Like many people, I have been sitting on the news for the past few days, and what I have to say is:
That could have been me.
Watching the headlines for the past year has been stressful.
When Covid first broke out and before stay-at-home was official, I noticed that everyone on public transportation started giving me wide berth even if the train was crowded because they assumed I was a disease carrier, that people would avoid me in grocery stores (which was the optimal grocery store experience, let’s be honest). But the feeling of “otherness” was the most intense it had been since I was in my primarily white and conservative hometown.
Watching grandfathers and grandmothers get assaulted and attacked for the past couple months, and watching it happen close to home in Oakland and SF, which have strong Asian American populations, is terrifying.
Hearing about that reminds me that it can be me. I can be next. And it makes me even more scared than I usually am to walk out of my own door, confident that I can make it back safe, even if it’s for a short walk.
It’s upsetting to hear how the news is portraying this rise in violence against Asians as a completely new thing. Violence against Asians and racism against Asians has been happening since colonial times.
I have experienced many racist things, including:
Bringing my Asian food to school and being surrounded by a circle of curious classmates who had eaten Lunchables all their lives wondering what in the hell I had brought, why it smelled, wondering whether my bao was a giant marshmallow. It wasn’t, they were disappointed, and my food ended up thrown on the ground.
Being chosen to play Mulan in the school play. There was a lineup of girls for the chorus line and they all had eyeliner except me. I wanted it, but was told, “Oh, but your eyes are slanted enough.”
Being approached in hallways while the word “Konnichi wa” was yelled at me, and when I stared, I was made fun of for not “knowing Chinese.”
I can say for sure that I have experienced racism, and still do in many everyday interactions, but I have also been told that I don’t count as POC because my experience of oppression is not the same and our skin has the potential to be whiter than white people’s skin.
To the first point, everyone has unique experiences when dealing with oppression.
To the second, the color of my skin in this instance is not what sets me apart [acknowledging that colorism is a huge and related and harmful issue]. It is my “otherness”: my culture, the very cells of my being that give me double eyelids, my higher cheekbones, my flatter nose, my straight dark hair that I was ashamed of as a child and desperately wished would suddenly turn blonde and curly.
And so watching the news treat it as a brand new phenomenon is especially frustrating when I know that the history of society against asians has always been violent, from the railroad workers to the Chinese Exclusion Act back in 1883, to SF ordinances in the 1870s that prevented Chinese from being employed by the government and prohibited the use of yeo-ho poles (the primary way that Chinese used to transport goods using a pole slung over their shoulders), Laundry Ordinances (a primarily Chinese occupation back then) and forcing Chinese people into quarantine in 1900 to treat them as carriers of the bubonic plague.
Especially if you look at the wars and/or occupation in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines — and on and on and on — violence against Asians is NOT a new thing at all.
It’s scary, especially as an Asian woman, that outside of racism we additionally have to deal with the objectification and fetishization that comes with our identity.
As an Asian woman, through many people’s lenses, we are not seen as people, rather we are seen as objects of sexual desire which is an image that has been continually perpetuated through media.
There has been a lot of historical context for this, depicting white saviors saving an underprivileged Asian girl.
Take Miss Saigon (based on Madame Butterfly) for example. It is a popular and well-loved tragedy of the 20th century, depicting a love story between an American soldier and a young Vietnamese girl.
TL;DR: Homeslice abandons her and then comes back (with his wife) but then shit happens and the main female lead ends up committing suicide to secure a better future for her child.
Wow. Modern-day Romeo and Juliet. What a beautiful story about love. *vomits*
Let’s reframe:
Asian girl, aged 17, forced to work as a bargirl and prostitute due to dire situation in war-torn country, seeking an avenue of escape and finding it in this American soldier who takes advantage of her naïveté and desperation, then promptly forgets her, returning to America while she continues to struggle, now with a son in tow.
If this script was flipped, and it was an Asian soldier doing the same thing to a poor and underprivileged white girl, would this be romanticized at ALL? It is my belief that it wouldn’t even be written because such a dynamic is so unthinkable that the position of privilege would ever be switched.
The hypersexualization that Asian women confront is society’s invitation to inflict violence against them. Every approach and every harassment is supposed to be seen as a compliment. They are playing the American lieutenant “helping” that 17-year-old bargirl and prostitute, and it makes it so that WE are supposed to be honored that some white man is paying us attention.
Additionally, as we have seen with this latest incident [which is UNDOUBTEDLY a hate crime], this hypersexualization leads to victim blaming.
The police statement was that the perpetrator had a “bad day” and suggested that it was due to sex addiction, and did not mention race-based motivation as a reason for the murders. They additionally specified how he had gone after them to get rid of “temptation,” furthering the message of Asian women as objects of sin and not humans just trying to survive in this world bent on breaking them.
Like everyone else, I’ve had plenty of bad days. I do not go out and murder people when I’m feeling under the weather.
The fact that this is presented as an excuse is disgusting and dismissive of a real and dangerous problem that has become increasingly more visible and out in the open in the past year. Dismissing it as a “bad day” and a result of “sex addiction” takes away the fuel needed to introduce Anti-Asian American Hate Crime laws, which are sorely and sadly needed.
Law enforcement is refusing to see the bigger picture of racially-motivated crime despite crime against Asian Americans rising 1900% in the last year(!!!), and their blindness doubles down on the message that it’s okay to stereotype against a race and perpetuate hatred and violence against a race.
Right now is a scary time and the past year has proven that no matter how much we assimilate, we are forever foreign and now fallen over the cusp and firmly into “otherness.” There is no use in trying to strive for the white ideal because no matter what we do we will never be accepted.
And honestly, that’s okay! If you feel shame around your Asian identity, like I once did, just read up on 1400-1700 AD European hygiene practices and immediately feel relieved that, while Henry the 8th was busy switching castles because the feces pile had literally gotten too high, China was using toothbrushes and actually bathing regularly. [The fact that era is romanticized gives me the heebie jeebies. SO many sex scenes in dramas about them and in reality, rubbing against another person would just probably cover the mattress in rolllllllllllssss of dead skin.]
I am glad that this violence and racism is now stepping into the spotlight at last. Hopefully something good will come from it. If anything, I hope that Asian Americans who once disdained the BLM movement now understand how important it is to fight for justice and the right to be treated equally, and that we can all unite and fight for it all together.
This world is broken, and waiting and dreaming for the world to change is the same as standing by and letting these awful things happen.
We need to stand together and actively seek change for Asian/Pacific Islanders, for Asian/Pacific Islander women, and for every other group that is slowly being crushed under the boot of white supremacy.
SHUERETHING 