It’s a lesson that we’ve not only had the past year to learn but hundreds of years. Directing our anger, fear, confusion, lack of information, or just plain pandemic exhaustion at marginalized groups of people is both harmful and counterproductive. Over the past year, there have been nearly 3,000 reported cases of anti-Asian attacks in the U.S., related to bigoted and incorrect rhetoric around COVID-19. Recently, those acts of racism have been on the rise again.
“These recent incidents are stark reminders that urgent action must be taken to protect our AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community from hate, discrimination and violence,” Russel Jeung, professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, said in a statement last month.
“It is up to all of us — businesses, the government and community partners — to come together and immediately support victims and families affected by these incidents, and work together to create long-lasting solutions that empower our communities with resources, support and education.”
Kirin Amiling Macapugay, is a professor of human services and social work for the San Diego Community College District, serves on the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs, and founded the nonprofit Asian Pacific Islander Community Actions. Celina Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in urban studies and teaches political science at the City University of New York. Her work focuses on how everyday citizens participate in politics and policy-making, in ways other than elections. Macapugay and Su took some time to discuss these recent attacks against the AAPI community and how we understand this specifically anti-Asian racism. (This email interview has been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: The recent string of racist attacks against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders has reignited a discussion of anti-Asian racism and how to address it. President Joe Biden addressed this racism in January, saying that the federal government had previously played a role in this xenophobic sentiment, which has contributed to increased bullying and harassment against the AAPI community. Where do you think this recent spike in racist attacks is coming from? What do you make of this recent spike in racist attacks against the AAPI community?
Macapugay: Asian American, Pacific Islander people, Black people and other people of color have been subject to racism for hundreds of years — from the Chinese Exclusionary Act of 1882, to Executive Order 9066 during World War II, sending Americans of Japanese descent to internment camps throughout the country, to Pacific Islanders continued fights for autonomy in American-owned land. There was a time when new Irish immigrants were attacked by more established Irish communities. This is all to say we have a history in this country of scapegoating people we consider to be “other”/different/not American, during times of economic and social struggle. This pandemic has been a grave challenge for everyone, and many of us, including those of us in the AAPI community, have lost those we care about to COVID-19. The recent spike tells me misplaced fear and anger continue, and AAPIs are again the recipients of society’s fears.
Su: Unfortunately, this recent spike in attacks against the AAPI community does not surprise me. The spike in anti-Asian hate crimes possibly reflects very real pain and anger in the U.S. — at our loss of jobs and livelihoods, at the sickness and death around us, at a lack of affordable housing, childcare and health care. In 1982, two White men killed a 27-year-old Chinese American man named Vincent Chin; they held him responsible for the Japanese auto industry and the recession in the U.S. It’s perhaps no coincidence that we hear echoes of that time in our current crisis. It’s hardly shocking that, in the face of the government’s failure to protect Americans from the awful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, former President Donald Trump resorted to demagoguery and scapegoating. The pandemic has not created but revealed and widened so many fault lines in our social fabric. The spike in racist attacks should not be seen as an aberration but a crystalizing moment in our history of xenophobic and anti-Asian racism.
Remembering historical precedents is important so that we can collectively work to prevent something similar, no matter what community it affects next, from happening again. In the mid-20th century, White supremacist politicians attributed tuberculosis outbreaks to African American communities in order to uphold “racial hygiene” Jim Crow laws. In the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, conservative lawmakers called HIV the “gay plague” in order to stigmatize a specific community rather than fund research prevention and treatment. Falling prey to such scapegoating doesn’t bring back our loved ones or our livelihoods; it keeps all of us down.
Q: There were reports in February that these attacks against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders— 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee, who was killed in San Francisco; a 64-year-old woman attacked and robbed in San Jose; a 70-year-old woman shoved and robbed in Oakland; and a 61-year-old man slashed across the face in New York City —weren’t being investigated as hate crimes. Does this communicate anything about our response to anti-Asian racism? If so, what does this say to you about how this kind of violence and discrimination is understood and viewed in our public consciousness?
Macapugay: Stop AAPI Hate (a national coalition that documents and addresses anti-Asian hate and discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic) began serving as a reporting hub for AAPIs experiencing incidences of hate in March of 2020, with grassroots organizations encouraging community members to report their experiences. There have been 2,800 documented nationwide, half of these in California. In San Diego alone, there were 42 attacks reported over the past 41 weeks. That is an average of one AAPI person right here in San Diego attacked every single week.
