Every post I’ve come across on social media recently regarding the attacks on Asian Americans adds to the growing dread I feel for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. In the faces of these victims, I can see my parents. I see my brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparents. As I read these news articles, the same horrifying thought passes through my mind every time: “This could’ve been my family. This could’ve been me.”
In light of the horrific events that have been taking place in the Asian American community recently, it’s essential to consider why they are happening and how we can do our part to stop the hate.
The History of Asian-American Racism, Microaggressions, and Everything in Between
The current events of anti-Asian hate are derived from a long history of violence, discrimination, and hate against the AAPI community. While Asian Americans have been around for over 150 years, they have often faced some brutal circumstances over the course of American history. Here are some of the most significant historical events in American that reflect such hate and discrimination:
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Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 – In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law to restrict free immigration based on race in which it banned Chinese immigration for twenty years and prevented the Chinese who were already here from gaining citizenship. President Chester A. Arthur vetoed the overwhelmingly approved bill, and Congress revised the law such that it cut the restriction period down to ten years instead of twenty. President Arthur ended up signing the bill. The Act was put into place for more than 60 years before it was repealed in 1943. During this period, nearly all Chinese immigration to the U.S. ceased.
- People v. Hall – This 1854 California Supreme Court case ruled that those of Asian descent could not testify against a white person in court—which essentially allows white people to escape punishment for anti-Asian violence. In this case, a murderer named George Hall killed Chinese immigrant Ling Sing and avoided punishment. Additionally, the testimony of witnesses was rejected because they were also Asian. It was also during this time in the 1850s when Chinese immigrants began coming to the United States, mostly to California and other Western states, to take on mining and railroad construction jobs, which were often dangerous, and the workers were paid low wages. This is when the racist trope of “Asians coming to steal white jobs” first came about.
- Japanese internment during WWII – After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entering World War II, the U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans into internment camps during the duration of the war on suspicions that they would aid the enemy. The camp conditions were extreme and in the end, no one found any spies. When they were finally freed after the war, many found their homes and businesses vandalized or confiscated. It wasn’t until 1988 when survivors received a presidential apology and $20,000 each in reparations.
- San Francisco plague outbreak – In 1900, there was an outbreak of the bubonic plague in San Francisco. While the outbreak was believed to have been caused by a ship from Australia, the first victim of the disease was a Chinese immigrant and as a result, the Chinese-American community was blamed for it. Sound familiar? Soon after, the city’s Chinatown was surrounded by police who monitored the residents and prevented anyone except the white residents from leaving and entering the area. Additionally, Chinese residents were also forced to comply to forced home searches and property destruction.
Anti-Asian hate does not have to take form the form of blatant and overtly racist events and actions. It can also take the form of microaggressions, which, as its name might imply, is more of a subtle type of racism. People pass them off as jokes or even just natural curiosity, yet they do not always understand how damaging their statements can be, regardless of whether they were meant to be harmful or not. The racism towards Asian-Americans has become so frequent in society such that people begin to disregard microaggressions as harmful, which ends up adding to the pre-existing system of oppression for the community. Here are some of the many ways microaggressions toward the Asian-American community might look like:
- “You’re Asian? You speak English so well!”
- “Can you teach me some words in your native language?”
- “Where are you from?…No, like where are you really from?” or “Where were you born?”
- “You look foreign!”
- “You’re so smart; all Asians are good with math/science, though.”
- “Why are you so quiet? Speak up more.”
It’s these types of comments that have made countless Asian-Americans feel like perpetual aliens in their own country. You could be born in America, have family members that have also been from America for generations, and still feel alienated from your own country—all because you’re from a different ethnicity and are ultimately not white. At the same time, these microaggressions have grouped all Asians into one category and largely ignore the diversity within the Asian community. It’s a paradoxical concept: Asian-Americans are all the same such that they are often viewed to have assimilated better than other minority groups, but they are also all different because they have some foreign quality that makes them seen as perpetual aliens.
The Tip of the Iceberg and the Silent Normalization of Asian-American Racism
As of recent, you may have seen many posts on your social media feed about the attacks on Asians. However, this is merely the tip of the enormous iceberg that encompasses everything Asian Americans face or have faced that everyone else doesn’t see: selective immigration, the model minority, racist hiring practices, Asian fetishization, impoverished living conditions, lack of Asian representation in the media, school curriculums without Asian American history and their contributions to society, aggregated statistics that leave out Asian representation, and so on.
