i was always here: some words on being asian-american
when social media exploded in a frenzy of activity after the atlanta shooting, i thought i was going to feel more. happiness isn’t the right word — maybe ‘acknowledgement’. i thought that the outpouring of support for the victims, the renewed conversation on what it means to be asian, and specifically what it means to be asian-canadian/asian-american, was going to encourage me. i thought i’d feel, i don’t know, even grateful, for the slim amount of media attention we were getting.
but i didn’t. i watched asian-american activists on cnn explain words to anderson cooper — fetishization, emasculation, passive, model minority myth — words that were already well-established in my vocabulary and that of my friends. words that i’ve lived and experienced, which were now being introduced to the broader world. ‘you should feel good about this’, i said to myself.
but i felt empty. i finally began to empathize with what so many black activists have said before me — that there is a unique type of emotional exhaustion that comes with seeing your race, your life, your struggles, displayed out on tv in graphs, dissected in tv interviews, splayed out in shareable tidbits for social media. i didn’t know how i felt — i just knew that every couple hours, i would start crying and be unable to explain why. i didn’t know why looking at the faces of the victims was so painful for me.
there is a lot of discussion and energy right now on covid-related racism. in the statements of many political leaders, they are condemning the vitriolic hate that is no doubt a result of racist language surrounding the virus. it is important that we establish that asian people are not, and were never, unique carriers of the virus, and that we are not responsible for the pandemic.
but this type of language supposes that asian-related racism is exclusively a product of covid, and that anti-asian hate existed only when the pandemic began. when we frame anti-asian hate around the pandemic, which has a timeline — it began, and it will end, someday— we assume that the anti-asian racism that accompanied it will also end on that timeline.
that’s just not true.
i was always here.
i was five when the teachers at my school program mispronounced my name. i corrected them — ‘it’s pronounced like “she”’ i said — only for it be pronounced incorrectly every day thereafter at attendance. and i remember thinking, not that they were wrong, but that i myself was an inconvenience. and wouldn’t it be so much easier if my last name were just ‘smith’ instead? for the rest of the school year i told my friends i was white, in the vain hopes they wouldn’t see the truth, and that maybe i wouldn’t either.
i was eight when i first started dumping out my lunch before going into the cafeteria, after several of my classmates began to comment on the smell of my food. i pretended that i was always forgetting to bring it, eating whatever leftover pretzels the lunchladies had instead.
i was thirteen when i was getting into a car with my mother, while white teenage boys threw soda cans at our car. my mother calmly told me to get in the vehicle. when her hands wrapped around the steering wheel, her knuckles white from tension. as they tapped on our window, taunting, i didn’t know then if i was more scared for her, or for me.
i was sixteen years old when a white man made a racialized catcall to me on a bus. i didn’t even understand the vile comment he made at the time, but i remember i looked around the bus, to see if anyone would step in to help me. when no one did, i got off the bus and waited forty minutes for another, praying that he would not follow me.
i was nineteen when one of the white directors at my workplace got my name wrong — only for him to laugh it off, saying he had a hard time differentiating me and the two other asian girls who worked on our floor. (incidentally, he had no issues remembering the names of any of the 15+ white men who also worked on that floor.)
and i was twenty three, when last summer, a cyclist passed me in downtown toronto, and spit a mouthful of food directly into my face. i stood in complete shock, with food trailing down the front of my shirt, as several people passed me, mouths agape. and silent.
and i walked home, covered in his spit, called the police, and gave a statement. the police officer told me to not press hate crime charges, because ‘i would never win that in court’. and that ‘was i sure it wasn’t just an honest mistake?’ not knowing what else to do, i agreed. ‘it was a mistake.’
i took the elevator back up to my apartment, threw my clothes in the laundry, and showered. i cried harder than i’ve ever cried in my entire life.
we’ve always, always been here. we have always been filled with a deep sense of injustice about how we are treated, how we are seen, and how people who look like us are never given the kind of respect we deserve. those discussions were happening, and those feelings were real, even if they weren’t being shared by major news outlets.
it is a unique type of pain, to witness the people you love and respect — your friends, family, mentors, community — be denigrated in the media, in the workplace, at school, in everyday life. it is a unique type of pain to witness your parents be disrespected by literal children, to watch your female friends preyed on by racist fetishizers, or to watch your male friends emasculated publicly in mainstream media. it’s a type of pain i don’t wish on anyone.
to so many people, asian people are little more than a soulless caricature, a collection of racist traits amalgamated into a convenient package. we are quiet, we are academic, we can’t speak english, we are skinny, we are pale, we are all rich, we are emotionless, we all have no personality, we are all chinese, we are a uniform and unidentifiable unit. these types of beliefs were there, long before the pandemic began, and it’s these types of beliefs that enable people to attack the defenseless without a second thought. it’s these types of belief that underpin and actively enable hatred.
so while i appreciate the public gestures of support — while i appreciate the renewed discussion on the safety and security of asian people — i can’t bring myself to feel hopeful about it. i can’t help but wonder why no one heard me, or any of the thousands of asian-american activists and writers before, back when we were yelling into the void.
most of all, i fear for the future. i will do my part. i will attend the march and donate my money to the causes, and share whatever instagram stories i’m supposed to share that week. so much of the work of activism is involved in the daily slog.
what i want to know is what happens next. will people still care about us when we’re no longer in vogue? when there’s no hashtag to share? when there’s no pictures of bloodied bodies to outrage and shock?
even when that media cycle ends, they will still be there. there will still be asian women who are followed home and harassed. there will still be asian businesses that are destroyed and vandalized. there will still be beatings and slurs. there will still, of course, be microaggressions at work, and the constant struggle that lives in every asian person’s mind: should i bother to make a big deal out of this? do i deserve to?
my skeptical hope is that years from now, we will say yes.
the ultimate saving grace of these events has been, for me, the ability to reconnect. not only within my own community, but outside of it. the last year has helped me to empathize with the black community unlike ever before. it’s became clear to me, in a renewed light, how much we owe to the black community for normalizing discussions of racial equality, and for teaching us the right ways to claim dignity, take up space, and have hard talks with those you love. it’s also made me realize the urgency of BLM, and that racial equality has to be achieved for everyone, not just my own. i urge any asian people reading this to use these events as a reflection period for themselves, and recognize that we are not the only ones in this fight.
