Solidarity is a goal, it is an action, and a choice.
African American civil rights movements demanding justice for police brutality, and an end to racism in our daily lives, have empowered so many other groups to speak up currently and throughout history. This is exactly what a social movement should do. I am descended from Black Wall Street and, adjacent to the neighborhood in the Greenwood District in Tulsa, was a Vietnamese community that interacted, and occasionally intermarried, with African American residents. The Asian American community has presently mobilized against racism in a way that is historically unprecedented.
Growing up in white, suburban Texas, some of my first friends in school were other ethnic children and teens, including Asian, African, and Latino peers. There have been numerous times in my life where the Asian men and women in the workplace or university setting were my strongest professional allies and confidants. As an independent artist, Asian business owners and families were some of the earliest, and most enthusiastic, supporters of of my craft.
The feeling of home was fostered while I lived overseas in moments where an Asian peer helped me in my times of need. When I learned that dogs were used in racist attacks against Asian students while I studied overseas, I searched how to stop a dog attack and carried supplies with me because I fully intended to intervene if I saw such an incident. Of course, there were daily instances overseas of me having to check white coworkers or peers who made racist remarks against Asians in my presence.
After years of relentless emotional abuse and financial strangulation from outright racism and performative activism, I have regretfully blacked-out and recklessly used the word ‘chink’ out of angry desperation towards bullies to demonstrate how their overtly racist actions and words made me feel. A ‘How would you like it?’ moment gone awry in a matter of seconds. I should not have let bullying and racism get the best of me and cause a divide with a community I greatly respect. I’m deeply sorry for it. No, I haven’t been ‘cancelled’ and I refuse to ever be! I’m just a responsible adult and mature enough to issue an apology for my words.
Solidarity is a goal, it is an action, and a choice. Everyday, I strive to be a better ally because true economic and emotional freedom cannot be gained without the cooperation and genuine kinship of people of color. My memory serves me well just as much as it haunts me and I want to recall moments where the dynamics between Asian and African American relations are extremely fragile in my life.
*Names have been omitted for privacy
My memory serves me well just as much as it haunts me, and I want to recall moments where the dynamics between Asian and African American relations were extremely fragile in my life.
As a child growing up in white suburbia, white peers would jeer that I must be Chinese because my eyes looked closed when I smiled. I figured I could possibly be Chinese and told them to stop! My mom told me I was not, in fact, Chinese. Apparently, this group of children did this to other African Americans at the time because, years later, an old friend told me the same story.
In high school, our journalism class went on a school trip to Houston and we had to sleep two to a bed. I shared a bed with my Indian friend because she was afraid the white girls would laugh at her since she smelled different. I told her I wouldn’t mind at all! Of course, the white girls would waddle up to me and gossip about my friend and I told them to leave her alone!
In high school, I took ballet classes and the Indian girl at my white, suburban studio was leaving. She told me I must stay and represent brown girls while I was ready to quit myself!
When I lived overseas, it was an Asian motel owner that rented me the safest lodging I experienced and warned me about white employment scams meant to trap ethnic people into servitude. Sure enough, when I got into a sticky situation with an employer as a live-in maid at a bed and breakfast, the Asian motel owner welcomed me back to his motel as a renter without judgement.
I have been told by several Asian peers that they do not experience even a fraction of the racism that I do and I have been left to fend for myself when enduring racism in the proximity of Asian peers.
Some of the most problematic and bigoted white people I’ve ever met have Asian spouses.
I have been told by a mixed race Asian coworker, whose European father got her the job without applying, that she preferred to be called white and that she had no connection to her maternal country of origin where her father met her mother in a remote village. But, she was still referenced by our employer when diversity was mentioned. Yes, this was a non-profit organization.
I have been in a dressing room owned by an Asian man overseas and when I emerged, he gave me a play-by-play of everything I did inside that room. He then told me to follow him into the back room. I left immediately. I believe I was a victim of a hidden camera.