More recognizable AAPI celebrities and non-AAPI notable public figures began sharing on social media to raise awareness, and I am heartened there is more wide stream attention. It saddens me there needs to be this desperate plea for the public to acknowledge when racism happens to any group. I am also saddened that many do not know the history of systemic racism against AAPIs, Black, Indigenous and other people of color. It is not comfortable and it is not pleasant coming to terms with hate in a time when people are struggling with their own personal challenges. It is easier to turn off the TV or not read that social media post about hate, or to dismiss it as happening to other people who have nothing to do with you, but that just allows hate to perpetuate. What I hope is that people take this as an opportunity to reflect and acknowledge how they may have ever engaged in or allowed hate to happen, and what they will do to combat hate in themselves and those around them.
Su: Two things stand out to me from the fact that these incidents were not investigated as hate crimes. First, the police can now portray these crimes as random or completely unrelated incidents. This makes them harder to talk about as a category, and part of a larger pattern of racism, one that can be addressed through policy. It says a lot about how law enforcement approaches racism in general, as if racism has to be overt and explicitly verbalized through derogatory name-calling to be real. This puts an awful onus on the victim to prove they were “respectable” and “deserving” victims and that they are not “playing the race card,” rather than making it a responsibility of the community (and especially elected officials and our leaders) to keep everyone safe.
Second, it tells Asian Americans that they are not a real part of and don’t belong in “our” larger community. Practically speaking, it also shows us that law enforcement will not help Asian Americans to stay or feel safe. This is reflected in debates within the AAPI community as well; whereas some want to expand the New York Police Department’s Asian Hate Crime Task Force, others, like Murad Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition, argue that “We can’t police our way out of this.” The police have a history of not taking anti-Asian violence seriously, or even of justifying the killing of unarmed Asian Americans with stereotypes about Asian American men practicing martial arts. Community members have instead been campaigning for language justice and greater access to care and support services.
Q: Journalists and activists from the AAPI community have been addressing the role of the “model minority myth” in relationship to this current increase in racist incidents. Can you briefly talk about what the “model minority myth” is? And how does this myth affect how people navigate and understand these racist experiences?
Macapugay: The model minority myth is a false narrative that certain immigrant groups, typically East Asians, are able to establish economic and social “success,” and therefore completely negates the economic and social disparities Asian American and Pacific Islanders experience. Even worse, it is a narrative used to harm and prevent resources to Black, Indigenous, Latinx, our own AAPI communities, and really any community living in poverty calling for systemic change. This is why AAPI organizations, especially in California, have pushed for disaggregated census data to gain a more accurate picture of where AAPI communities stand. The truth is, we do have AAPI communities living in poverty who are undocumented and victimized by their employers, who have little to no access to health care or higher education. I also believe this myth has led people to believe AAPI carry cash with them at all times, which could lead to AAPIs being victims of attacks. It is an incredibly harmful myth that needs to stop.
Su: The “model minority myth” claims that people of Asian descent are quiet and hardworking. It plays a role in maintaining a race-based hierarchy and even upholding White supremacy in the U.S. If Asian Americans can get into elite colleges and earn high incomes, we are told, then racism is no longer an issue, and Latinx or Black Americans are not getting admitted at the same rates simply because they are lazy. It uses us as pawns to make American meritocracy look real when it’s absolutely not.
The notion of a “model minority” is a myth without good supporting evidence, and problematic in too many ways to count. It assumes that the children of relatively well-resourced Chinese-American immigrants, who came to the United States as elite graduate students, should be in the same category as the children of refugees who moved here after U.S. involvement in wars abroad, like the Korean and Vietnam Wars. So, it harms Asian Americans, too, by masking and ignoring high rates of poverty (and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder) in some communities, and by erasing the role of the U.S. economic and foreign policies in fueling immigration. It also attempts to separate Asian Americans from other racial minority groups and diminish historical alliances, like those between AAPI, Native American/ Indigenous, Black, and Latinx civil rights leaders.
The model minority myth profoundly shapes how people understand and attempt to excuse racist experiences. It perpetuates stereotypes of us being “soft targets,” being “demure and weak” or “martial arts” experts, so that if (or more accurately, when) we speak up or try to speak up for ourselves, we suddenly look like we’re stepping out of line, as if we’re asking for trouble. All stereotypes, from “yellow fever” to “yellow peril,” dehumanize and subject people to impossible scripts. By suggesting that Asian Americans are essentially and inherently a certain way, it also treats us as “perpetual foreigners,” so that we will never truly belong — as if Asian Americans could be capriciously held up as models to justify educational inequities, and then cast aside or stigmatized if anything goes awry.
Q: People often talk about how these examples of racism are a result of ignorance on the part of the racist, and a lack of visibility for marginalized people. Do you think the solution to ending this kind of anti-Asian racism lies in increased awareness and visibility?
