My mother messages me whenever she hears about a new anti-Asian American attack. She texts me a quick summary: how they were hurt, where they were, what they were doing. Occasionally, she sends WeChat links to the articles she reads, alongside a frantic “Please be safe. I love you.” text message. A month ago, my mother linked an article reporting the detonation of an explosive device outside the Nebraska Chinese Association. The building is a place I regularly visited as a child, and the community was an inclusive space for young Chinese Americans like myself. Now, it is the site of violence.
In the aftermath of the Atlanta killings of eight individuals, six of whom were Asian women, my mother FaceTimed me, terrified and begging me to leave my “big-city” college and return to my Midwestern hometown. For two hours, we sat together and scrolled through endless social media posts and news reports about the tragic event. Our almost-silent conversation was sporadically punctuated with my mother’s progressively frantic pleas for me to come home as she read through WeChat commentaries that her friends had shared.
Graphic videos depicting anti-Asian American violence have circulated across social media since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 alone, a 70-year old grandmother in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood was robbed and assaulted; an 84-year-old Thai immigrant, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was shoved and killed in San Francisco; and a 61-year-old Filipino man, Noel Quintana, required 100 stitches after being slashed with a box-cutter while riding the subway.
The COVID-19 pandemic unearthed prejudices against Asian Americans that have been obscured for the last several decades. In early 2020, terms such as “China Virus”, “Kung Flu”, and “Wuhan Virus”, became widely adopted to conflate COVID-19 with Asian American identities. As infection rates soared, the use of these xenophobic terminologies by prominent politicians, including former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fueled anti-Asian American resentment, contributing to the over 3,795 reported anti-Asian hate crimes since 2019.
Across online platforms, Asian Americans spread warnings and advocated for the protection of Asian elders and neighborhoods. At the same time, a troubling narrative of anti-Black sentiment emerged on social networks. Video footage from national news organizations displaying Black men as the suspects in some attacks reignited anti-Black stereotypes in many Asian-American communities. Days after the explosive attack in my hometown, I listened to older members of my Chinese community hypothesize about the motives for the crime in a discussion punctuated with anti-Blackness. Recent attacks have forced a new wedge into age-old cracks between Black and Asian American communities in the U.S., and the media has been a driving force of this racial fracture. Particularly in our current virtualized environment, the role of online platforms and mainstream media in perpetuating — and their potential to instead be ameliorating — Black-Asian hostility cannot be neglected.
Violent incidents and racial justice events within the last year re-exposed the historical and ongoing tension between Black and Asian American communities. Most recently, the Model Minority Myth has been employed to squash movements like Black Lives Matter. The Model Minority Myth is a long-standing instrument wielded to divide racial communities and uphold the status quo of White supremacy. In monolithically portraying Asian Americans as the law-abiding, politically submissive, and “well-behaved” minority community in the U.S., the Model Minority Myth disparages “radical” social justice activism by Black leaders while simultaneously discounting the diverse Asian-American experience. When coupled with the racist stereotypes used by many politicians and mainstream media, the Model Minority Myth also downplays the impact of racism on people of color, specifically Black Americans.
The Model Minority Myth and other politically-motivated tactics for racial division are damaging to all people of color. However, we must acknowledge that Asian Americans are not merely bystanders but often perpetrators of anti-Blackness. For instance, the social media trope of “Asian Baby Girls,” or ABGs, embodies the appropriation of Black culture in many ways. While ABG Instagram influencers, TikTok stars, and even prominent Asian film actresses are labeled as “funny” or “aesthetic” for their “blaccents”, Black individuals are stereotyped for their use of African-American vernacular. This appropriation and subsequent cultural tension punctuate historical racial division.
Controversies surrounding affirmative action in higher education also underscore the role of the media in exacerbating the strain between Black and Asian communities. Cases such as Student for Fair Admissions v. Harvard primarily claim that discrimination occurs against Asian American applicants in undergraduate admissions processes, but the media’s portrayal of race-conscious admissions often pairs Asian American and white students together with Black and Latino students as their opposite. In these cases, news outlets and politicians fixate on the racial divide, not to justifiably highlight systems of discrimination but to garner more attention for political and commercial agendas.
This criticism of the media’s hyperfocus on racial conflict is not a proposal to eliminate all media discourse of Black-Asian tensions. The accessibility and ubiquitous nature of social media facilitate increased accountability for racist beliefs and actions. For instance, the imagery of Hmong-American police officer Tou Thao with his back turned as his white colleague pressed a knee against George Floyd’s neck haunts many Asian Americans, myself included. The viral video of Floyd’s murder rightfully and critically highlighted the bystander role of Asian-Americans in a policing system built to suppress Black communities. It also spurred widespread initiatives to combat anti-Blackness in the Asian American community that received minimal media attention. While social media and news outlets imperatively call attention to stigmas within racial communities, they must begin to spotlight Black-Asian efforts to challenge interpersonal and structural discrimination as well.
Across the nation, multicultural organizations are unifying against violence and racial prejudice. In Oakland, California, Black and Asian advocates held a rally to fight for the liberation from all forms of prejudice and violence while simultaneously challenging the narrative of one community targeting another. A coalition of Bay Area Asian-American organizations issued a statement calling for more community-based solutions rather than relying on increased policing. These acts of solidarity merit the same news coverage and social media attention that Black-Asian racial conflict receives.
Ending anti-Asian American violence requires us to stop drawing divisive lines between our communities and those of our Black peers. It requires us to question why a White man who murdered eight is dismissed as having a “bad day,” while perpetrators of color are unquestionably characterized as deviant criminals. White supremacy compels us to remember the unhealed injuries: the historical and ongoing anti-Blackness in the Asian community and anti-Asian American incidents committed by Black individuals. It re-opens these wounds without acknowledging the history of Black-Asian unity. From the missing narratives of Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama to ‘Yellow Peril Supports Black Power’, the erasure of cross-community allyship further fragments Black and Asian communities. Yet, shrouded in the haze of racial division lies the stories of solidarity that are omitted from media coverage. In this pandemic, where emergent public health issues and isolation compound on the existing suffering of marginalized communities, it is imperative to highlight narratives of social justice and solidarity — not just subjugation and suppression — for our collective healing.
Image by Korantin Grall is licensed under the Unsplash License.
