The American narrative has been strictly black and white since this country was founded. But America is more than that. America is a melting pot of cultures, a diverse rainbow of ethnicities and people.
Asian-Americans comprise around 5.6 percent of the American population, equaling almost 18.5 million people, and there have been Asians migrating into the U.S for over 160 years. Throughout those years Asians have been oppressed, silenced, killed, and segregated, yet they have never spoken out in the same way other minorities have. Asian-Americans are expected to be silent, to become productive citizens who do what they are told and expected. Recently, these expectations have started to become overturned as Asian-Americans have started to speak out over an increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans this year. The news has been flooded with reports of hate crime after hate crime and people are taking notice.
Racism against Asian-Americans has dramatically accelerated this year as a result of hateful sentiments emerging out of stereotypes surrounding the pandemic. As a third-generation half Chinese Asian-American myself I think it is time for me to use my voice and speak out instead of allowing my voice to be suppressed like so many Asian-Americans before me.
Sometimes I feel as if the perception of Asian Americans is very narrow in America, people always assume that I am Chinese before I have even identified myself. Being Asian American encompasses an entire continent rich with diverse cultures, not just China. There are Koreans, Samoans, Japanese people, Indian, Vietnamese people, Filipinos, and many others. That is why for the rest of the article I will refer to Asian-Americans as AAIP meaning Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders.
In Minor Feeling: An Asian-American Reckoning, author Cathy Park Hong writes “Asian- Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity.”
Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders often find their identities paradoxically split between black and white in a society where they only choose one. In school we have learned about America’s history of racism through a narrow lens, depicting a history fraught with racism, but only towards Blacks. In reality, America’s history with racism is a lot more complicated.
I can’t compress 160 years of history into this single article, but I can focus on one significant event that shows the extent to which racism towards AAIP people has gone unnoticed. In the mid-1800s during the peak of the California Gold Rush, many Chinese immigrants came to America looking for work. Many of them became miners or railroad workers. In Rock Springs, Wyoming there was a settlement of Chinese miners. There was a tremendous amount of built-up tension between these Chinese miners and the other white miners in Rock Springs due to the white miners accusing the Chinese immigrants of taking their jobs.
What was at first simply frustration that the Chinese were were willing to work for less money eventually grew into a vehement hatred. This deep hatred would boil over into outright violence on September 2, 1885, when 100 white miners decided to wildly charge into the Chinese miner’s Chinatown and brutally massacre 28 innocent Chinese miners in what became known as the Rock Springs massacre.
This massacre was brought to my attention a few days ago by my father, and the fact that I had never heard of this tragedy shocked me. My whole childhood I thought that the only real racism AAIP people faced was racist jokes and some mild discrimination in sports or Hollywood, Black people were the ones who really suffered.
When I delved into the circumstances surrounding the time of the Rock Springs Massacre I found out that this was not an isolated incident at the time. AAIP people had suffered much worse than racist jokes in their long history.
Chinese immigrants were forced into horrific working conditions while they were building the transcontinental railroad. People spread propaganda about AAIP people being unclean and second class, deeming them the “yellow peril”. They faced prejudice and were not given justice in the legal system, and Chinese people were even barred from entering the country at all or becoming U.S citizens by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In 1930, the Watsonville riots occurred, where many Filipino farmers were killed and attacked. In the following years, the World Wars would perpetuate a hateful, racist narrative against AAIP people that would result in Japanese internment camps and intensified racism.
The racism against AAIP people that is happening now is not new, and while the pandemic has furthered violence and resentment towards AAIP people this year, AAIP people have been facing oppression and violent racism ever since they came to the U.S.
Even so, we have remained silent all these years. We have been the punchline, we have been fetishized, mocked, beaten down, and ultimately silenced.
And this problem is not a problem only found in large cities with high numbers of AAIP people, it’s a disease that has even spread to our own secluded mountain town.
“I got a lot of ‘why is your nose so flat’ or “‘can you see less with smaller eyes?’, like I had chosen to have these features,” says Jessily Chen, a freshman at Watauga. “Asian racism is so normalized that at that point I've grown to learn to ignore them rather than to speak up about them. I found it really hard to speak up since the majority of my peers would accept that it was nothing more than a joke.”
Racism is not a joke, AAIP people are not a joke. COVID has further compounded this issue and hatred toward AAIP people has become reinvigorated as a result. Certain politicians have only further perpetuated this misguided anger towards AAIp people by using terms like “Chinese virus” and “Kung-Flu” that cause people to direct their frustration towards Chinese people.
Hate crimes towards AAIP people have increased by 150% this year with many of these crimes being committed against elderly people.
“As COVID came around, I've gotten significantly more comments like those, but this time it wasn't just racism, but xenophobia as well. ‘Asians eat anything.” Chen continues: “‘Were you the one that ate bat soup?’ ‘Is the reason you have slanted eyes because of the Kung-Flu?’ Then they'd kick dirt over their comments by saying that they were only joking as if those words have never made an impact on me.”
I share a lot of the same experiences of racism with Chen, and I have grown accustomed to brushing off racism like it is just a joke but recently I have realized that racism is not something I can just ignore.
Chen says, “ In addition to all that, I've heard a lot of use of the c-slur, but there has been a lack of acknowledgment that it's a slur. People aren't understanding the seriousness of that word and not treating it like the n-word.”
I have been called “chink” multiple times but I have never grasped the gravity of the word. On the other hand, whenever I have heard the n-word I am repulsed. Racism is racism, and the racism I face is just as valid as the racism other minorities face. We can’t prioritize how serious racism is based on who experiences it. In order to counter racism, we have to stand in opposition to racism in all its forms and racism towards all peoples, not just African Americans, or AAIP people.
My mom, who immigrated to the U.S when she was almost four, has some powerful words. “ I am Asian-American. I am fully American, with the experience of being an Asian. I should not have to justify why my English is good or where I am ‘really’ from. I should not be treated as second class,” she says.
In addition, she states,“ Being American does not mean being white, it is a rich and diverse, multifaceted experience. We are known as the model minority but also the silent minority. We need to stand up for ourselves.”
AAIP people have been silent for far too long, I have been silent for far too long. Times are changing, and people are speaking out. AAIP people are tired of being suppressed, tired of being the butt of the joke, and tired of being caricatures. We are tired of being treated as objects, as stereotypes, and as second-class.
I am more than a math whiz, more than a virus, more than my small eyes, and more than a second-class citizen. I am not an immigrant, I am not going back to China, I am not weak and unathletic, and no I don’t know Kung fu and no I don’t eat dogs. I am more than a stereotype and more than my face. I am an American, We are Americans.
Written by: Nathan Bishop
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