why are people still doing the whole “well these asian people from this asian country arent offended by [racist thing] so you, an asian american, shouldnt be offended” like maybe, perhaps, mayhaps, people experience racism differently and in different contexts when they, idk, live in different fucking countries
so there was a shooting that happened at 3 spas in Atlanta that killed 8 people, six of which were asian women. the articles i was going to link had pictures of the shooter, which i am not going to spread, but this can be easily validated with a google search.
the shooting in Atlanta of 8 massage parlour workers by a white man was a white supremacist hate crime and the latest in a series of attacks on Asians in the US. however, it’s also extremely important to note that the group he targeted are a community that is already more vulnerable to state violence than many, in form of police raids, deportations, and systematised stigmatisation. this is an industry that’s often conflated with and overlapping with sex work, and the industry has faced decades of criminalisation and dehumanisation, with a long history of being targeted by cops and systemic injustice along with racialised misogyny and fetishisation. they are also often excluded from conversations about the latest rise of anti-asian racism in the US, since many do not fulfill the “american” part of asian-american.
if can donate, also consider donating to red canary song,butterfly, and swan, grassroots organisations and activists that fight for migrant and labour justice for migrant workers and sex workers.
Asian Americans have always occupied a unique place in the American racial sphere. We are never considered white by white Americans and often our position as marginalized is contested by other people of color. A lot of this is due to our ‘invisibility’ as a group which has both helped and harmed our community and given rise to the ‘model minority myth’ that stereotypes the entire asian community (which accounts for East, South East, and Pacific Islander groups) based on the success of the relative few.
It’s crucial that in this time we recognize how this myth has gone on to divide us as a community from other minority groups and realize that the root of these injustices comes from nothing else except the continuing value of white supremacy.
In the wake of these attacks on the AAPI community, please donate to any anti AAPI Racism groups, but if you cannot, it is just as important that you educate yourselves on AAPI racism and bias because for so long our problems have been written off as “trivial,” “not enough,” or simply unseen. Hating Asians and spitting slurs and objectifying comments is too commonplace and is laughed off as a part of media culture. It needs to be taken seriously.
The reality is we are all victims of the racial hierarchy and the unchecked fetishization, violence, and ignorance to Asian American issues has culminated into what we see today.
Here are some articles I strongly recommend reading through as a very brief start to your education. If you can’t read them all, that’s fine but please at least read one!
(15 min read) National Geographic: “America’s long history of scapegoating its Asian citizens.” Emphasizes how different Asian communities have been impacted by America’s history of Anti-Asian scapegoating, blaming, and how we have never been accepted by White America. (note: it says u gotta put an email to subscribe, i literally just mispelled something random and the pop up went away so please don’t let that dissuade you): (link)
(5 min read) PBS: “The long history of racism against Asian Americans in the U.S.” Goes into the history of the model minority myth and how Asian immigrants have been weaponized against the Black community and even other Asians by White Americans even while being continuously discriminated against: (link)
(3 min read) Women’s Media Center: “How The Fetishization of Asian Women Leads to Violence.” I cannot emphasize enough how sick I am of Asian women’s fetishization being written off as a preference without impact when googling them literally just links me to hundreds of violent porn sites: (link)
(5 min read) The Cool Bears: “’Yellow Fever’: The Fetishization of Asian Women.” Similar to the previous articles but it identifies how this fetishization manifests in day to day humor and conversation: (link)
(7 min read) CNN: “The History of Attacks against Asian Americans is Complicated. Addressing it will be too.” Not my favored news source but a good overview of the Asian American community’s generational attitude change towards discussing racism: (link)
If anyone has any other resources to add, or if any of these sources contain misinformation I have not caught, other asians please feel free to add on and correct.
note: for those looking for donation links, thispost has an extensive google doc containing AAPI organizations for many different states as well as caards and funds.
The specific intersection of gender, class, and immigrant status needs to be addressed in the #StopAsianHate movement. It is beyond disingenuous to aggregate “anti-Asian” hate that does not account for these statues because it erases the most marginalized Asian women who are dark-skinned, impoverished, immigrants, elders, trans, and sex workers. Don’t overlook the fact that a majority of the attacks have been against Asian women.
