Janaya Khan on Asian American Violence (IG Live 2/11)
America frames things in a way where our identities are pitted against each other. And so there are hierarchies within racism. And there are “model minorities” as well as the people who are considered to be at the very bottom. When you have this kind of reality, it’s going to cause a lot of tension.
"Model minorities" are closer in proximity to whiteness, which means they are not experiencing the full brunt of racism in the way, say, a Black person would be. And instead of seeing solidarity with Black people for example, the idea of the "model minority" is to seduce people into assimilating whiteness, i.e. looking down on Blackness. You believe, or are seduced into believing, the tropes against Black people.
There are some kinds of racism that are invisibilized, and some kinds of racism that are hypervisible. Being Black is hypervisible. But the experience of many Asian American people is often invisibilized. It is very difficult to know when or how to speak about it, or how to fight about it, or how to fight for yourself and your communities. So what has typically happened is that racism against Asian Americans tend to be brought up almost exclusively when we’re talking about anti-Black racism.
For example: we all know #oscarssowhite. And what happens is instead of interrogating why this is (around who is in power, etc), it becomes about any representation. So the idea is that Black people have representation, and Asians do not. And instead of looking at the gatekeepers, we are calling out in comparison a group of people who experience the brunt of racism instead of the gatekeepers who keep us all out.
No matter what tensions exist or previously existed between Asian Americans and Muslim, Black, etc communities — our job is to fight against EVERY kind of racism, because that is what you do when you are an anti-racist. We dont have the right to pick and choose which communities we will support. There are people in the Asian community who have supported BLM and those who haven’t, and that’s true of every community.
What I really love about how this framing of Asian American violence was brought into our timelines is someone saying, “This happened, and this has been happening, and the media has not talked about it. And this is where the convo should be located. There’s a reason why it's not happening in the media, and it’s because the media will only be drawn to what society (and whiteness) determine as important / urgent enough. It has taken Black people a very long time to capture the media attention and it’s fickle, doesn’t stick with you, keeps moving. So the callout of the media is a beautiful call to action and something we all find a home in because we are not competing with each other for the crumb but for the systemic overhaul with the understanding of how the hierarchies work.
To our community: Do not fall into the comparison trap. It’s not transformative and throws Black people under the bus. The Black experience cannot be used in a ladder or footstool in that sort of way, as it suggests that Black people have been successful in the struggle that no other population of people have, despite experiencing some of the worst realities of racism.
If you only know how to say who you are by using the Balck experience as a footstool for your positioning, that is a problem. We have to find affirmative visions for change that don’t require saying things like "If you’re seeing things like “You were vocal about BLM where are you now” or “Being pro-Asian isn’t anti-Black.”
We need to be mindful that when there is a tension like this, especially this particular sort of violence against the Asian American community, there’s a rise of white supremecist violence in the country. Every racialized person is going to be impacted by this. What could happen very quickly is calls for more police. And this is where we have to be very careful and mindful. The CTA cannot be “we need more police.” For many Asian Americans, the experience of police interactions is different from that of Black people. Many Asian Americans will find safety with police and many will not, that’s the reality. It just depends on how awful the institution is at that moment in time. There are experiences of violence and police brutality in the Asian American community as well, it’s just not as prolific as the Black community. The answer can’t be to call more police.
We, as carers and producers of freedom and the future—our job is to drive this attention and this conversation towards where it needs to be. Towards defunding the police and expanding connecting and connectivity. Towards justice. We have to gently and with care, push back against those who say “BLM vocal people where are you now” , or “Where were Asian people when ___” because that is not what we do.
We show up because we understand this freedom work requires us all to be free. Our integrity is not incumbent on anyone else, or their communities. As many people who have assimilated into whiteness and the project of it, there have been just as many people fighting alongside Black people because we don’t play those kinds of political games. No one earns our fight against racism, we fight against racism.
And for those we dont have the same understanding / politics / of how the structure works, we get them there. This fight is our fight. This articulation of violence against Asian American is very different from how it used to get brought up, which helps to show the work that we are all doing together is working, and the conversation is changing.
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