Between the Lines of Asian, Black, and White

By Isaiah Hobus

T

wo years ago, I found myself in a place where no amount of apathy was deep enough to overlook the concrete suffering I witnessed.

I went with fellow ministers on a trip where we came face to face with the historical and ongoing effects of a democracy that was founded with more than 20 percent of its population consisting of enslaved Africans. The trip was called Sankofa. We stood in key locations of the Deep South where Black Americans were enslaved, beaten, terrorized, and killed. It was difficult not to sense the blood and tears still seeping out of the ground. I could not help but put myself into the shoes of the murdered Emmitt Till, the murdered Martin Luther King, the countless nameless Black American lynching victims and their families. 

I was so overwhelmed at the real bodies, families, and children that suffered that my empathy led to despair. The group of us wept, we left spaces early, we sat in silence, and we lamented how so many “Christians” were blind to the fact that human beings became objects of violence, alterity, and greed. Some notable sites we visited included: the Burkle Estate Slavehaven Museum—a haven for slaves escaping for freedom on the underground railroad; the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC) in Glendora—the site where Emmett Till was lynched; the Edmin Petus Bridge in Selma—the site of bloody Sunday; Dexter Ave Church—the first church Martin Luther King pastored while finishing his PhD; the Legacy Musuem; Lynching Memorial Square in Montgomery; and the Civil Rights Musuem in Memphis—the site of King’s assassination. 

Throughout the trip, there was something I could not ignore. I was the only Asian in the group. I felt misplaced, invisible, and at times exempt from the story. I did not fit into the racial binary of black and white that shaped this story of North America’s culture, public sphere, and allocation of its resources. Asians seem invisible in this story. I know I am not the only Asian person who has felt the void of this complex loneliness in a group of people that look nothing like us. However, as I began to reflect, I realized how my story as a second generation Korean American actually did fit into this story of American racialized suffering. 

During the Civil Rights movement, North America still found itself in its long ideological war with the Soviet Union. The United States was seeking to win the Cold War against communism, rooting out communism from all the poor non-Western countries. One of the Soviet Union’s prominent critiques against North America on the global stage was its racially segregated country and its ongoing history of racial terrorism. Thus, during the Civil Rights movement, North America was correspondingly trying to save its image before the world. It was at this juncture that the model minority myth was born. When faced with this critique, North America began to point to Asian American success. It pointed to “quiet” Asian American workers who never complained and never asked for handouts for its justification. However, students of Asian American history know it was only a few years earlier that America was banning Asians from coming into its country altogether. 

Americans had a name for Asians coming to America: Yellow Peril. They believed Asians were a yellow terror polluting and corrupting the country. During this time, Asians were lynched, terrorized, and hated. In 1882, the North American government began excluding the entry of Asian persons into the United States and denied citizenship through the Chinese Exclusion Act. The government eventually expanded this exclusion to all people of Asian descent. This changed with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the same year the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed). An annual limitation of 20,000 immigrants from each country were allowed entrance into North America. Thus it was Asian persons with skills, status, means, and family in the US that were given priority for immigration. It was through these Asian persons with status that the ideology of the model minority myth was created. Americans, now wanting some Asians, used their “select Asians” as tokens to disparage Black Americans and other minorities in the Civil Rights movement. 

The model minority myth is a genius ideological tool of the United States racial caste system. 

The myth erases North America’s robust selectivity in Asian American immigration when Asians were allowed entrance into America; it erases the discriminatory process of entrance at Angel Island; it erases 2.3 million Asian American living in poverty in 2022; and it erases North America's violence and xenophobia against Asian people. Finally, in accomplishing this erasure of Asian American suffering, it then pits us against other minority groups. Thus, the myth erases both the suffering of Black Americans and Asian Americans. 

On the trip, I realized how this destructive ideology is still alive and well. Americans still use Asian Americans to justify the suffering of Black Americans and other minorities. I experienced this when George Floyd was murdered in my home state of Minnesota. I heard and saw remarks that are encapsulated in: “Black Americans are just complaining. Look at Asians; they are a minority and they don’t complain. Asians are fine.” I have been told throughout my life some version of, “Oh, we aren’t racist, we have you!” The model minority myth is a mechanism of destruction for equity and history. On the trip, I realized how I have been (and could be used still) to undermine the work of Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hammer, and others. 