What happened in Atlanta happens daily to Asian & migrant women who work in massage parlors (which can sometimes front as sex work). Massage therapists face a combined assault of hypersexualization, abuse, racism, and misogyny.
Please consider boosting smaller mutual aid funds and grassroots organizations over the big #AAPI organizations. These large organizations are usually too broad and often don’t use the money as well.
Here is an ongoing thread of anti-carceral, migrant, sex worker, reproductive justice and other Asian organizations to support instead.
Red Canary Song: grassroots collective that supports Asian & migrant sex workers, organizing transnationally
Butterfly: provides support, education and information to Asian & migrant sex workers
Swan Vancouver: supports Asian migrant women workers fleeing violence & exploitation
ok so this has been bothering me for like the longest time so sit down and please stop appropriating japanese culture. u may not realize ur doing it, so just take a second to listen. if any other japanese wanna add on to this post, feel free to do so. if u are not japanese, please do not try to defend ur ignorance or racism, rather listen and change ur behavior.
stop saying the word “jap” as a substitute for japanese. jap is a racial slur that was popularized in america after pearl harbor and all through the japanese internment. it’s not a shortened version of the word japanese like brits are to british. we are japanese, not japs.
acknowledge japanese imperialism. do not defend it. what the japanese did in ww2 was horrible, so make sure u know about it and use that knowledge to think critically about any japanese media u may consume.
stop japancore. japan is a country with a deep culture. my culture is not ur aesthetic.
on the same note of japancore, do not use shinto shrines as part of ur moodbaord. that is a religion still practiced to this day in japan. it’s not ur aesthetic. also realize that shintoism has been used as means to empower the emperor during japanese imperialism in ww2. they forced people into that religion and locked up those who didn’t comply. (it’s ok if u practice it ofc, just research and know what u are following)
again with moodboards, this is slightly more forgivable, but please don’t use japanese language for ur aesthetic. while i encourage anyone who wants to learn it to try and learn it, it’s not there for ur aesthetic. i can explain more on this if anyone would like, but i’ll just leave it at that for now.
do not self id as a weeb. being a weeb is incredibly harmful, as it dismisses many of the horrible things japan has done to asia. please read this post for more.
please do not support hetalia or aot. hetalia sort of glorifies japanese imperialism as well as nazism and makes it into this cutesy lil thing that makes u go “awww ” at ww2. aot has antisemitic themes within it and again glorifies japanese imperialism.
if u are going thru with a name change, do not choose a japanese name that u found online after a google search. names in japan are more than just names, there’s a whole process that involves it that is dependent on ur time of birth as well as stroke count for the written name. additionally, it further appropriates the culture when a non japanese person uses a japanese name simply bc they found it cute. this also applies to online aliases. a name from ur own culture or language is good enough.
do not fetishize us. this goes for every culture and race but just stop. we are not “babies” and we are not here for ur entertainment. we are people too.
do not say “i wish i was japanese.” don’t say that for any culture at all unless u are also prepared to face the years of oppression and racism that comes with it.
do not say we have privilege simply because japanese tend to have lighter skin to other poc. this can be said about many east asians countries as well. asia isn’t just pale skin, it comes in a multitude of shades as well as cultures from other countries. we do not have privilege because we do not benefit from the system like white people do.
i’m just done with racism going unnoticed because of ignorance. if u did/do any of these things, whatever. just realize how ur behavior has added to japanese racism and learn from it. further, please help stop anti-asian violence. i live near where an attack was done to an elder. please use these links to help asian lives.
It’s pretty interesting how the “top post” in the “Fire Island” tags is a gifset featuring a secondary white guy. I should remind you that “Fire Island” is movie about gay “Pride and Prejudice” romance between two Asian male leads written and directed by Asian men, a movie that points out how Asian men face discrimination and racism within the community…
Granted the movie just came out yesterday, the situation may change, but still. People out here watched this movie and thought that a secondary white guy is the hottest thing that should be centered above the two Asian leads.
(for the record this post is about the pattern in fandom that exists)
Not only do Asian Americans worry about surviving the virus, we also fear for our lives. Our loved ones are experiencing skyrocketing levels of unchecked hate and violence – over 100 hundred hate crimes a day. This violence is the latest iteration of Yellow Peril. It is a form of white supremacist settler nationalism that the U.S. pioneered to peddle racial fear and justify endless global war and the exploitation and expulsion of what they perceive as diseased and enemy Asians.
