![]() On top of the 150% increase in Asian Americans hate crime this past year, attacks against women occurred 2.3 times more than men between March 2020 to February 2021. This feeling of invisibility and being demeaned and ignored takes a toll and is soul crushing in it’s own way.Īs an Asian American woman, this past year has personally been painful and difficult to process. If people don't even want to believe Jeremy Lin, what chance does the average person have. ![]() The incident was investigated by the G League and they identified the player who called him that by the way. When Jeremy Lin spoke up about how being an NBA veteran didn't protect him from racism and that he had been called "coronavirus" on the court, people didn't believe him and called him a liar. That is what we experience when we speak out. In the past whenever I said anything negative about the US or talked something being racist, I would be ignored or gaslighted. Nobody is listening and nobody wants to believe us. Because of our long time silence, it becomes more of a challenge when we do try to speak up. After all it's much easier and palatable to imagine that Asian communities have not suffered and have actually benefited living in a white supremacist world. Western society and the mainstream media by and large would rather diminish and erase us rather than face up to the brutal truth of the violence that we experience at both institutional and social levels. ![]() The victims of the shooting last week were murdered as they were working to support themselves and their families. Growing up in poverty, we studied hard as we saw that as our only chance to rise up out of our circumstances. My husband and I both had to practically raise ourselves because our single moms had to work long hours, even on weekends, just to provide for us. The truth is the average Asian is working class and does not even come close to living on generational wealth. This is why shows like Bling Empire which continue to perpetuate certain stereotypes are so misleading and harmful. It's assumed that just living in America is a a privilege for us and for that we should never have anything to complain about. This imposed expectation that Asians, regardless of circumstance, are smart, wealthy, submissive, and hard-working is used to deny that racism occurs and ignore the poverty in our communities so resources such as economic relief, health care or public attention don't have to be provided. The “model minority” stereotype is a problematic myth that surrounds Asian Americans. And we have always been mindful of avoiding certain places and regions in America because we are Asian. It's something you just learn to live with and internalize because when you speak up, you're usually just dismissed or met with indifference for being sensitive because it's not racist. Aside from physical violence, my husband and I have both experienced all of these. And yes telling us we all look alike and you can't tell us apart is racism too. ![]() Erasing our diverse communities and viewing us as a monolith is racism. Asking us where we are from and if the answer doesn't satisfy you, ask us where we are really from. It also includes microaggressions like minimizing us as well as our experiences and not recognizing us as Asian. They include the fetishization of Asian women and the emasculating of Asian men. It includes verbal harassment, making fun of our names, our language, our culture, our food and telling us to go back to where we came from. This racism manifests is not limited to physical violence. It is only now that the violence has become so glaring that it has finally crossed the barrier into a national conversation that usually ignores the AAPI community.Īnti-Asian racism is ugly and it is rooted in American history (look up the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, the murder of Vincent Chin, etc.). The most disturbing aspect of this apart from the horrific and heartbreaking violence is the lack of mainstream media attention and/or responsive calls to action up. These unprovoked attacks are often violent with a vast number perpetrated against elders. Stop AAPI Hate has collected over 3,800 reports of verbal abuse, harassment, and physical assaults against AAPI in the United States since March of last year. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a significant increase in violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The shooter reportedly yelled, "I want to kill all Asians." It was obviously a hate crime rooted in racism and the reluctance by local law enforcement to call it that is demoralizing not to mention insulting. Last week, eight people were killed in a series of shooting across three Asian-owned spas in the Atlanta area.
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