On the Continued Rise of Anti-Asian Violence from AACC President, Raymond Chang

AACC responds to anti-Asian racism and xenophobic attacks.

By Raymond Chang

O

ne of the greatest challenges to the Asian American experience is that few people really care about the Asian American experience, including Asian Americans.

Steven Yeun powerfully said in an interview, “Sometimes I wonder if the Asian-American experience is what it’s like when you’re thinking about everyone else, but nobody else is thinking about you.”

Plagued by the two dominant stereotypes of (1) being perpetual foreigners, which means that no matter what we do, we will never be considered American enough, and (2) the model minority myth, which is a myth that a) says Asians are successful in America because we exhibit traits that ultimately preserve the racial status quo (or are satisfied with a painstakingly costly, minimal incrementalism) and b) doubly erases Asians who don’t submit to or fall within the stereotype, it's difficult to get people to see that the race-influenced problems we face are worth caring about.

To be Asian American is to straddle the tension of belonging and exclusion. It often means that we erase ourselves, including the harm we experience by a normalized anti-Asian racism, where those who are considered true Americans (which often means white first, then Black) get to determine whether the plight and pains of our community are worth paying attention to and addressing.

“Every dog (no distinction of color) has its day.” 1879

Throughout history, Asians have worked hard to belong in America, only to find over and over, that when we are perceived as a threat to the racial status quo or it's convenient to blame us, we are scapegoated. This often occurs when we start making inroads to belonging. For example, soon after the Chinese helped build the Transcontinental railroad and shortly after the largest mass lynching in the history of the United States took place in Los Angeles in 1871, the San Francisco riot ensued in 1877, where whites rioted and destroyed 20 Chinese-owned businesses, a church, and four people were killed. They did this because they were afraid that the Chinese were gaining a social and economic foothold in the United States. The anti-Chinese sentiment eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882. This was the first race-based immigration act (it’s worth noting that immigration laws in the United States are primarily founded upon the desire to keep Asians out). If you’ve ever wondered where the tendency to yell, “Go back to China” comes from, this is it. The Chinese Exclusion Act then led to the Immigration Act of 1927, or the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which fueled nativism and attempted to keep out people from much of Asia and the Pacific Islands.

While Asians were largely restricted from entering into the United States, the events of Pearl Harbor during World War II led to a rise of anti-Japanese sentiments. This led to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans throughout the United States (and the rest of the Americas). Regardless of whether they were an American citizen or not, people of Japanese ancestry were required to leave their homes and were incarcerated in concentration camps throughout the country. Though some German Americans were also detained, they were not detained in numbers anywhere near what Japanese Americans experienced. I still remember the story of an elderly, third generation Japanese American Christian man who told me that he would pretend to be John Wayne, shooting down the enemy Japanese planes one minute, then sent off to one of the camps the next.

Then, shortly after 9/11, we saw Arab Americans and South / South East Asian Americans get categorized as terrorists. It didn’t matter if the majority of Muslim Americans were law abiding citizens, Arab American Christians, or Indian Americans, they were often viewed with suspicion and plagued with hate.

In 2020, due to the rhetoric around the Covid-19 virus as the “China virus,” the “Chinese Flu,” or the “Kung Flu” by former president, Donald Trump, we saw a spike in anti-Asian racist sentiment where both hate incidents and hate crimes surged against our communities. Asian Americans faced at least two pandemics – Covid-19 and racism – and continue to experience them to this day.

These major waves of overt anti-Asian sentiment are consistent with the cycle that historian, Erika Lee identifies, as a vacillation between being identified as “good Asians” and “bad Asians.” When we are good Asians, things are better for us, and we even get larger parts of the pie. When we are bad Asians, we are targeted, attacked, excluded, and even killed.

In 1982, Vincent Chin was at his bachelor party when a couple of drunk auto-workers started to taunt him. With the Japanese auto industry growing in its market share, the American auto industry was experiencing contractions that led to layoffs. These layoffs led to the scapegoating of Asian Americans who were lumped under the label of “Japanese.” Two white auto workers took notice of Chin, who was Chinese American, and began calling him racial slurs assuming he was Japanese. This escalated to the point that Chin was bludgeoned to death, leaving behind his fiancé, family, and friends. Chin lost his life because of the anti-Japanese sentiments that led all Asians to be perceived as a threat.

Over the course of the pandemic, Asian Americans are once again the recipients of enflamed anti-Asian sentiments. Asian Americans throughout the nation, young and old are being targeted, attacked, and killed, simply for existing in the United States in Asian bodies. Children and youth have reported experiences of discrimination, exclusion, bullying, and assault. The elderly are also on the receiving end of deadly attacks. This includes, but are not limited to Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai American man who was killed in an unprovoked attack, a 64-year-old Vietnamese American woman who was attacked and robbed in broad daylight in San Jose, and Noel Quintana, a 61-year-old Filipino American, who was slashed in the face with a box cutter as he rode the subway.