What we are experiencing in 2020 is tied to the violence of the mid-1800s when Chinese immigrants were targeted while risking their lives to lay railroad tracks. As a result of white suspicion and fear, the US passed racial bans on immigration and naturalization in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This law created a new gold standard in settler states and made Yellow Peril a core element of US national identity.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic fit the ready-made story of Yellow Peril in the US. Racist responses to the spread of the disease are consistent with a history of treating Asians as a foreign threat. Part of undoing the power of Yellow Peril is confronting the history of empire, capitalism, and white supremacy and building a vision of peace, justice, and health which celebrates and honors our interdependence.
Unmasking Yellow Peril is a collaboration between 18 Million Rising, the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at UConn, and Jason Oliver Chang, Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at UConn. We seek to ground ourselves in the long history of Yellow Peril, uncover its many forms, and resist it in the time of COVID-19.
Yellow Peril has been here for more than a century, it’s time to unmask it.
During the pandemic, anti-Asian hate and COVID-19 disinformation are putting lives at risk. Coronavirus opportunists are using the internet to spread their dangerous lies and fuel xenophobic and racist violence.
Asian Americans are being blamed for spreading COVID-19, particularly those of us who are of East Asian descent. Asian Americans are now experiencing over 100 hate crimes per day related to the virus.
Millions of people are sheltering in place and dependent on social media for up-to-date, truthful information about how to keep themselves safe. It’s urgent that social media companies crack down on the hate and disinformation spreading across their platforms.
You’re invited to ANTIDOTES 4 YELLOW PERIL! From Filipino nurses on the COVID-19 frontlines, to Chinatown businesses closing due to xenophobia, Asian Americans are challenged to heal and be the freedom fighters our communities need right now. That’s why we’re teaming up with Spenta Kandawalla of Jaadu Acupuncture and co-founder of generative somatics to bring you a virtual healing practice space, in the time of pandemic and Yellow Peril.
The event, on April 25 at 1 pm ET, is FREE with sliding scale donations and open to all. Register here.
Participants will be guided through somatic practices and learn how Traditional Chinese Medicine can build our resilience and immunity.
Accessibility: ✿ We will have ASL interpretation for the event. ✿ The practitioner will share adaptations to each somatic practice to meet participants’ diverse physical needs. ✿ Participants who register will have unlimited replay access to the event, even if they do not attend it live. ✿ Unfortunately, we are unable to provide live closed captioning.
“Why don’t you guys just get the fuck over it ” - Becky voice .
“Why are you resisting ? Be peaceful .”
Don’t ever let this post die . *Good history Twitter pg to follow *
“It was a long time ago get over it” Jim voice.. Cough, only 54 years ago for Kenya , 55 years for Jamaica, 70 years ago for India, 50 years ago Aboriginal people weren’t counted as people, they were under the Flora and Fauna Act…
Not to mention the aboriginal stolen generation where children were literally taken from their families and given to white families to “assimilate” them and it’s still terrible the gap between white Australians and indigenous Australians.
Because we dont talk enough about this in the UK, especially not in schools. It is, at best, glossed over if mentioned at all.
I’m a British Asian and not a single bit of this is taught in the UK at any educational level.
Fucking bizarre watching people try to eject Russians from whiteness in real time
This is what colonized people have always been saying. Whiteness is an ontological category created to justify which part of the power hierarchy you are allowed to occupy in the sphere of western imperialist domination. It defines the proximity to the colonial halls of power. It has always been fluid until recently and it will remain fluid to resist as the power restructures.
Ukrainians are included doesn’t mean they matter. They are useful pawns for now geopolitically and bodies of labour to exploit. So they stay higher in the hierarchy for now.
The orientalizing of Russia also shows the extent to which “Europe” and “Asia” are ideological/discursive categories and not actual geographical boundaries (because if we’re being honest Europe is a large peninsula in northwest Asia). The boundary between “Europe” and “Asia” is constantly in flux and dependent on the geopolitical conditions of the day. Another example of this is the insistence by media and journalists this is the “largest conflict in Europe since WW2”, effectively brainholing the wars in former Yugoslavia because it’s no longer geopolitically useful to categorize the Balkans as “Europe.”
