Sleepless night so forgive this post if it's all bleary and intense
(Inspired by the commentary on this post)
For the purposes of anti-racism struggles, that’s all you need to go by.
Yes, the term, “colored” is not normally associated with Asian people these days, but it was definitely used to label people of Asian descent in this country in the…
Here’s another one of those one-way calls for solidarity. “If you don’t legitimize my identity and include me in your organizing then you’re stupid.” No mention of Asians needing to eliminate anti-Black or non-Asian POC racism BEFORE being in solidarity with these communities. Or that racism and white supremacy operate differently for Blacks and non-Blacks and we all have to understand those intricacies before organizing with each other. Just, include us or you’re stupid. The fact that I am always Black and never “Other” means something. That white supremacy lynched all of us, but recorded me as Negro and you as white means something. Not that Asians aren’t people of color or victims of white supremacy, but that white supremacy oppresses us in different ways. If some Asians feel closer to white people because they beat them up less, that seems like a pretty important thing to address before making blanket demands of inclusion.
It seems that people are missing or deliberately ignoring the context of my post, which was commentary on a particular piece of commentary, not a blanket statement about intra-minority racial relations. My call for solidarity among ALL people of color was just a rhetorical turn from pointing out the fact that racism among Americans of color has been bred, born, and nurtured in a White supremacist power structure. Recognizing the fact that all people of color are oppressed by the White power structure IN NO WAY is a sort of downplaying of anti-Black racism or a call to ignore the social/economic/historic differences in our situations. I don’t think I’m being controversial when I say that (1)White racism has harmed all people of color (2) though the ways this harm has manifested itself in our communities has differed. It’s possible to acknowledge situated differences AND overall, systemic effects at the same time.
Pointing this out (1) is not meant to absolve anyone of culpability for racism, but is/was meant to (again) raise the point that Asian racism against Black Americans is not Black American’s biggest problem, race-wise. Neither is Black racism against Asians. The LA riots were a perfect example of the divide-and-conquer strategy devised by White racism—get the minorities hating and mistrusting and destroying each other so they forget about who’s actually holding the boot to their throats.
I make a point to acknowledge Asian racism against other non-Whites, but my post was specifically addressing a particular skeptical comment about whether Asians count as ‘Colored’ or not. (FYI: We do.) I’m pointing out the fact that many (black, brown, white, etc.) DON’T count us as oppressed due to circumstances that are mostly beyond our control and that the reasoning behind this stance is highly suspect. Telling Asians to clean up our act is one thing; flat-out denying our oppression is another.
I mean, when has liberation ever been bought with denials and ignorance?
I didn’t discuss Asian culpability in anti-Black and -Brown racism because my post wasn’t about Asian culpability in anti-Black and -Brown racism. It was about how potential allies among POC have tended to deny Asians our history and oppression in a way that reproduces similar White denials of the history and oppression of Blacks, Native Americans/Amerindians, and Latinos. Reread it and tell me where I say, “I’m here to discuss why Black and Brown people should absolve Asians of our racism against them.” It’s one thing to tell me I’m wrong, but it’s another to put words in my mouth before you do it.
I would like to add that one of the basic premises of the responder is wrong: that East Asians were ‘recorded’ as White. No, no they were not. The White Supremecist folk focused on Black people because they were in the same place; that is not the same as giving other PoC White status. Look at Arizona’s campaign against Brown people—have they given Black people a pass? No, but Latinos are the group there to oppress. Were the Nazis recording Arabic people as White? No, because they had the Jews and Roma for non-Whites; nowadays, with the Jews and Roma dead or gone, and Arabic peoples coming in large numbers, Central Europe calls Jews White and Middle Easterners ‘ethnic’.
To say East Asians were recorded as White because they weren’t systematically oppressed at a particular point in time and specific place by a specific group is utterly fallacious.
“Person of color” = someone discriminated against for their race/ethnicity on a systematic level by the white majority
(Inspired by the commentary on this post)
For the purposes of anti-racism struggles, that’s all you need to go by.