Macapugay: That is a big question. How do we solve a hundreds-year-old problem of racism? I think the “solution” involves more things than can fit in one interview, though I appreciate the opportunity to address it. I think awareness and visibility need to be part of our society’s acknowledgement that racism exists, but that is one piece. ... We have to provide opportunities for all people. We have to acknowledge how systemic racist practices like redlining and higher loan percentages keep Latinx and Black people in communities with less. We need to do away with model minority myths and “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” narratives to people who do not have boots to begin with. We need to check and stop those leaders who use words like the “Chinese virus” or who would blame a people for the country’s ills. In San Diego alone, we lost two AAPI leaders (Dr. Rey Monzon and Larry Baza) to COVID-19 within days of each other. One of my own dear friends, who is a nurse, was harassed by people blaming them for COVID-19, while simply taking a walk with her 60-year-old mother and 17-year-old daughter. We are facing the realities of our Filipina/o nurses making up only 4 percent of the nursing force nationwide, but who account for 32 percent of front-line (health care worker) deaths in this nation. We are hurting in so many ways. We must face these realities and follow up with the advocacy and will to change how racism has seeped into our politics and public safety.
Su: On one hand, visibility and representation matter. The fact that the film “Minari,” (about a Korean American family that moves to a farm in Arkansas “in search of their own American dream”) written and directed by an American, just won a Golden Globe in the foreign-language category, feels a bit behind the times, to put it mildly. On the other hand, no, I do not think that increased awareness is sufficient in ending this kind of anti-Asian racism. Sensitivity or diversity awareness trainings focus on changing the minds of individuals. I don’t think that presenting the perpetrators of racist attacks with logic would work. Are we supposed to point out that getting close to someone one accuses of carrying a disease makes no sense? Or that people are not diseases, and that many of the East Asian countries have been much more successful than the U.S. in containing COVID-19 outbreaks? Besides, plenty of studies show that facts on climate change, immigrants’ effects on American jobs, or vaccines do little to change people’s minds; some hold on even tighter to stereotypes, fake news and conspiracy theories. I think that many ready-made messages and formulas for racial “awareness” sound like cheesy, naïve propaganda; confronting racism (including our own racism) is hard work, and it requires serious reflection by each of us.
More dangerously, these sorts of sensitivity programs potentially end up letting organizations, elected officials, and leaders off the hook on deeper, structural anti-racist work. How can we make it harder for politicians like Trump to foment such violence in the first place? We need to address inequities in our school and health care systems, and hold elected officials accountable for allowing such suffering to happen nationwide. When I read that a country like Taiwan, next to China, has had a total of nine deaths from COVID-19 so far, I despair over just how many of our 500,000-plus deaths were utterly preventable.
Q: What would be some ways you’d like to see people move from awareness to action, in support of the AAPI community?
Macapugay: Do not dismiss these incidences. Please understand that the model minority myth is a harmful one used to hurt others. Please support leaders, laws, policies and public budgets that purposely acknowledge race and work toward anti-racism. Demand that our elected and appointed leaders allocate resources and support to our communities in the form of financial assistance, health resources, mental health resources, affordable education from kindergarten to graduate school. Learn from and support groups like Stop AAPI Hate, the San Diego API Coalition, Asian Solidarity Collective, and many more. Most importantly, speak up against all forms of racism, from whoever you hear it from. Support the AAPI community voice, and the Black community, and the Latinx community, and the Native American community, and those struggling even more to survive in this pandemic. If we want to move forward as a society, we need to do this together.
Su: While I strongly believe that what we need are policy-level and collective changes, actions by individuals can still make a profound difference in the meantime. When I have been followed by men (the gender dimension is hard for me to ignore here) on the street, yelling at me to go back where I come from, for blocks on end, I would have been so grateful if passersby had taken the time to walk alongside me for a bit. When my family received anonymous hate mail telling us to go back to China (we immigrated from Brazil) when I was in middle school, I know that it meant a lot to my parents to know that our immediate neighbors welcomed us to the community.
Solidarity matters. If folks feel safe enough to calmly object when a colleague makes a racist joke or perpetuates a stereotype, they can shift from being bystanders to upstanders. While supposed “jokes” are by no means equivalent to acts of violence, they are connected. Namely, so-called “microaggressions” set the stage for more overt violence with impunity. And countering them can make a difference in our everyday lives — an Asian American colleague might be more likely to get promoted to a managerial role if the boss rethinks stereotypes about Asians being nerdy losers and lacking people skills, for instance.
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Urgent calls for action and support as anti-Asian racism increases again during pandemic - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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