The complete amnesia it seems like all my fellow Americans have about the Yugoslavian ethnic wars blows my mind.
Y’know, this reminds me of the time when Amandla Stenburg was cast to play Ru in The Hunger Games and she received racist backlash from young people, people younger than me, even for being black when the character Ru, herself was described as being dark-skinned. This reminds me of that situation because it highlights how embarrassingly ignorant some people can be. The Billboard Music Awards allow people from all over the world to vote for who they want to win. BTS was one of the candidates so it’s not like anyone should be surprised that there was a possibility of them winning. Also, if these people think that they know all about pop culture and pop artists and they only listen to American pop music then they are severely behind the times. K-pop has been rising to popularity for the past 2 decades. From Seo Taiji and Boys changing the face of Korean music forever, to DBSK becoming one of the top pop acts in a country foreign to theirs (Japan), PSY breaking the record for most YouTube views in history and now BTS dominating a western music award, k-pop is quickly taking over the pop music world. ARMYs, the BTS fanbase is global. And according to actual Koreans, k-pop is more popular outside of the country than in. So when you factor in the fans in South Korea, North America, South America, The UK, The Middle East, Japan and everywhere else in the world. By the vote, it’s clear that there are more k-pop fans in the world than there are Justin Beiber or Selena Gomez fans. We’re everywhere. I run into k-pop fans all the time here in NYC.
Let’s also talk about the racism. Is the stereotype that Asian men are only good at academics and that they’re not attractive still so pervasive that they are shocked that people consider this Asian boy group to be the top pop act in the world? These men undoubtably have talent and millions of fans around the world find them to be very attractive to the point where they’re obsessed with them. There’s a thing in Hallyu culture called “biases” where people choose who their favorite member of a group is mostly based on their looks. With younger people, we’re so very far removed from the times where Asian men were being portrayed as monsters on propaganda posters during WWII. Or are we? People didn’t see Asians, particularly Japanese citizens as human and because of this, Japanese American citizens were forced into internment camps. In movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and16 Candles, Asians are portrayed as being ugly, clownish, the foreigner and obnoxious. And it is shameful to say that that is still how some young people feel about about Asian men. It’s even more shameful that older generations viewed Asians that way and now because of the way they misrepresented and underrepresented Asians in films and on TV, that this is how the young people who have attacked BTS online view Asians. They could never imagine in a million years that Asians can sing, dance and that they are desirable to anyone. They can never imagine a young Asian boy becoming the next Justin Beiber because they don’t see Asians as talented well-rounded people. All they see is this:
So all the racist Justin Beiber, Selena Gomez and Shawn Mendez fans out there who are pissed that they lost to the so-called “Asian fucks” as you monsters called them, you’re just as bad as the people who view Asians as the images shown above. And I know that you guys don’t care if what you said is racist or maybe you don’t even think that what you said is racist, you all need to get the fuck over it. Asians are dominating pop culture and other sectors of society.
Asians need more positive representation in all parts of pop culture so that these inhuman racists aren’t surprised when they learn that the top pop act in the world is an Asian pop group. Especially in the midst of all the white-washing in Hollywood, this is desperately needed.
And one more thing… if you’re sitting there going well, race has nothing to do with this or this isn’t a big deal…if Justin Beiber would have won the Billboard music award, I bet you anything, Asians and k-pop fans would not be coming out of the wood-work calling Justin Beiber “white trash,” a “honky” or any other anti-white slurs, they wouldn’t be saying “where the hell did this white kid come from?” (Because y’know, Justin Beiber is as foreign to South Korea as BTS is to America yet they have both performed in each other’s countries. You also don’t see Korean fans saying that he doesn’t deserve to win because he’s shown to be ignorant about Korean history and doesn’t care about Koreans. If South Koreans and k-pop fans had such a backlash against these North American pop-stars, it would make headline news. But since the backlash is against an Asian group, not many people here in the US seem to care.
Lets squash this anti-Asian racism, people. It wasn’t acceptable during WWII and it sure as hell isn’t acceptable now.
It started when I was in kindergarten, and I was so proud I did not have to go to Bingo class, unlike my friends, because I could speak good English -
although I had no idea what a yellow dog that could spell had anything to do with Chinese.
