Rising Pride: Resistance Beyond Respectability

By: Fatema Haque & Ryan Barrett

“We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness in ways we never have before. We need to step up, help our neighbors, donate gear, vote, wear red white and blue, volunteer, fund aid organizations, and do everything in our power to accelerate the end of this crisis. We should show without a shadow of a doubt that we are Americans who will do our part for our country in this time of need. Demonstrate that we are part of the solution. We are not the virus, but we can be part of the cure.” - Andrew Yang in The Washington Post on April 1, 2020.

Since the first reported case of COVID-19 in the US two months ago, there has been a marked increase in anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. The CAA (Chinese for Affirmative Action) developed a reporting tool to #StopAAPIHate and received over 1,000 incident reports in the span of two weeks. Prior to this, the FBI issued a warning anticipating a surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans. These incidents have prompted a variety of responses from activists, advocates, and community members, including former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who called for Asian Americans to perform patriotism in order to prevent hate crimes.

We believe that messaging Asian Americans to be hyperpatriotic in order to be safe and free from hate is problematic, dangerous and harmful at any time, but especially so in a time of crisis and coming from a highly visible figure. Others have already spoken out about this, but we wanted to consider Yang’s message in the larger context of Asian American history and resistance and the resistance history of Black Americans. We believe that Black and Asian American histories and resistance movements are intertwined, and there is much we can learn from and build with each other. Mostly, we want to talk about how to unlearn the narratives that push us into the assumption that performative patriotism will save us. (Spoiler alert: it won’t.)

Ryan and I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, in a mixed Bangladeshi American and African American neighborhood, so we have had many conversations about race and Black/Asian solidarity. Ryan has also done years of organizing work in Detroit, contracted with the ACLU to facilitate race dialogues, and paired with friends to counteract gentrification. I have facilitated dialogues amongst Asian American women across Southeast Michigan as part of Rising Voices of Asian American Families, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the civic participation of Asian Americans in the state of Michigan. We are both coming to this from a long-standing history of thinking about and working towards Black & Asian solidarity, and facilitating race-based discourse. What follows is an edited version of our dialogue.

What is Andrew Yang saying and where is he coming from?

Ryan: What Andrew Yang is saying makes sense; lots of Black and brown people subscribe to respectability politics, the idea that if you show that you’re an American then people will see you as an American, when ultimately what’s happening to Chinese Americans and Asian Americans has nothing to do with being American. It has more to do with white supremacy and the implications of that. If you go back to Black Americans in the early 20th century, you’ll notice that a lot of our existence depended on the ability to code switch and the ability to seem more American, i.e., white. The Black American community has run the gamut of trying to fit as Americans, AKA white people. We’ve also had more time to figure out that it’s not for all of us; and we’ve had more time to maintain our culture while still being American, and also understanding that being American isn’t the real issue. The real issue is being other. What Andrew Yang is saying is that if you can show people that you’re not other, you won’t be harmed and you won’t be disrespected, and honestly, it’s just not true. There are so many groups that will show you that this isn’t true.

Fatema: I agree. Within the Asian American community, many have unsuccessfully attempted to demonstrate patriotism and respectability in order to prevent harm. After 9/11, many South Asian Americans put up American flags on their porches, wore red white and blue as Yang suggested, and it didn’t protect them. If you were visibly Muslim, if you had a beard, if you wore a hijab, even if you wore a turban because you’re Sikh and not Muslim, you were unsafe because people perceived you as brown and Muslim and other. And long before 9/11, there was the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Executive Order 9066 effectively forced Japanese Americans into incarceration, without evidence. Japanese Americans had to give up their businesses and livelihoods, their homes and their freedom. George Takei, who spent his childhood in these camps, describes in his book They Called Us Enemy how many Japanese Americans tried to prove their Americanness by playing baseball in the concentration camps and cooperating with the order, yet still lost years of their lives to unlawful, unjust incarceration. Conforming to some arbitrary standard of patriotism can’t and won’t protect people of color from racist attacks.

Ryan: Respectability is often a method to control the circumstances that you’re in, and I think a lot of it goes into our implicit belief in the goodness in white people, that if we can appeal to that sense of goodness in them, they’ll accept us, not understanding that what upholds the whole hierarchy is the fact that whiteness is at the top and everything else is at the bottom in a scale going down from brown to black.

Fatema: And you will never be white, no matter how much you try.

