George Floyd death sparks Asian American soul-searching
21 June, 2020
As anti-racism protests broke away across the United States, Viet Hoai Tran knew exactly what he wished to write in his poster - "Yellowish Peril Supports Black Electric power".
"If we are discussing fighting for justice, for liberation, for change ... most of us have to be part of this," said the 27-year-old, who was born in Vietnam, but was raised in the US.
The death of George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis police custody sparked nationwide protests - and a feeling of reckoning in the Asian American community, which has historically fraught, even violent, ties with African Americans.
Specifically, the revelation that among the officers charged over Floyd's death, Tou Thao, is Hmong has caused various Asian Americans to grapple with their community's complicity.
"Yellow peril" is a good racial slur articulating the centuries-old Western fear of an East Asian takeover that is repurposed by Asian Americans found in a express of solidarity with the dark community.
"There's a lot of anti-blackness in the AAPI network," said Tran, referring to the Asian Americans and the united states diaspora of Pacific Islanders.
Among the worst examples was first through the 1992 protests found in Los Angeles over the authorities killing of Rodney King, a black gentleman. Massive rioting broke out through the demonstrations, most of which happened in the Koreatown community.
Ethnic Korean store owners, feeling abandoned by the LA police, shot at dark-colored protesters from the rooftops to safeguard their businesses.
"We, Asian Americans, have remained complicit in perpetuating anti-blackness and profiting from bright white supremacy," Kevin Quach, who works on insurance policy at the Asian American advocacy group OCA National, told AFP.
"WEDGE COMMUNITY"
Quach noted the internalisation of the model minority myth - the stereotype that Asians will be the "best" minority, so implying that other minority groups are actually somehow lesser - and colorism, or perhaps prejudice against darker skin tones, within the Asian community, among other examples.
Even using slogans like "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power" or "Asian Americans for Dark colored Lives Matter," Quach said, "ignores and minimises the injury that the AAPI network has inflicted in the black community in the last 50 years," whether or not unintentionally.
For example, the "yellow peril" slogan was initially found in 1969 by Japanese-American activist Richard Aoki at a protest to get Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton.
Aoki was revealed in 2012 to have been a great FBI informant on the Black color Panthers.
Asian Americans have already been utilized "as a wedge community between dark-colored community demands and our bodies", said Bo Thao-Urabe, a co-founder of the Minnesota-established Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL).
It's important to be sure "our communities are not used against each other", she added.
Groups want CAAL and OCA National, that have been already working with dark and Latino communities, have made particular pushes to aid the current protests.
CAAL has provided support for Asian Americans found in Minnesota who joined the demonstrations, and OCA has launched more than a few programs explicitly about Asian-black relations, including a good workshop on the version minority myth and a good virtual summit on Afro-Asian solidarity.
Asians 4 Dark Lives possesses supported protests found in the SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Bay Area while Equality Labs, a good South Asian rights group, has community forums and other assets promoting South Asian-dark solidarity.
DECONSTRUCT THE FEAR
Many young Asian Americans took the conversation on line, sharing articles on social media about combating anti-blackness.
Others experience posted lists of key phrases and talking things, translated into languages such as for example Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese, for "talking to Asian parents about institutional and internalised racism."
"Anti-blackness is not only a thing that you can brand and it disappears," stated Jenny Tam, a 21-year-old student at the University of Minnesota Twin Towns who's of Chinese-Vietnamese heritage.
"It's a fear, and fear should be deconstructed."
After Floyd's death, Tam created a Facebook group called "Asian America for Black color Power" to connect Asian Minnesotans who wished to go to protests together.
The group quickly morphed right into a platform, now with almost 3,000 members, for sharing resources on where to donate, what things to read, where you can protest and how exactly to talk with their own families about racism.
Tam also noted that the coronavirus pandemic had served seeing as a sort of wake-up demand Asian Americans, as it sparked a great outpouring of anti-Asian racism, with many blaming China for the virus.
Racism "might oppress us differently, but there's a basic enemy. We're fighting the same thing," explained Tam, whose parents came to Minnesota after the Vietnam War.
"We are not white, and so we cannot protect something that supports bright white and is harming our dark-colored community."
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