(I figure out now that it was probably called Bilingual class)
I am lucky. I speak the fluent, accentless English of newscasters, the dialect spoken by the children of immigrants, that we learned not from our parents but rather from watching Sesame Street and other things on tv.
Last year, a white facebook friend of mine posted, “In order to celebrate Chinese New Year, me talk rike chinese man arr day.”
And then told me that she was “sorry I was offended” and “she didn’t mean anything by it” when I (nicely, sweetly) told her that that shit was not okay. She said that she saw it the same as doing an accent, like Irish. Or British. Or Italian. (for bonus points, she even said that she has lots of Asian co-workers and friends, and LOVES Asian people, and so is not a racist.)
And when one of my white friends gets drunk, he thinks his “Asian accent” is hilarious.
And I was told by a coworker about the time my Asian coworker mispronounced “Barroway” as “Bwawwoway” and how hilarious it was.
Here’s the thing - can you guess how many Asian people I know who actually say
me rikey
me from _____
me so solly
(or, if you like, the fetishized versions: me so horny, me love you long time)
if you said ZERO, then ding ding ding! Congratulations, you have working brain cells.
No, my misguided fb friend, the “Asian accent” is not an actual imitation of an accent, comparable to your bad British/Irish/Italian - but rather a mockery of Asian people and their supposed inability to speak English. It is the perpetuation of the image of Asian people as perpetual foreigners in America.
Like that time when my family was at an Italian restaurant, and we were speaking to my father in Cantonese, and a drunken white lady said very loudly, “GOD when you come to this country at least learn the language!”
Or when my father was pulled over for speeding, and although he said “what’s the problem, officer?” the first thing the state trooper said was, “Do you speak English?”
Your fake “Asian accents” are not harmless and silly, because at the root of the joke, it says - you, you are stupid. You cannot speak English. You are Other. You do not belong.
my parents have been in this country for 30 years. They have been American citizens for 30 years.
And they are very self-conscious of their imperfect English, afraid that it makes them look ignorant, knowing that it marks them as immigrants. That, after 30 years, you can still be told (in not so many words) that you do not belong.
The Cultural Revolution started in China when my father was 13. He was pulled out of school and, later, sent to work in the fields. (He escaped to Hong Kong when he was 18, but that is another story for another time.)
When my father came to this country, he had a middle school education and did not speak a lick of English. He worked as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant, the evening shift that ran until 3 or 4 in the morning, and went to school during the day.
It took my father ten years to earn his bachelor’s degree. He is now an engineer.
Is this not your “American Dream?”
When my mother came to this country, she spoke very little English. She got a job as an entry level clerk. Over the years she earned one promotion after another. She is now management at a large federal agency, and manages funds for the whole state.
Is this not your “American Dream?”
And my father didn’t understand why his coworkers said, “flied lice, flied lice!” to him over and over and laughed.
And my father is still afraid to speak in a professional setting, even when he has ideas.
And my mother still checks and double checks her professional e-mails with me, for fear of mockery from the same people she manages.
And people don’t understand why I can’t take a harmless joke. Why I don’t think that shit is funny.
No, I don’t “rikey.”
No, I won’t “love you long time.”
And no, I’m not sorry.
So, please, kindly - FUCK OFF.
Reblogging this for, like, the fiftieth time because it has never stopped being relevant to my life and it always, always breaks my heart.
It’s not funny. It’s not okay. It’s not harmless. It’s alienating and hurtful.
There’s a PR push to celebrate the new romance between Chelsea Handler and Filipino American comedian Jo Koy. But Handler has a history of being racist and using her dating life with men of color as a shield from facing repercussions—and Koy seems happy to let her do it again.
Handler used this tactic in the Black community. Her response to backlash was to create content that talks around her racism without truly addressing it—and still profit from it. Ironically her “acknowledgement” of anti-Black racism is how I got exposed to her anti-Asian racism.
In 2016’s Chelsea Does Racism, Handler claims to be “egalitarian” with her jokes about race. But it’s clear she’s made choices on which groups to appear empathetic to and which groups she feels safe to dismiss with a laugh—such as Asian men. And she’s unapologetic about it.
Fast forward to Handler and Koy’s media tour touting themselves as a power couple. This matters because Jo Koy is currently being celebrated as major Fil-Am rep with his soon-to-be released studio film, Easter Sunday. Proudly pairing with an anti-Asian racist sends a message.