Ryan: Exactly. Andrew Yang is ultimately well-meaning. Respectability is something that’s taught to all of us as a way to protect ourselves. This is very different than in the Black community, though, because Black Americans are very firm about being Black, and this country has reinforced to us from our hair to our skin color that we are just other, we’re different, and in that way, we know that we are neither African nor American a hundred percent, but we are also both simultaneously. So, from the time we’ve been here, we’ve been evolving culture, creating a sense of self and identity that is neither our motherland nor the current land we’re in. Andrew Yang’s perspective seems to come from a view that you’re either Asian or you’re American. That’s taught to us in this assimilist nation, and what Yang is trying to do is protect people by giving them tools to stop themselves from being harmed, even though he doesn’t seem to have the foresight to know that this strategy won’t work. It’s ill-advised and demonstrates a lack of awareness of social context.

Fatema: In this piece, Yang describes experiencing a moment of othering: he’s in the parking lot of a grocery store and notices that there’s an accusatory tinge to how people are looking at him. He says he “felt self-conscious--even a bit ashamed--of being Asian.” So his immediate response is: How do I control this? How do I fix this? How do I shift this narrative? He turns to the dominant script: if he acts American enough, he won’t experience this type of othering. And honestly, assimilating or being hyper-patriotic probably helped him in the past. As an Asian American person who grew up in a predominantly Black community in Detroit, I had all the privileges afforded to me by the model minority script. Over and over again, I was told that I was better than those around me, I received greater leeway on things that my Black peers did not. Certain narratives about Black kids needing more disciplining, or them being not as well-behaved, or not as intelligent, were implicit in this space because I was told: you’re so well-behaved, you’re so likeable, we support you. It was never directly said that it was in comparison to Black kids, but it was definitely implied. I didn’t realize this back then, but I know now that this is how the model minority myth operates--these narratives are implicit and internalized, and Andrew Yang seems to have internalized this and is perpetuating it.

Ryan: Because Yang was in the model minority, he was able to control the narrative even as a young person experiencing racism and xenophobia. Being smart enough or being more American has helped him feel protected, but what happens when that model minority cloak is not on you, when you’re not protected? What is the next step? That’s the part he’s not seeing because he’s chosen to box the things he’s experienced. When you’re closer to oppressive structures in a way that can benefit you, you tend to box certain traumatic experiences in a way that can cause you less harm. In the telling of his experience with racial traumas, it was very much a narrative of how he got past it, not really diving into why it happened, not really holding the perpetrators accountable for persecuting him because of how he looked. When you’re in the model minority station, there’s a sense of pride. You are lauded for your work ethic, your intelligence; you are told that you are better than other groups, and that puts you in a place where you are defending your oppressors instead of holding them accountable.

Fatema: Yang’s statement is also classist and erases the experiences of the majority of Asian Americans. There’s great diversity in Asian American ethnicities, class, religion, and immigration status, and the model minority doesn’t apply to all Asian Americans. Working class folks, Muslims, refugees, etc. aren’t afforded the same privileges, and often experience racism and xenophobia more frequently. A lot of Bangladeshi American folks in Detroit and Hamtramck are Muslims, and after 9/11, they were caught in the racial and religious blowback. While the rest of America “united” after 9/11, Muslim Americans experienced 645 bias incidents in the first week alone.

Ryan: The Model Minority trope and accepting the ‘well-behaving minorities’ only works in times of really low stress because the minute there’s an elevation in this country or any significant event, we go back to the original default of othering and persecuting people. It’s important to know that even though you can get close to whiteness, unless you’re white, you’re never going to quite make it. We also have to consider the narrative that’s coming from this president, calling the Coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and crediting this to semantics because the first cases were in China. The President is using language to activate a very specific narrative in the same way that Sarah Palin talked about “the real Americans” and Trump campaigned on “Make America Great Again”. They are activating certain groups, signaling to them that whiteness is priority. Calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” isn’t about where it came from; it’s moreso attributing blame to a group of people. Being “more American” and “wearing red white and blue” is not going to protect you from the racism and vitriol that’s surfacing from this moment. Especially when you’re Asian, and specifically if you are Chinese, there will be no masking of your phenotypes. No amount of donating, no amount of providing aid will help, and brown people in this country provide aid every day, to everyone. When you look at the people who are being hardest hit with the virus, it’s brown people, the people in the front lines, in essential jobs. We are providing the aid already, so in that sense, a lot of Yang’s statements are in economic privilege where he has the ability to detach because he doesn’t have to go to an essential job every day, he doesn’t have to be in those situations where daily persecutions occur. He can control what schools his kids go to, and if something happens, he has the money to send them somewhere else.

