What Does It Mean To Be Asian in America
Written By Josephine Man’ 23
Illustration by Sandro Lorenzo ‘24
For many, 2020 was an immensely challenging year with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, wreaking havoc on many of our lives and forever shifting the scope of a “normalized” routine. We were catapulted into a habit of donning masks, stockpiling toilet paper and hand sanitizer, and social distancing. We learned to live for the day, cherish our loved ones, and appreciate our health. Yet, amid such tumultuous times, we were also faced with an even deadlier pandemic —racism— that had brought some into the habit of carrying pepper spray, wearing personal alarms, and making themselves completely undisguisable from head to toe to avoid being racially profiled.
The evil of racism had yet again claimed the lives of the most marginalized groups in our country. Headlines regarding Black lives being threatened by abusive policing and institutionalized racism came one after the other after the senseless murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The outpouring of social justice reform and movements catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter movement last June brought forth a sense of social responsibility to the public as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest police brutality against Black individuals. From hashtag to movement, Black Lives Matter was a wake-up call to many that social injustice has for decades, plagued our nation’s Black and Brown communities, and that racism continued to be a lethal weapon.
Needless to say, in 2021, racism has become a hyper-lethal weapon. Racism is more present than ever, perpetrated by white supremacists. Most recently, this led to the tragic death of eight individuals, six of Asian descent, in an Atlanta massage parlor mass shooting spree. The news sent shock waves to individuals all across the country that such an incident occurred. However, to many Asian Americans across the nation, this violent attack was foreseeable and formulaic. Many Asian Americans knew such a heinous crime would be committed eventually as if the unfolding of such an event were a time-ticking bomb. This begs the question: why weren’t others able to see this coming?
The answer lies within the disparities in reporting of Asian American-related news across mainstream media and news platforms. The severity of anti-Asian hate crimes has been deeply underplayed by mainstream media. Unless you follow news platforms like NextShark or Angry Asian Man, or are up-to-date with the reporting of Asian news reporters like ABC7’s CeFaan Kim or Dion Lim, it is likely that you aren’t being exposed to the news of surging Asian American hate incidents. Senseless, racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans & Pacific Islander (AAPI) individuals have skyrocketed within the past few months and were the new norm even before the tragic Atlanta mass shooting. A study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, reveals that crimes targeting Asian people rose by nearly 150 percent in 2020, with approximately 3,800 different hate-crime incidents taking place within the last year. In fact, Henderson reports that in urban regions like New York City, anti-Asian hate crimes have reached over 10 incidents in this year alone, which means that the rate of such hate crimes are growing at an even higher rate compared to last year (a total of 29 incidents). Incidents particularly targeting Asian American women and the elderly in Chinatowns all across the world and U.S. cities with a high population of AAPI residents have been reported - from robberies, to carjacking, to being spat on. The world froze as stories of what happened to individuals like 84-year old Vicha Ratanapakdee, a Thai man who was fatally assaulted in broad daylight or 75-year old Xiao Zhen Xie, a Chinese woman who fought off a man that punched her, came to light. As these stories continue to surface, many individuals are grappling with this reality , particularlyAAPI individuals who fit the mold of the model-minority myth, which perpetuates the stigma that most AAPIs are relatively well-off socially, economically, and professionally. Yet Asian-American violence and discrimination has been for embedded in our society for a long time, and has left an indelible mark on our nation’s history.
Anti-Asian American hate has started as far back as the 19th-century with events such as the Chinese massacre of 1871 in Los Angeles’ Chinatown or the 1875 Page Exclusion Act that barred many Chinese women —who were perceived as sex workers— from entering the United States. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act became the first U.S. policy outing and discriminated against a certain ethnic group from entry into the country. In 1942, we saw former President Franklin D. Roosevelt sign Executive Order 9066, instating Japanese internment camps in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Such anti-Asian sentiment led to uprisings of white supremacists. Most notably, it led to the killing of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American autoworker who was made a scapegoat for the auto vehicle recession in Detroit as his killers thought he was responsible for the success in the Japanese auto industry. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, former President Donald J. Trump normalized rhetoric such as the “Chinese virus” and “Kung-flu” in press conferences, fueling xenophobia across the nation. As we are confronted with the long and tiring history of such despicable acts towards the AAPI community, we have to ask ourselves this: Has the guise of the model-minority myth benefitted AAPIs? Does being a part of the model-minority myth shield individuals from racism?
We have learned the hard way that despite the recent headlines about Asian American representation in Hollywood, sports, and other industries, the AAPI community is still vulnerable to being excluded. We have learned the hard way that in the same week an Asian American film could bag several Oscar nominations, a mass shooting involving six innocent working-class women could take place. We have learned the hard way that the same superstar athletes such as Jeremy Lin and Chloe Kim who are praised and idolized are also susceptible to slurs and racial insults. We have learned that no amount of representation, praise, and commendation towards the AAPI community will make up for the shortcomings of the United States’ policies and long-fueled history of xenophobia and discrimination.
There is no easy solution to this troubling problem — one that involves dismantling white supremacy, racism, and the model-minority myth. What we need now more than ever is support from all fronts, especially fellow POC communities. Racism isn’t a problem that can be fixed overnight. But it can be tackled one day at a time so that Asian faces and names won’t have to be memorialized and mentioned in headlines for the wrong reasons.