Jo Koy was not only the most frequent guest on her past show over the years (meaning he knows who she is), but invited her to play a role in Easter Sunday. This serves to rehabilitate her image, bring her into Fil-Am/AsAm spaces and let her profit from it.
Handler’s recent IG video says it all: She wants a Kardashian empire, where Filipinos are swapped in for Black people as accessories to her whiteness. She’s talking like a textbook sexpat yet repeatedly describes Filipinos and Black people as infiltrators.
Jo Koy’s decision to partner with Handler makes more sense knowing he’s guilty of peddling anti-Asian stereotypes too. In one special, Koy publicly body shames his son—ignoring his pleas not to. This is the same special that got Steven Spielberg to greenlight Easter Sunday.
You can guess the elevator pitch for Easter Sunday: “Think Crazy Rich Asians, but take out the rich so they’re just crazy.” White-mixed Asians like Jo Koy are granted more humanity than monoracial Fil-Ams due to the legacy of colonization, and Koy seems to be leaning into that.
For ex, AsAm Chloe Bennet—who’s half-white like Jo Koy—proudly defended Logan Paul after he mocked and exploited a dead Japanese man. Yet Bennet is centered in campaigns about anti-Asian hate. Asians who hurt their community aren’t punished by white Hollywood—they’re rewarded.
Back to the film Easter Sunday, there are no Fil-Ams credited on the creative team. I’m all for pan-Asian progress, but not at the expense of specific ethnic groups. It’s the first studio film to center on a Filipino American family. This pattern of erasing Fil-Ams in AsAm spaces needs to stop too.
Overall, Easter Sunday is supposed to be a “first,” but with so much racism embedded in its creation, I don’t feel like celebrating. The idea of seeing either Jo Koy or Chelsea Handler on a red carpet for a major Fil-Am milestone is awful. It’s a win for them—not us.
Happy#AAPIHeritageMonth! This self-care kit for Asian Americans applies all year round (and maybe even for years to come).
The post in this link analyzes how Asian men are being hidden in anti-Asian hate crime data. It’s unbelievable that this is even happening and allowed to continue.
Thisnext post analyzes how journalists are part of the problem (including Asian journalists who uphold and defend racist white-controlled platforms/institutions).
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
Western media downplays anti-Asian racism and manipulates narratives about it in order to reinforce the Model Minority Myth, the Asian gender divide, and geopolitical tensions in Asia.
Even in so-called progressive outlets, U.S. media invokes Orientalism and even gendered depictions of Asian countries to create a contrast: Evil Misogynist Asia vs. Benevolent White Male West. The goal is to dehumanize Asians, deify whiteness, and justify warmongering against Asia.
Whenever diasporic Asians are harmed by racist violence, U.S. media takes one of three approaches: 1) ignoring the incident, 2) reporting on the incident but erasing the Asianness of victims, or 3) reporting on the incident but questioning whether it’s really racism to blame.
To ensure AsAms don’t work together to push back against this, U.S. policies and propaganda create a gender divide. The 1942-1943 Mixed Marriage Policy ranks Asians, with monoracial Asian men the least valuable and most threatening. This ranking still exists.
Four years ago, I made a sincere effort to help heal this gender divide by pointing out how all AsAms were hurting and at risk of falling into a cycle of retribution. Instead of taking accountability, AsAms in power targeted, harassed and blacklisted me.
I—along with anyone else who dared to speak up—was repeatedly scolded with the refrain that the harm Asian men experience is not meaningful. Yet looking at the recent data and media narratives about anti-Asian hate crimes, we now have damning evidence of how untrue that is.
In my previous post, I did an in-depth analysis of anti-Asian hate crimes and the role of Stop AAPI Hate as a primary source of data collection. Now I want to talk about how journalists—especially AsAms—have skewed this data into a violently racist narrative.
After the Atlanta shootings, the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) shaped the media narrative about Atlanta and anti-Asian hate crimes in general. The problem is that they relied on Stop AAPI Hate data—which over-prioritizes East Asian women over other AAPI victims.
There’s more than sufficient evidence from trustworthy sources like AAPI Data to show Asian men are as likely to be victims of hate crimes as Asian women and also more likely to experience physical assault. So why isn’t AAJA promoting this narrative?