These are just a few of the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching stories of people being targeted, attacked, and killed for simply existing as Asians in America or as Asian Americans. Watching some of these videos, it's hard not to see our own grandparents and parents on the receiving end of such hate. Let us not forget the many incidents in 2020 that took place including, but not limited to a Burmese family (including two children under the age of six) that was stabbed in Texas while grocery shopping because they were thought to be Chinese, a woman in Brooklyn who had acid thrown on her while taking out her trash, a woman who needed stitches after she was attacked by teenage girls directing anti-Asian comments to her, an elderly Chinese American woman who was slapped, then set on fire by 13 year-old teenagers, and an elderly woman in Minnesota who was kicked in the face by two teenagers. These don’t cover the nearly 3,000 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian racism that were recorded during 2020.

What is difficult about the conversation on anti-Asian racism is that it often flies under the radar. When racist acts are directed towards Asians, unless they are overt, widely understood racist acts, most people (including Asian Americans because of the ways in which we have been racialized and conditioned) struggle to identify it as racist. Instead, we have a strong tendency to explain it away as isolated events that have nothing to do with race or minimize it by saying that it wasn’t really that bad. We often think that racism directed towards Asian Americans won’t get worse until we find that entire laws are created to ban us, concentration camps are constructed to contain us, juries are constructed to prevent justice from flowing to our communities, and words are used to scapegoat us. Anti-Asian racism is consistently argued away as never being that bad until it's really bad – and even when it's really bad, our warped nationalistic tendencies leave us neglectful to civically engage in powerful and sustained ways. Asian American civic engagement is often a flash in the pan over a sustained growing burn.

What we need is an education and a robust understanding in how race operates in our society and the church within.

People need to understand that racism in this country looks differently for Asian Americans than it does for African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. For Asian Americans, racism is often grounded in the forever foreigner designation and the status quo-accepting model minority trope. These two things keep us in a perpetual cycle of silence, minimization, and mass dissociation. This often leads us to say that what we experience isn’t all that bad because it doesn’t happen as often or in the same ways as it does to other communities of color. This is why there is relative silence and apathy by large swaths of the Asian American community when it comes to these attacks and assaults that have led to death. Many see it as a distant, far off reality that has no bearing on them, until it happens to them or someone they know, or happens close to where they are.

For Asian American Christians, we need to find a voice that truly embraces the unique image of God that has been instilled in each of us. It’s not always easy to find our voice, especially when we are tired from navigating the Black-white landscape that forces us to constantly adapt to our racialized settings. We need to realize that trying to fit into the Black-white narrative will never work as it was never where God intended for us to be situated. We are the many ethnicities that make up Asian America for a reason. We must see that God values us, and because He values us, we can value those He cares about, and ask others to care as well, including those within our own communities who are on the receiving end of racial hate and injustice. We can care about the things that others may not care about because we know that God cares, and his care gives us the ability to care, too.

Action steps:

1. Report anti-Asian hate incidents to Stop AAPI Hate as they have been gathering important data providing insight into the rise in overt anti-Asian.

2. If you see something, say something. 

3. Share this and other posts or articles related to the topic.

4. Encourage your teachers, pastors, and other leaders to speak up about this historic pattern of anti-Asian hate.

5. Tag local and national media outlets to have them cover these incidents.

6. Write your local and national elected officials about this.

7. Read, sign, and share the "AACC Statement on Anti-Asian Racism in the Time of Covid-19,” especially the list of action items.

Additional Action steps (From Dr. Russell Jeung):

1. Patronize Asian American businesses, which have been severely hurt by the pandemic and racist avoidance.

2. Stroll through Asian American neighborhoods, greeting our elders and making everyone feel welcomed.

3. Donate to Asian American victim assistance funds.

4. Donate to Community Ambassador programs that hire local residents to greet visitors to a business district.

5. Call for broader civil rights protections so that Asian Americans have safe access to goods and services

Additional Action Steps (From Dr. Michelle Reyes):

1. Organize a peace walk and offer protection to Asian Americans through physical presence.

2. Support local Asian small businesses by eating at our restaurants and offering financial donations.

3. Denounce discrimination & hate crimes against Asian Americans in your home, neighborhood, workplace, church, etc.

4. Call local publicly officials to discuss resources for your Asian American community such as access to mental health care, language services and more.

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Pastor Raymond Chang is the president of AACC, a pastor, and writer. He regularly preaches God’s Word and speaks throughout the country on issues pertaining to Christianity and culture, race and faith. He has lived throughout the world (Korea, Guatemala, Panama, Spain, China), traveled to nearly 50 countries, and currently lives in Chicagoland, serving as a campus minister at Wheaton College. Prior to entering vocational ministry, Raymond worked in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and served in the Peace Corps in Panama. He is currently pursuing his PhD. He is married to Jessica Chang, who serves as the chief advancement and partnerships officer of the Field School.