Fatema: And if he doesn’t want to confront shoppers, he can have his groceries delivered.

Ryan: When you have the money, you have the ability to create lifestyles very differently and that very much affects your understanding of social context. I’m curious, is this type of messaging emblematic of something bigger, like are more people thinking this than Andrew Yang?

Fatema: Absolutely. As I described earlier, most of us are constantly affirmed as the model minority, and it’s been internalized by a lot of Asian Americans. In my parent’s generation, I heard things like keep your head down and you won’t be bothered, and younger folks who grew up here seem to fully buy into the myth and believe that if they are American enough, they’ll be safe. And like you said, that’s true until it isn’t, until we are forced into stressful situations.

Ryan: So, what’s the next step? What would be useful for all of us, especially Asian people right now, in stopping this type of messaging?

Fatema: Great questions, let’s talk resistance!

How to Resist and Unlearn Internalized White Supremacy

Learn your Asian American history.

Ryan: When it comes to Asian Americans, we are told to think of them as passive, but it’s important to know that there’s a significant history of Asian Americans resisting in this country, going back to mid-1800s when Asian Americans were lynched out west. This is not something we learn a lot about because American history tends to focus on the south and the north, leaving out the pacific west and the west, especially if we are talking about pre-antebellum times or immediate post-antebellum. Also, right after the Pearl Harbor bombing, there were lots of people who protested the internment camps; these protests often happened on college campuses. More recently with the murder of Vincent Chen, Chinese feminists organized protests and sought justice. There is a deep legacy of Asian American resistance in our country, and that’s important to know.

Fatema: Knowing these histories will help us challenge stereotypes and open us up to the possibilities of Asian American resistances.

Ryan: Exactly. As brown people, we need to lean on each other, reinforce strengths within ourselves and with each other because if Black people, Latin people, Asian people, etc. are united, if we’re sharing resources and information, then when these things happen, we can protect each other from the greater system that we know is not looking out for us.

Cultivate a deeper connection to your cultural identity.

Ryan: What I’ve learned from the history of Black American resistance is that the best offense is cultural pride within yourself, both as an individual and a group. When you have the pride of yourself as a Chinese American and as an Asian American, as a Black American, it’s harder to accept less from others. When you have a sense of pride for your culture, it’s harder to blame yourself for persecutions coming at you. Leaning into that culture is the best thing we can do, not only at times of crisis but every day. I don’t want to accuse Andrew Yang of not being proud of where he comes from, but I do think in some ways there has to be some elements of detachment or strategic detachment in order to put that kind of messaging out. I don’t think I could ever reasonably say to a group of people, hey, you need to act more American, talk less like how you talk, wear different things, wear your hair differently, but at the same time, my people have run the gamut of that for things like straightening your hair for work, changing our speech patterns, various attempts at assimilating. What we’ve collectively learned over the years is that the problem is not and will never be the fact that we’re not American; it’s that we’re other. So, the counteraction is to lean into the pride of your own culture and evolving your own culture. In America, is there a thriving space for Asian Americans that is neither the homeland or America? Is there a space for young people like age or younger who are looking to build community and enjoy their culture and also identify as American? Black Americans, we are a subculture, so I have a huge safety net of people and places and culture that I can always fall back on that is constantly counteracting these narratives about how awful it is to be Black in America. I hear it all the time, but at the end of the day, I have so much around me that says differently. It doesn’t and it’s not like depictions of Africans; it’s not depictions of white Americans; it’s depiction of Black Americans like me, my age or older or younger.

Fatema: I completely agree with you that cultivating a sense of connection and pride with your cultural and ethnic identity grants you more protection. More and more, I see those spaces being created by Asian Americans. They’ve existed in various pockets before, but they are more visible thanks to social media. In some ways, there’s a bit of a renaissance happening with Asian Americans producing art and music and writings. From personal experience, I know that knowing Asian American history, appreciating my Bangladeshi heritage, building community with other Asian folks, I am fortified. I feel our collective strength and in times of crisis, I have people to turn to, people who are going to understand where I’m coming from and what I’m feeling and not force me to defend or explain my position.

Unlearn model minority and other Asian American exceptionalism narratives.