One look at the governing boards of AAJA says a lot. For an organization that is supposed to promote inclusivity of Asian voices in media, there aren’t many Asian men represented. Not only that, but there are more white men than actual Asian men seated in the Asia division.
This erasure of Asian men in anti-Asian hate crime narratives is eerily similar to what happened with my comic Reconciliasian and how Asians in power erased Asian men back then too. Seeing AAJA’s guidance on the Atlanta shootings provides new insight.
What I thought was a fringe mindset among a handful of AsAm journalists was actually a product of top-down marching orders sent out to all AsAm journalists, which then gets disseminated as the mainstream narrative. This intentional erasure of Asian men is racist and violent.
It’s ironic that AsAm leaders push for restorative justice for anti-Asian hate crimes—which emphasizes communication between the perpetrator and victim—yet none of them has owned up to how much harm they’ve caused with their bias. Whenever they’re caught, they just go quiet.
That’s the part of the betrayal that hurts the most. Violent perpetrators of anti-Asian hate crimes get more sensitivity than actual Asian male victims of hate crimes. I can’t even put into words how heartbroken and angry I am to see this racist abuse play out again and again.
The lack of empathy towards Asian men is so normalized in media narratives that it’s not even questioned. Here’s a person who lost his mom to a violent hate crime, yet an AsAm journalist felt the need to imply he should feel shame—which is so inappropriate to ask of anyone.
The point of these posts isn’t to say East Asian women or AAPI women in general shouldn’t get attention and resources. It’s to correct the harm of AsAm leaders erasing Asian men, and to make sure all AAPI can get meaningful victim support, resources, and media attention.
But I’m not holding my breath. This requires big changes—including giving Asian men like me a voice—and so far, Asian American leaders have demonstrated strong resistance to holding themselves and their friends accountable. They profit off the harm, and want to continue doing so.
So I anticipate they’ll do what they’ll usually do. Quietly lurk on my posts, steal the content, & then speak over me and other people they’ve harmed in order to portray themselves as the heroes who came in to save the day. With fellow AsAms like these, who needs enemies?
The mainstream media narrative about anti-Asian hate crimes consistently erases Asian men as victims. So when AAPI Data—a well-known source of reputable stats—acknowledged this issue in March, I felt validated for the first time, and decided to find out what went wrong.
Is the erasure of Asian men in anti-Asian hate crime narratives occurring during data collection, analysis, or interpretation by mainstream media? The answer is that deep-seated bias against Asian men is present at all three levels of the process, causing harm along the way.
The reports I read came from a variety of sources: AAPI Data (national surveys), Stop AAPI Hate (community reporting), hate crime statistics (national law enforcement data), and articles and reports from Asian academics and journalists. I focused on these four reports in particular.
Here’s what I found. National survey data (AAPI Data) is considered more reliable than community reporting (Stop AAPI Hate), yet mainstream Asian-led media has relied heavily on Stop AAPI Hate data. Which might not be so bad—if Stop AAPI Hate didn’t show several signs of bias.
Stop AAPI Hate has pushed a media narrative that East Asian women are at the highest risk of physical assault. Yet their most recent national report and survey of AAPI women show that Asian men, enbies, and South Asian women are the most likely to experience physical assault.
Stop AAPI Hate has also pushed the narrative that Asian women are uniquely targeted because of their gender. Yet in both their national report and survey of AAPI women, victims of all genders overwhelmingly attribute these hate incidents to race & ethnicity, not gender.
The omission of Asian men from the narrative of anti-Asian hate crimes is more glaring when Dr. Janelle Wong’s report shows that there’s evidence—even before 2021—that Asian men report violent incidents more often, self-report to community organizations less, and get less media coverage.
It seems Stop AAPI Hate suffers from two major problems: 1) it ignores important patterns in its own data if it doesn’t validate a narrative centering East Asian women, which 2) suggests a biased over-prioritization of EA women in outreach efforts—which impacts self-reporting.
Additionally, Stop AAPI Hate doesn’t collect race data on perpetrators of anti-Asian hate crimes. Its vague language and ambiguous framework of restorative justice & education seems to favor the perpetrators’ needs more than the needs of actual AAPI victims—which is concerning.
Restorative justice is well-intentioned but has major flaws, including the assumption that the victim has enough English proficiency to understand procedures and communicate their needs. Given what we know about many AAPI victims, this assumption is dangerous and can cause harm.
