Must Someone Die Before We’re Visible?: Myths and Hot Takes
2020 was bad, but looks like 2021 is getting off to a less than stellar start. On Jan. 6, we had an insurrection. From last March to this February, the Stop Asian American Pacific Island Hate organization recorded 3,795 attacks on Asian Americans, ranging from verbal abuse to refusal of service to outright physical violence, even to murder. Imagine a modest size church of close to 4,000 worshippers. That’s how many. Are we having fun yet? Not if you’re Asian in America.
Although Asian Americans have become more vocal in voicing their concern throughout the pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China, it took a shooting that left eight people dead to get some responses out of America. And boy, did we have some responses. While I don't consider social media true representation of reality, it does showcase some of our (worst) knee-jerk reactions in one (irresponsible) click. Let me address the two common responses I saw from (mostly) white social media influencers.
First, some plain deny this was a problem. Starting from the police reaction, the officer said that the man was having a “bad day.” If that man was having a bad day, I can’t imagine what kind of day his victims were having. So, does this mean next time I lock my keys in my car, I can go shoot up a specific ethnic group with a specific gender? Some of us find the “bad day” laughable, but as an Asian (or any person of color), we find zero humor in such predictable and formulaic humanization of just about any white mass shooter.
The fact is, we’ve been routinely humanizing our white terrorists for far too long in our country, but who are these women? We don’t know.
While dehumanizing anyone is wrong, soft-peddling a heinous crime as “a bad day” instantly dehumanizes the victims.
In the last four years, our country has elected, tolerated, and emboldened a leader whose loose cannon took aim at minorities and women. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, the same leader took specific aim at Asian Americans with his racist tropes. All the while, many white people enable his words by their denial of racist impact.
As an Asian American, I can testify to the fact that none of those racist tropes are new. I grew up hearing them from classmates and so-called friends back in Florida. The shocker is that we haven’t progressed. Many white people continue to deny our experience. So, when Asian Americans warned our society that something terrible was happening to us, everyone including the news media dismissed our claims, rendering our suffering invisible. Why does it take a mass shooting of our people to raise any kind of awareness? I laugh in bitter irony whenever a white person finds this surprising. This is the moment we tell you, “We told you so.”
Must someone die every time before we’re visible?
Words matter. Until our white citizens make an extra effort to treat non-whites as human beings, this pattern will persist.
Second, some influencers start getting on their moralizing high horse about the shooter’s sex addiction. Allegedly the shooter was shooting up the businesses to get rid of the source of his sexual temptation. One evangelical leader tweeted that perhaps race wasn’t the real cause and that we’re all jumping on the “hot take” bandwagon of racism without evidence.
He is wrong, but maybe in a much worse way than he realizes. How many of my readers reading this has the first reaction of “These women were sex workers”? Be honest! What if all masseuses were white males? I don’t think you’d have the same reaction. Therein lies the problem. The sex addiction excuse of the shooter highlights a revolting kind of gendered racism that plagues Asian women. If your first reaction was that the masseuses were sex workers, your view of Asian women fits the vile fetishization of Asian women whose lot in life is for the non-Asian man’s gaze and pleasure. Otherwise, why would anyone automatically assume that they were sex workers? Anyone, man or woman, who thinks these Asian women are sex workers has consciously or subconsciously bought into the sexual stereotype of Asian women. That line of thinking is racist because it’s directed at a specific race.
Now, let’s move on to suppose that some of them were sex workers. Before we cast any judgment about that profession, perhaps we should figure out how they got there instead of condemning them. When hearing some of the Christian conversations about sex workers, I often ask a simple question, “What would Jesus have done?” Most likely, Jesus would’ve done the opposite of the way we portray and talk about such women. If they’re human, they deserve protection rather than abuse.
Our entire worldview should move beyond narrow, respectable, and moralistic ethics. God loves sinners, us included.
Words matter. Our worldview equally matters. Unless our non-Asian citizens change their thinking, what happened in Atlanta will repeat.
Having read the above, if you’re a white Christian who is curious about what you can do, here are some steps you can take.
Start with reading Asian-American history and make Asian American friends (See E.g. Gary Okihiro, American History Unbound (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 2015). If you read Asian American history, you’ll soon figure out how U.S. policies in a large part caused sexual slavery and human trafficking of Chinese women. Next time an Asian American (or any other person of color) tells you that something bad could happen, start by listening and then take action to eliminate the cause before it’s too late. Listen to and learn from their experience without throwing your opinions around.
“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me”? Bullsh-t! Words are what cause sticks and stones and empty bullet casings. The failure of recognizing the cause and only coping with the symptom will continue the vicious cycle. The last four years cultivated the linguistic hotbed for this deadly moment. Take care how you talk.
