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.
Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race
So one answer to the question What can I do? is simple: Listen. Believe.
“I had to stop talking to white people about race, because I kept getting retraumatized,” an African American friend told me about her days as a diversity trainer. “They just wanted to talk about why they weren’t racist.”
“It’s really important to recognize that race affects everything you do—and that to act otherwise is just naive,” says Julie Nelson, the director of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights (she’s white; her predecessor was an African American woman).
What Nelson says is this: If you’re white, you have to own it. None of this I’m-not-white, I’m-beyond-it-and-I’m-Norwegian stuff. White people have to see race according to the terms they actually benefit from. Not that whiteness is a monolith, any more than nonwhiteness is. As Mab Segrest writes: “Women are less white than men, gay people are less white than straight people, poor people less white than rich people, Jews than Christians, and so forth.” But what might matter, what should matter, is that whiteness is a real force that you’ve personally benefited from in one way or another if you’re white.
Source: The Stranger
An Open Statement to the Fans of 'The Help' from The Association of Black Women Historians
On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.
Read more
If you're a minority, but identify culturally with the U.S. or Canada, should you self-define as white?
The question I often have for South Asian Americans, especially those who come from affluent backgrounds and whose acculturation is largely to Euro-American (“white”) norms, is whether they really think they are so going to be very different from white ethnic communities down the road.
Isn’t it fair that some South Asian Americans with little connection to South Asian culture or language would see themselves (and be seen as) “white” by others in their communities? Isn’t it possible to be of South Asian origin and “white” at the same time?
Source: Amardeep Singh, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University
A Cantonese-speaking Aussie is busy as a Hong Kong actor - he is fluent albeit a foreign accent. Pretty impressive, right?
So, how do you react to visible minorities who speak with a foreign accent in our English-speaking world? Are they cool or what. Even for those who speak in an American accent, how are they represented in Hollywood?
via Wiki page:
Gregory Rivers, aka Ho Kwok Wing, is a Hong Kong actor of Australian descent.
Speaking fluent Cantonese, he is currently a TVB actor. Practically every major character who is a foreigner (no matter the time period or whether French/English or Persian) in TVB dramas is played by him. He has also appeared on stage, as protagonist, in 2005. The Aussie often says that in Hong Kong, he’s found America.”
Wow. The part with the little kid is just heartbreaking…
Clips from the upcoming documentary exploring the deep-seated biases and attitudes about skin color—-particularly dark skinned women, outside of and within the Black American culture.
Directed by Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry
Produced by Bill Duke for Duke Media
and D. Channsin Berry for Urban Winter Entertainment
Co-Produced by Bradinn French
Edited by Bradinn FrenchThis was…is…my life. Kinda sad how I had the exact same experiences in two completely different cultures and countries. its common amongst most colonized people.
Watch this and consider that racist soap ad from earlier and you start to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. It hurts my heart to watch the girl picking out who is “stupid” and “ugly” and “smart”.
Notice 阳光 sunshine (literally) listed on both Weibo social networking posts above. The singles are specifying shades of skin colour they desire in a companion? Wow, imagine that in North America. In China, both senders and recipients of Weibo messages are expected to be Chinese. Even when race is homogeneous, skin tone is important and is stated clearly either under personal traits or requirements. The female is looking for someone who is has a bit of “sunshine” while the male states “sunshine” in his description. So on a Chinese skin tone scale that would be light/medium for the first, and dark for the second. And the preferred female skin tone is always very fair or “white”.
Interestingly, the English translation of Weibo posts provided in the blog omitted the “sunshine” expression in both examples:
Female:
Qingnong female, studying hospital care at Qingdao Agricultural University, born in 1992, 162 centimeters tall, hometown is Jining in Shandong Provence, has the loveliness of an eastern northerner. Looking for a university freshman, sophomore, or junior around the height of 176-183 cm, slim, and doesn’t have to too handsome as this isn’t the most important thing.
Male:
Hey friends, I’m here! Born in 1988, 180cm tall, junior at Wuhan Normal University, from Xiamen. I’m a good person with a fun personality. I like to play basketball and sing. I’m pretty laid-back. I want to find someone to relax with and watch movies. My instant messaging QQ number is 340054497.
Model Minority Myth: Sticky Floor and Bamboo Ceiling Truth?
Over the past week, there’s been so much chatter about the Model Minority Myth and the Bamboo Ceiling.
The ‘model minority’ myth owes its inception in no small part to the gaming of the University of Chicago’s 1924 Survey of Race Relations, engineered by influential members of the Chinese and Japanese immigrant communities.
While Wesley Yang brought our attention to the Bamboo Ceiling, here’s an excerpt from Sylvie Kim’s response in Hyphen:
Yes, the Bamboo ceiling sucks for an engineer who will never make it to management level. But it probably sucks more for the Asian immigrant who has to dust that Bamboo ceiling after emptying out the wastebaskets and mopping the floors. While earning no more than $12,000 a year may be a badge of Model Minority defiance for some Asian Americans, it’s a stark economic reality for others.
If it wasn’t for the following true tale that just happened to a friend, I would have drowned out the chatter and let it go.
One of the main reasons I’ve been so frustrated about job hunting is because I got rejected even though I thought I did really well on the interview. On the other hand, a classmate who also went for an interview thought she had bombed it but ended up getting the position. The thing I can’t get over is that when I found out she was also going for the position, I already felt like I wasn’t going to have a good chance at the position, mostly because she was white. The irony is that she just recently came to America from Europe while I’ve lived in America ever since I could remember. I know it’s a bit too simplistic to say that and really I have nothing that shows race may have been involved in the decision making process. I just can’t help but get so angry and frustrated at a situation that does seem to have race involved.
Never mind the Bamboo Ceiling, he got stuck on the Sticky Floor.
Companies that don’t embrace diverse markets now will miss out, while companies that ignore them tomorrow will become obsolete.”
(Source: newsok.com)
I am truly touched and humbled by the response from you, the tumblr community, on the “…from Seattle” post. Kudos to Stephanie Santiano who published the original article in Glimpse.
To borrow a phrase: Power to the People.
But where are you really from?
Here’s one of my favourite “Where are you really from?” stories. The gal is of Korean ethnicity, third-generation “born in Russia” (that’s fourth-generation Russian). She came to North America as a teenager, speaks fluent Russian and American English but no Korean. She wrote about the “But where are you really from?” scene at a bus stop where she was questioned by a stranger because she was talking with a friend in Russian.
“Excuse me, what language are you speaking?” He would look at my (white) Russian friend.
“Russian” Nadya would reply.
“Russian,” he’d repeat as if clarifying it for his own sake, “So … You speak Russian too?” he’d nod in my direction.
“I presume I do.”
“Wow, so where are you from?” he’d linger
“… Russia”
“No, no, but where are you really from?”
“… Russia” my tone never changing…
“But … You’re Asian.”
More from Schema here and scroll down the page here.