Yes, the term, “colored” is not normally associated with Asian people these days, but it was definitely used to label people of Asian descent in this country in the past. We have been and still are the targets of White racism:
Believing the fallacy that people of Asian descent are not authentically or legitimately ‘Colored’ or ‘People of Color’ is wrong because:
1) It ignores the long history of racial discrimination and persecution of Asians in the U.S. (e.g. the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the Japanese-American internment during WWII, explicit campaigns to drive Asians out of the American West, the lynching of Asian Americans. (Which is something that is not commonly known due to the fact that many Asian and Mexican victims of mob violence in the 19th c. were classified as ‘White’ in official records*)
2) It ignores the history of White European imperialism in Asian countries, which intersects with White racism against Asian immigrants in White-majority countries. I assure you that White imperialists certainly did not view Indians, Chinese, or Vietnamese as being anything other than ‘Colored’
Imperial map of Asia, source of map
White European man receiving a pedicure from South Asian servants
3) It plays into the White racist divide-and-conquer strategy.
Even a brief look at the history of race/ethnicity in U.S. law alone makes it apparent that a key aspect of White racism has been the classification of non-Whites according to (white-defined) categories.
Those hailing from Asia (as well as the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America) have been legally categorized in a myriad of ways—very occasionally as White, but more often as non-White (e.g. Ozawa v. United States, United States v. Thind). In general, Asians have occupied a strange ethno-racial limbo as ‘Other’ (e.g. the Census prior to 1870). As far as Whites were concerned, Asians might not have been ‘Negros’, but we certainly weren’t White either. Our otherness made us targets for discrimination and violence, and—because our right to citizenship has constantly come under attack—we’ve historically had as little recourse to the protection of the law as African Americans have.
Massacre of the Chinese at White Springs, Wyoming (source)
Yes, Asian people have (somewhat more recently than you think) enjoyed certain perks due to our ethnicity/race compared to Black and AmerIndian people (e.g. ‘the model minority’). But that’s just a more recent aspect of the divide-and-conquer strategy, which the White hegemony has used to pit minorities against each other so as to distract us from the real problems facing our communities.
And yes, some Asian people are complete racist dicks to those who aren’t Asian or White, but that’s internalized White racism. If you’ve been kicked and beaten by your master for years, then suddenly given a few scraps from his table, would you throw them in his face? Or is it more likely that—as beaten down as you are—you’d give in to Stockholm Syndrome and play along? (To be clear: that’s an explanation for Asian racism, not an excuse.)
Even so, incidents of Anti-Asian bias (e.g. Vincent Chin, Wen Ho Lee) and straight-up racist violence occur frequently enough these days that Asians are hyper-aware of the fact that many—including non-whites—don’t view us as Americans, let alone ‘Colored’. We’re simply foreign ‘others’.
So if White is grudgingly treating you OK, while Black and Brown seem to hate and distrust you, then whom do you ally yourself with? More importantly, who benefits from this apparent alliance?
In the American black-white paradigm of race relations, ‘others’ like Asians get shit on no matter which side we’re on. So the Asian internalization of White racism makes a twisted kind of sense as a survival strategy, particularly if your natural allies (other victims of White racism) are treating you like foreigners and even equating you with the oppressor himself.
My point: Asians’ conflicted, sometimes tense, relations with African Americans and those who have been historically, categorically considered ‘Colored’ is an artifact of White racism. This means that if you exclude Asians from ‘Colored’ solidarity against White racism, you are reproducing a highly successful strategy of White racism.
Let that sink in for a minute.
To conclude: Anti-Asian exclusion from POC solidarity movements is ignorant, wrong, and just plain stupid. Asians’s current role as a prop of White racial supremacy is not our doing, just as our historic role as the foreign ‘Other’ is not our doing. The peculiar place of Asians in race relations today has been the result of the intersection of White racism, xenophobia, and imperialism. It is a mistake to think otherwise.
TL;DR: Questioning the identity of Asians as “people of color” reinforces White racial supremacy.