Fatema: Unlearning the model minority narrative is crucial. You have to confront it within yourself. Ask yourself questions like, how does it feel to be told that you’re the best or you’re exceptional? Does this make you feel good? Why? Who do you think doesn’t deserve to feel exceptional because you are the exception? Who do you think deserves less? Who deserves more? I had to confront these types of questions because I was told that I’m the best in comparison to other people, and often implicitly to other races, my entire life. I had to go on a long unlearning journey in order to stop turning against other people of color, however implicitly. This is a good time for Asian Americans who have never confronted this within themselves to actually go in and do the deep learning work of acknowledging that they’ve subscribed to this exceptionalism narrative and to unsubscribe.

Ryan: Unlearning is the biggest learning curve. Being able to say, I have been complicit in this, I have internalized this, I’ve participated actively in this for my own benefit and here’s where it stops. Specifically, I’m thinking about how these prescribed hierarchies seem to naturally play out amongst brown groups. One of our biggest opportunities for growth and for self-protection as brown communities is to identify how we engage with each other, how we treat each other, how we commodify each other. It’s important to recognize your placement as Asian American because there is a hierarchy that puts you above Black Americans most of the time, and it’s time to step out of that false hierarchy. In many ways, Andrew Yang is telling people to play up the model minority, but the best option is to reject the model minority.

Extend kindness and compassion to people of color.

Fatema: A final action item would be to extend the same level of compassion and generosity to other Asian Americans (and people of color) as you do to the people perpetrating racist acts. Andrew Yang spends more than a paragraph on understanding the psyche of the person who did the racist thing, who made him feel uncomfortable. Yang talks about their feelings, where they might be coming from, what’s happening for them, and rationalizes their actions. He spends no time thinking about the Asian Americans who experience and resist these types of oppression every day, who say, “No, I will not stand for that,” and “Yes, I’m going to hold you accountable.” We need to start extending compassion to our own communities. It may be easier to tell our communities to check themselves, behave differently, etc. because we feel that we have power and influence over them, whereas we may feel powerless against oppressors, but policing other people of color isn’t the answer.

Ryan: I agree. Kindness for me has been so transformative as a Black person. It’s a realization I had years back, just growing up as a Black person in an inner city among other Black and brown people. A thing I didn’t receive or extend to other people in my group or my background often was kindness. There was an assumption of ill-intent, negativity, and that’s because that was what was projected onto the community. When I started to change my mental framework and operate from a space of kindness and compassion, it allowed me to see the best in the people around me and also see the real stuff that was going on in terms of oppressive systems coming into the community. Leaning on compassion, kindness, being aware, really doing the work of unlearning implicit biases and getting really real about your attachment to white supremacy is the way out. A lot of us don’t want to be honest with ourselves on how dependent we are on white supremacy for our own survival; but getting real with ourselves is so, so, so important. That can extend to dating practices, education, who we surround ourselves with, because that’s a big part of how we create meaning. It’s important to read authors of color, ingest artists of color. For me, Black art and Black history has always been a part of my life. I do recognize that I have friends who have come to this country from the Middle East or from Asia and other places in the world who have actively distanced themselves from their origin, so that content is not a part of their lives. But, moving forward, what’s important is that you do the unlearning, you do the work to bring it back into your world and make that your world. That’s the greatest form of resistance. From that framework, you’ll be able to hold people accountable, stop assuming the best of people that are doing harm to you.

Fatema: Unlearning is hard. You’re going to feel guilty, complicit, defensive. You’re going to reconsider the relationships in your life and some dramatic changes will come into your life. At the same time, there will be a greater sense of connection, rootedness, pride. It’s a level of dignity we are not afforded unless we take it for ourselves.

Ryan: Getting to a point of awareness and self-love is a luxury and you can only get there through doing the hard work yourself. No one else can give it to you. Doing the work is very hard; it feels very violent to yourself; it feels like it’ll pull you apart and it makes you feel. You’ll want to stop doing the work because it’ll make you think about friendships and you’ll probably lose friendships. This may seem off-topic to us in relation to Andrew Yang, but his statement feels like the absence of this self-work, which is why this work being done in individuals is so important, so you are not putting this kind of propaganda out into the world. What Andrew Yang has said is very harmful, and it’s emotionally harmed a lot of people in a very harmful time. I don’t think he even realizes what it would do to the sons he speaks about, what that teaches them, that they are essentially less. It’s hard work, but it’s our best defense against colonialism and respectability politics.

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