THE AMERICAN-NESS OF ANTI-ASIAN VIOLENCE
Today is Day 30.
I so was looking forward to writing a post celebrating the success of this 30 day challenge to write a post every day, but in the end, I am not able to do that. Instead, I feel that I need to write about the new low this current wave of anti-Asian violence has reached this week.
President Biden issued a well-intentioned statement yesterday denouncing the racist, misogynist, and xenophobic shootings in Atlanta in which he described the recent increase in violence towards the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community as “un-American”. This narrative that we tell ourselves about this history of the United States enrages me to no end, and, as this week’s latest spate of hate crimes illustrates, is dangerous. It is not “un-American” to be violent against the AAPI community. It is quite the opposite: it is as American as apple pie.
The history of anti-Asian violence in the United States is almost as old as the nation itself. Entire Chinese communities were burned to the ground by white mobs in the Pacific Northwest repeatedly during the 19th century and early 20th century. The violence toward and sexualization of Asian women stems back as far as the Page Act of 1875, which banned Chinese women from immigrating to the United States in order to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.” The act ended the US’s open border policy and paved the way for similar legislation that upheld racist immigration policies and legalized human rights violations, including the Japanese internment camps during World War II.
Our teachings about American history focus entirely too much on false narratives of a melting pot of immigrants and a nation of people who “righted” the wrong of slavery and “won” the battle for civil rights. They tell a history of the United States that seems to only view the US through a North / South lens that is focused mainly on the East coast of the country. As a result, few people understand or even know about the long history of Asians in America and therefore have the racist conception that American history is only about white people who brought black slaves to this country and shared a Thanksgiving meal with the indigenous people who were already living here. These offensive and dangerously incomplete narratives uphold white supremacy by obfuscating who the victims of racism are, and fortify the model minority myth that racism does not effect Asian Americans, making it an effective tool to sow division .
The media’s very clumsy reporting about this week’s horrific mass shootings illustrate this point. Journalists were questioning whether or not this was a racially motivated attack, reporting about “sex addiction” and “guilt” as possible motives. Even now, on the Washington Post’s live updates page devoted to this story, they write about the “widespread concern that the spa shootings could be the latest in a surge of hate crimes and bigoted rhetoric against Asian Americans.” (emphasis mine). 6 Asian women were murdered by a straight, white, cis-gendered man. The fact that 6 out of 8 of his victims were Asian, all working at AAPI-owned businesses, means that no matter what his motives were, they had some sort of root in racist and misogynist notions about Asian women. There is absolutely no doubt that these shootings are the latest in a surge of hate crimes against the AAPI community.
History is a living and breathing thing, and the work of anti-racism and anti-xenophobia are never done. We must continue to educate ourselves about our history as Americans and do so with the courage to look at that history with clear eyes which can see both the bright spots as well as the long shadows. We also must remain ever-vigilant in the fight against the oppressions of white supremacy and patriarchy in all their forms.
To learn more and for resources about what you can do, please visit: https://stopaapihate.org