I Divorced My Racist Husband

#StopAsianHate #BlackLivesMatter #NoKidsInCages  #WouldRecommend

[ireallytrulydid]

“The indignity of being Asian in this country has been underreported,” the poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong writes in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning.

Morgan Ome: So how do we move forward?

Cathy Park Hong: I don’t want to overcomplicate this. There are two ways of talking about this. The act of violence itself is wrong. You cannot excuse it. I think many Asian Americans have never talked about it, and so white people still don’t believe that Asian Americans face racism. Because we’re invisible, the racism against us has also been invisible. This is why it’s important that people are speaking up to show: “Actually, this has been happening, and there’s been a spike. But at the same time, this has been going on for a long time. We just haven’t really talked about it. And now we’re talking about it, and you have to pay attention.”

Morgan Ome: Maybe I can clarify. The term Asian American was coined in 1968 by radical student organizers who were envisioning a pan-Asian, anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement. Is their notion of being Asian American just an ideal? Or is it a real identity-based coalition that you see forming?

Cathy Park Hong: People forget that history. I forget that too. Asian Americans came together because there was no term for us. Before, we were called Oriental, or by our nationalities. What created the name Asian American was the Vietnam War and the Black Power movement. Keep in mind, those Asian American organizers were second generation, maybe even third generation. They were Filipino, Chinese, Japanese. Quite a few of them had family put in internment camps. They were working-class. So they had a lot to be angry about.

It was really powerful, and it got written out of history. Part of it was because of the immigration patterns in America. After the late 1960s, there was this huge influx of Asians coming in from all different nations. We got way more diverse: Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees, Koreans. A lot of those immigrants now have children who consider themselves American, but realize that they still have secondary status as Americans because of the color of their skin and because their voices don’t have the kind of reach that white people do.

Part of the new awareness and consciousness is because there are a lot more of us. And there are more of us who have been here long enough to demand that we need to be part of this country. More so than when I was in my 20s or even 30s, the younger generation is so much fiercer, so much more involved, and so much prouder of being Asian American. The rhetoric has changed from We want more Asians in Hollywood. It’s not just about representational politics. It’s also about confronting class inequity among Asian Americans and trying to build solidarity with other people of color.

Morgan Ome: Is there anything else you want to add?

Cathy Park Hong: As cynical as I sometimes sound, the fact that anti-Asian violent incidents are being documented, and that people are talking about them, is progress. Because that wasn’t happening before, not when I was growing up. A lot of Asian Americans are more vocal, organized, radicalized, and progressive. And we’re not going to go back.

Read the full interview at The Atlantic

[ireallytrulydid]

“I think Asians never know what they can get away with, in the same way that their white counterparts are more hip to. I would always sublimate that disadvantage through hard work.”

One of the scariest things about the murder of six Asian women in Atlanta on 16 March was the numbness I felt on hearing the news. The tragic, racially motivated killings didn’t seem surprising after a year of rising anti-Asian sentiment in the US, spurred by the pandemic. Asian-Americans are more accustomed to invisibility, to the familiar sense of resignation we feel when no one checks in or when we’re subject to a workplace faux pas – a condition that was suddenly, violently ruptured. This invisibility may stem, in part, from our awkward (and sometimes privileged) position at the periphery of the black-white racial binary and, in part, from the vast ethnic differences between Asian communities in the US, which make the categorization feel unmoored.  

Such is the refrain of Kenneth Tam’s performance The Crossing, which was curated by Lumi Tan and premiered at The Kitchen, New York, via livestream in December 2020.

Read the full article on FRIEZE

[ireallytrulydid]

Do Not Split

Told from within the heart of the Hong Kong protests, “Do Not Split” begins in 2019 as a proposed bill allowing the Chinese government to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China escalated protests throughout Hong Kong. Unfolding across a year, “Do Not Split” captures the determination and sacrifices of the protesters, the government’s backlash, and the passage of the new Beijing-backed national security law.

Told from within the heart of the Hong Kong protests, Do Not Split begins in 2019 as a proposed bill allowing the Chinese government to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China escalated protests throughout Hong Kong. Unfolding across a year, Do Not Split captures the determination and sacrifices of the protesters, the government’s backlash, and the passage of the new Beijing-backed national security law.

[ireallytrulydid]

“If you are invisible enough, you will be seen as American. But we are saying that we will be invisible no more.”

One of the workers was a man who was attacked coming to work, leaving him with broken glasses and a swollen face. The other was a woman, on her way home, who suffered a cut lip and bruised nose. “They were just traumatized,” Wang said. “These attacks are happening in broad daylight.”

Wang and I spoke the morning after a Malaysian man was randomly beaten in an attack outside a subway station. Wang said he had started shopping for bulletproof apparel. Would he need protection against a 9 mm bullet or a .44 Magnum, or perhaps even a rifle shot, he wondered. “Hopefully no one’s aiming at me with a rifle,” he said. Two weeks after we spoke, six Asian women were shot dead in Atlanta.

Read the full article on Buzzfeed News

[ireallytrulydid]

The Korea Times Atlanta cited a secondary source who relayed that a spa worker heard the shooter say he intended to “kill all Asians.”

The Korean press also reported on important details about how the events unfolded. When shots were fired at Gold Spa, a Korean employee managed to hide behind a desk and alert other spa workers in the area, likely preempting further casualties. The victim at Aromatherapy Spa had opened the door for the shooter, believing him to be a customer, when she was shot. 

Meanwhile, coverage of the shooting by national media outlets remained vague; reporters seemed reluctant (or were unable) to find details about the victims or pick up reports from the Korean press. Instead, the mainstream press published profiles of the shooter. And when the Atlanta Sheriff’s Office held a press conference on Wednesday morning, the press raced to take down the official statement, which uncritically echoed the suspect’s claims that he suffered from sexual addiction, and which minimized the role of racial animus in his motivation for the killing spree.

Lee, who had worked the police beat in Korea earlier in his career, was in disbelief. “I’ve never before seen a case where the police suggest: ‘The suspect said it wasn’t the case, therefore it’s not the case,’ ” he says. Worse, the press replicated the official statement in headlines and presented it as breaking news. In most news pieces, the spokesperson’s words were treated as self-explanatory, without additional context or questions. “It was almost as though the press believed what was said to be correct, like they wanted it to be the case,” Lee says.  

To Lee, the official statement was “clearly too absurd to repeat.” He felt no obligation to cover the press conference or to recite the spokesperson’s words. Instead, Atlanta K ran a story that recounted the community response to the official statement, titled: “ ‘Does a bad day mean you can kill someone?’: white police officers’ protection of a white murderer.”

Read the full article on Columbia Journalism Review