Stop Asian Hate

It has been a heartbreaking week after the Atlanta shootings, including six women of Asian descent. Online, I see my white friends who had been so vocal for Black Lives Matter stay silent when it comes to Asian hate crimes, and I see my Asian friends post about how they're worried for their families to be out and about. My instagram was flooded with Asian influencers posting about the shootings and the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. On Subtle Asian Traits, family members and friends of the victims posted about who they were and it felt so much more personal to be confronted with the fact that our community had been hurt.

For many Chinese adoptees, this tragedy has become a rallying point around which they are strengthening their solidarity with the Asian American community wherever they live. For me personally though, I have always felt strongly Chinese American and for me, I am as devastated for this shooting as I am for all the others. There are too many shootings in America, and it feels sometimes that unless someone is dead or many people are dead, underlying issues of racism (or whatever the issue is) are ignored. The model minority myth seems to have muted people's empathy towards the plights of many Asian people and I have experienced racism, stereotypes, or just plain bias that always just feels brushed off by people because it is not perceived to affect us.

My parents have recently made a tremendous effort to educate themselves about Asian issues in America. Like many Americans, I think they are conditioned to sense racism when it applies to black people but they aren't as attuned when it happens to other groups. I tell them to replace the group with "black" and see if they can hear the racism. That is a good mind exercise that helps a lot. When Asian hate crimes began to rise, egged on by President #45, ignorance, and the internet, my parents were quick to blame stabbings and other attacks on mental illness and violent video games, wanting to avoid talking about race altogether.

I don't live in a racist area. Certainly, I have been to areas where you can feel the racism, but where I live, it is very diverse and peaceful. The times I have felt discriminated against were when I was in another state for undergraduate college. This state was very non-diverse, middle-class, mostly white. Race was something I had not thought much about before because it just hadn't affected me. Being in this different state changed my perception, and it was also the first time I was really on my own. One day, I went to pick up take-out at a local sandwich place down the road from the college and the man handed me my food with what I thought was a leer. He asked if I was from next door, and I said no, wondering what was next door. It turned out to be a salon that did massages. I was completely grossed out because my experience of our interaction  was that he was implying he'd like an "Asian massage." The town was extremely white and I stuck out like a sore thumb. Surely an Asian girl just had no reason to be in town for a sandwich unless she worked at the spa. My parents didn't think the town was that white and actually felt that the place was diverse due to its proximity to a major city, not because they actually spent any time there.

I don't know if I never really experienced racism a whole lot or if I just wasn't "allowed" to perceive it. Everything was written off as someone having a bad day or someone being insecure. It was never that someone was racist. To many Americans, to be called a racist is worse than being racist. I think because racism is just so bad, it is like writing other humans off as being irredeemable. I see this a lot online where people are more interested in shouting (typing) than in holding semi-intelligent conversations. However, when my accomplishments were being put down in this white college (I graduated last year) and I perceived this to be related to the fact I was the only non-white person in my classes and Asian to boot, I think that racism does apply. How can people want to be teachers if they decide that different students should be treated differently based on their race? I worked very hard, but not because it was in my blood or my bones or in my culture or due to my upbringing. I worked hard because I work hard dammit! Even when my accomplishments weren't put down, but in fact praised, my race was brought up casually. One white (they were all white) professor made a comment about the hard-working Chinese like it was a compliment and then did a full hands-together bow to me at graduation. Yes, his behavior was hilarious in hindsight even though he was perfectly serious, but also, I earned my stripes. And so did all my other Asian friends who accomplished so much. Why would or should any of us be so othered?

I don't have Asian parents that I need to worry about being attacked when they go out. No one should have to be worried, but the world we live in is crazy. I can't share in some of the shared experiences of the Asian diaspora, but I am still a Chinese woman. That doesn't change. As a transracial adoptee--defined as an adoptee adopted by people of a different race--I think there is an expectation that I should have a constant internal or external struggle with how I racially identify or how I live with race. I just don't think I have this "struggle." I am Chinese. My parents are white. And to all the annoying people out there who have a problem with that, I shrug my shoulders and say, "Well, what do you want me to do about it? I can't control that they're white!" 

Our voices should not be silenced because of the color of our parents' skin. When a stranger calls me a chink, well, that just means that no matter my personal story, I am externally perceived and treated accordingly as an Asian woman. I haven't lived the lives of all the other adoptees I know, so I don't know what their experiences are. But for me, I feel like I've experienced below average racism so far, which I think is a good thing.

And when my friends who were so eager to post that little black square for BLM are as loud as crickets about the Atlanta spa shooting, I just feel like there's a selective blindness. If you stand against racism, you should stand against ALL racism. Supporting Black Lives Matter should go hand-in-hand with Stop Asian Hate.

I don't play the victim and don't pretend to. My life is blissfully calm in the realm of hate crimes and I'd like to keep it that way, but that doesn't mean racism isn't happening to other people, Asian or not. Just because it doesn't slap you in the face, doesn't mean it isn't real. I wish people would love more and hate less, but in reality I think it boils down to who we "other" and why we think it is okay to "other" people.