It is my contention that to resist this powerful ideological myth and make sense of the lines between Asian, Black, and White one has to put the reality of concrete suffering at the center. Or, to use a Korean word, one must put Han at the center. Han approximates the human experience and human tears more deeply than the English word suffering. Han doesn’t translate well into English, only analogies suffice. Han is like an all encompassing trauma that lives in the hearts of people. Han is like unjust suffering that wounds the heart. Han aches within collectives and individuals. Koreans use the word Han to describe the suffering of our people. As a small segment of land in Asia historically sandwiched between large empires, Korea’s history is one colonization leading to another. Koreans say Han lives in the blood of all of their people. In recent history, Korea was devastated by the ideological Cold War that birthed not only the model minority myth but the Korean War. Korea was split in two and the land and people were devastated. There is no exact figure of the total number of Koreans killed in the Korean War, but Korea’s people experienced the deepest loss of any people in the war. It is estimated that 3 million Koreans (roughly 10 percent of the population) were killed, wounded, or missing as a result of the war. Millions of Koreans were displaced and separated from their families across borders, and following the war, the land became some of the most impoverished land in the world. The Korean war is one of the most apt expressions of Han. 

On the Sankofa trip, I saw North America’s Han. I saw the ache of America’s heart from a collective Han of racialization. I saw violence deriving from a social hierarchy of skin pigmentation aching in all of our hearts. I venture to claim that Han not only lives in the blood of all Koreans, but Han approximates the most fundamental cry of human beings in the world. We are born in Han and die in Han. Han is the only word in my vocabulary that comes close to the pain and suffering of the history of racial terror of the Deep South I saw against Black Americans.

As followers of the Crucified God, Han also lies at the center of faith. The epicenter of the center of the Christian faith—the cross of Jesus Christ—God absorbs Han. God hangs from a tree before the world, powerless and weak. This is the way God heals the world, not through worldly power or God’s omnipotence, rather through God’s own suffering or Han (Matt 8:17). God’s absorption of Han is what heals our world. Thus, in the face of suffering, lies the very immanence of God. The suffering of God was the heart of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed should be at the center Christianity in our postmodern world. It led him to believe we should see the great events of world history from below—from the perspective of those who suffer. I contend in following the crucified God one is led to understand history through those who suffer most. 

As I reflect on my time on this trip and seek to harmonize the lines between Asian, Black, and White, I am drawn to put Han and God’s Han at the center of how I see others and the world. I found that I am trained to see the world like the Priest and the Levite rather than the Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37). I am quick to flee from contemplating the world’s deepest Han in the name of religious duty and piety, leaving Han on the side of the road. With this realization, I took to heart a pledge I encountered from the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights created by Martin Luther King and Fred Shuttlesworth. The pledge had members meditate on the life and teachings of Jesus daily. Throughout the life and teachings of Jesus, I am compelled to seek to bear the nonviolent healing presence of the Crucified God like King, Shuttlesworth, and many other saints have done. 

I can not ignore the faces of Han I saw on this trip, and I can not ignore the faces of my Korean ancestors whose Han I carry on. They lie close to my heart and I see the Crucified God near all Han. Human communities are not bound to constructed racialized hierarchies birthed out of violence and greed; a shared human ontology imaging the Triune God is more fundamental. I implore you, when you are caught between the lines of Asian, Black, and White—look for Han and resist all tools and ideologies that seek to undermine the voices of Han.

Photo by Michael Petrila on Unsplash

---

Isaiah Hobus is a 2nd generation Korean American and the son of a Korean adoptee. He is a Masters of Divinity student at Northern Seminary and Hospital Chaplain Intern at Duke University Hospital. He and his wife reside in Durham, North Carolina. In his spare time, he enjoys running, writing, sticking his nose in a book, and guzzling black coffee.