I have been told by Asian tailors that my clothes were cheap and not even worth altering, and that I should leave. On other occasions, I have been told that the alterations could not be completed unless I changed in the dressing room or followed them into the back room. I refused in fear of a hidden camera.
I have been solicited for sex trafficking by an Indian woman in a public department store.
I have been verbally degraded by Asian estheticians about my body. On one occasion, the session ended with the ‘compliment’ that some of my facial features ‘seemed kind of white’ and I was asked what I was mixed with.
I have been denied employment by Asian restaurant owners because they said the neighborhood was high end and their white customers didn’t want someone like me handling their food. I have been denied the position of ballet teacher because I was told white students and parents wouldn’t want a Black ballet instructor.
I once communicated my circumstances to an Asian friend while I was going through a complicated hardship when we lived overseas. I said if she wanted to help, there were certain things I needed, but I would pay her for the assistance. She complied with the help I asked for and refused the money claiming I was her friend and it was a favor…then she proceeded to rank me as the lowest favorite friend she had compared to her white friends. She didn’t believe me when I said I experienced discrimination because of the locs I had at the time. She told me I was ‘acting niggardly’ because I did not text in a manner she liked. She also wrote me two very long emails degrading me which was a very bizarre experience.
I once stumbled upon a family blogger who was married to an Asian woman and used his children for content and paid sponsors. On his blog, he jokingly retold a story of his wife using the word ‘niggardly’ over and over. Luckily, this blog was deleted by administrators.
Every African American person I know who has been to an Asian country has experienced physically violent racism like beatings with a bike chain or pushes/punches/hitting walking down the street or on public transit while being stereotyped as a prostitute.
Violence against people of African descent studying, living, or visiting across Asia is a frequent nightmare, compounded with the harsh and demeaning treatment of darker skin Asians. Asian teens casually using the words ‘nigga’ and ‘nigger’ is running amuck and blackface is still common in Asian media.
I have known an African American in STEM that was verbally degraded by Indian peers. When they searched the translation for the foreign words frequently used about them, it meant monkey or dog.
In the media, African Americans are constantly dragged for the lack of admittance of Asian students at Ivy League universities using affirmative action as a weapon of blame. I have personally been heckled about affirmative action and my position in universities or jobs compared to Asians.
I was falsely accused by an infamous influencer of calling ALL Asian men gay simply because she didn’t like my comment on her blog.
I have watched Asian and Indian influencers on social media make a living degrading Black people or capitalizing off the current civil rights movement with little depth, sincerity, or long-term commitment.
I have been on dates with Asian and Indian men who openly expressed they’d rather marry a white woman or they were just trying to use me for bedroom purposes because of what they saw in the media about Black women. I have been on dates with men who openly expressed they prefer Asian women.
I have been questioned several times if I really drew my own artwork which ‘looks Asian’ or ‘like an Asian person drew it’ because I don’t look like I drew it. I have been questioned if Anime or Manga has been an influence because my own skill and imagination is simply not believed.
Update: I forgot about the time I went to a happy hour and a drunk Asian woman told me she was a high school teacher in NYC and her Black students were all lazy, probably prostitutes, and couldn’t pass standardized tests. I told her the students should be learning more practical skills with apprenticeships anyway. I said, ‘I doubt they are are all that troubled you are just stereotyping them’. I said, ‘I’m sure there are struggling students in your home country of Bangladesh too, you just left them behind in a country you barely know and one you’ll never visit anyway’. An Asian man sitting with us was more understanding and less drunk.
Update: I stayed in an Airbnb last year where an Asian woman told me she never rented to African American guests before, but she was surprised by how clean we actually were!
If you think I’m lying about these memories, please know that they replay in my mind like a nightmarish film on loop in vivid detail like the day they first happened. I’m trapped with them. It’s not my job to stop Asian hate, it’s a collective responsibility that more people need to actively participate in.
Stop Asian Hate in Every Direction.
Have a Pleasant Day
-Rae Pleasant
