayed as “model minorities” in the past, but we are starting to do away with these stereotypes. We invite you to unlearn it and tear it down with us. Those stereotypes harmed us and harmed you. Many parts of it were cherry-picked. Asian-Americans face the highest poverty rate in New York City. The stereotype that we are all hardworking and therefore richer and better is false.
Wealth is a rolled dice. I know Asian families that have pools and houses that can fit hundreds of people at once, and I know Asian families that work three jobs in order to send their kids to high school. We are not what our stereotypes say. We are trying to extend that statement to every community. We wish that you do too.
I want to end this on a bright note and say that I’m proud to be an Asian. As a Chinese person, I am proud of my eyes, of my hair, of my skin, and of my culture. There should be no reason why I should be ashamed. I do not wish to look white or bring myself down to fit the Eurocentric standard of beauty. I am better than that. My ethnicity defines what food I eat and what holidays I celebrate. I celebrate this with pride. And every Asian should do so with me.
Being Asian means that we are unified under hundreds of different cultures and we should embrace it all with pride and love. We should not shun away from our culture because people thought our food or our language was weird like we have when we were much younger.
Let us fight together with the oppressed for a brighter future.