Perhaps the most prevailing narrative about Asian Americans is one of the model minority. The model minority myth is self-explanatory: it’s a myth centered around the belief that Asians are the ideal minority, characterized as polite and law-abiding while achieving a higher level of success than most people through a combination of innate talent and self-reliance. Despite most people agreeing that negative stereotypes of Asian-Americans are harmful, some still question about the harm the model minority myth causes. What’s so bad about being part of a group that’s seen as being successful? Well, just like all other stereotypes, the model minority myth erases differences among individuals by lumping all Asians into a singular group. It ignores the diversity of Asian American cultures and assume all Asians derive from East Asia when there are Southeast, South, and West Asians as well—all of which are vastly different from each other in culture, language, and so on.
Mainstream media has only shown aspects of Asian identity that fit this stereotype, and makes it so that unrealistic expectations are enforced onto all Asian people. As a result, underrepresented AAPI like Cambodians, Laos, and Hmongs, who are mainly low-income refugees fleeing from genocide and war terror, don’t receive the resources and care they need because they are grouped together with all Asians. While Asian-Americans may be more educated or make a higher income than the general U.S. population as a whole, people are largely unaware that there are also large disparities within the group. These disparities are largely ignored when people continue to perpetuate the model minority myth, which ends up pitting people of color against one another while putting Asians at the top of this supposed hierarchy. This distracts people from focusing on the real issue: white supremacy, the creator of the model minority myth. The model minority myth is often used to deny or belittle the impact of racism and discrimination on other people of color in America—considering the history of that impact on Black Americans in particular, the model minority myth is also a means to perpetuate anti-blackness.
How COVID-19 Exacerbated Anti-Asian Hate
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen anti-Asian hate explode across the world. In the U.S. alone, hate crimes targeting Asian Americans rose to nearly 150%. There have been almost 3,800 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian violence since March of last year, and a large number of the victims were often the most vulnerable individuals of the AAPI community women, seniors, and low-wage, economically vulnerable employees who were obligated to work during the pandemic, such as the victims in the Atlanta shooting.
At the start of the pandemic, Donald Trump persistently called COVID-19 the “Chinese virus”. While some claim that there is no racial motivation behind the label and that they’re naming it that way because that was where the virus originated (in Wuhan, China), there are negative unprecedented consequences to this rhetoric. The World Health Organization (WHO) has specific conventions when it comes to naming viruses. They are named based on their genetic structure “to facilitate the development of diagnostic tests, vaccines and medicines.” Virologists and other members of the scientific community are largely responsible for this, so viruses are named by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). The International Classification of Diseases in WHO is responsible for naming diseases. ICTV decided to name this new virus that emerged on February 11, 2020 “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2,” or SARS-CoV-2. They chose this name because the virus is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak in 2003.
The WHO also put down additional procedures when naming new human diseases such that it does not offend any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups. For example, it stated that disease names cannot include geographic locations (cities, countries, regions, continents; ex. Spanish Flu, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and cultural, population, industry, or occupational references. These guidelines were meant to reduce any negative impact from names while balancing science, communication, and policy. But that did not stop alternative names from being used when the pandemic first started, including “Kung Flu,” “Wuhan virus,” “China virus,” and “Chinese virus.” The Trump administration did not make any effort to stop the usage of these names and as a result, anti-Asian sentiments and attacks increased significantly. Many unreasonably blamed Asians for being the cause of the pandemic all over the world and used this idea as a poor excuse to commit hate crimes against Asians.
Conclusion
The increased prevalence of anti-Asian hate and violence has unfortunately reduced Asian American victims to mere statistics, but we must resist this. Instead, we need to say their names, humanize them once more, make them visible, and recognize that the current events of anti-Asian hate are a reflection of a brutal and violent past. Even today during a supposed “post-racial” era, racism and hate are still rampant and there is a widespread omission of Asian Americans within cultural conversations. Not enough people are talking about the difficulties Asian Americans face on a daily basis to the point that members of the community have often been forced to internalize these struggles and render them silent. This needs to change. To avoid repeating history, people must continue learning about the Asian American struggle and their history, educate others who may not be as informed on the topic, and actively fight against Asian-American racism and hate.
Resources
- Advancingjustice-atlanta.org
- Instagram accounts: @advancingjustice_aajc, @aafederation, @redcanarysong, @hateisavirus, @stopaapihate
- Stopaapihate.com
- Napaba.org/page/HateCrimeResources
- Aafederation.org/aaf-anti-asian-bias-reporting form