Anti-Asian hate crimes are vastly under-reported in national law enforcement stats because AAPI feel the least comfortable in reporting them and, like in Atlanta, law enforcement routinely downplays anti-Asian racism due to white supremacist apathy and the Model Minority Myth.
AAPI victims worry about drawing attention to themselves in reporting hate incidents, so they may feel pressured to rush through restorative justice procedures or acquiesce to whatever is proposed, regardless of whether they agree. This defeats the purpose of empowering them.
Also, national hate crime stats show 75% of perpetrators of anti-Asian hate crimes are white, 25% non-white. So why is restorative justice, an approach meant to protect POC from disproportionate levels of judicial punishment, being applied in a one-size-fits-all approach?
To understand why this is harmful, let’s consider the Atlanta shooter. The AAPI community had to fight loudly to overcome the racist narrative that he had a sex addiction and “had a bad day.” According to Stop AAPI Hate, should we drop all charges and just get him in a classroom?
Overall, vague restorative justice procedures could end up reinforcing the status quo that already exists: perpetrators don’t face appropriate consequences and AAPI victims are disempowered. AAPI deserve full transparency on what restorative justice looks like—upfront.
This doesn’t mean Stop AAPI Hate’s work is useless. But the severe de-prioritization of Asian men raises red flags on what the organization’s purpose is and how much bias is corrupting its work. It means that Asian men are being double victimized—and by our own community no less.
So until Stop AAPI Hate publicly acknowledges the harm it’s caused in its erasure of Asian men, improves its methodology and analysis, and centers victims completely, it shouldn’t be relied on as a primary data source to shape the media narrative about anti-Asian hate crimes.
In this post, I focused mostly on the data and analysis of anti-Asian hate crimes, and Stop AAPI Hate’s role as a primary source. In my next post, I’ll focus on journalism and the mainstream media messaging about anti-Asian hate crimes that gets produced from this data.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
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Knowledge is power, but power can corrupt. White institutions teach a select class of Asians to adopt elitism and gatekeeping in order to harm their community and deny lived experiences.
Asian Americans have the largest wealth gap of any U.S. racial group. Elitist Asians are a small percentage, yet they’re purposely given the largest AsAm platforms and resources in order to perpetuate the Model Minority myth and downplay anti-Asian racism. (for more info, see my Monomyth comic)
To be clear, higher education isn’t inherently bad. It’s like any other tool—it can enlighten and empower, or be misused. There are many Asian academics, educators and journalists who resist white supremacy and fight for their communities. But we’re talking about the ones who don’t.
These elitist tokens claim to fight for the most marginalized. In reality, they want to be the only Asian at the white table—the voice for the “voiceless.” White supremacist institutions are happy to seat them there, since tokens don’t dismantle the system but reinforce it.
Netflix’s show The Chair inadvertently captures this dynamic. It was widely touted as positive Asian rep, yet Sandra Oh’s character protected and prioritized a white male colleague/lover from accountability while treating marginalized students and her Black colleague as obstacles. When I saw prominent Asians and other POC gush about feeling seen by Sandra Oh’s The Chair character, I was disappointed—but not surprised. It speaks to their lack of self-awareness and how accustomed they are to trampling over their own people that they don’t think it’s wrong.
This is the major disconnect. We supposedly understand how structural racism works and that higher education—like every other industry in the U.S.—perpetuates white supremacy. Yet POC who get accepted to ivy leagues are not only celebrated, but viewed as automatic leaders.
The truth is, these institutions would never allow POC to matriculate if there was a real threat of them dismantling their bigoted systems. The token’s purpose is to insulate these institutions from accusations of bigotry, promote bootstrap narratives, and keep other POC out. Asian tokens know that to keep these prestigious positions of power, they must avoid being seen as a threat by white people. So, despite making outward claims of dismantling the Model Minority myth, they internalize it as fact—to the point of adopting white guilt as their own.
Tokens mask their gaslighting, bullying, and abuse by over-intellectualizing racism—the way white people taught them to. We’re seeing this with anti-Asian hate crimes, and how tokens police language and emotions while creating a hierarchy of which victims matter and which ones don’t.
This includes the thorny but necessary conversation of holding other POC accountable for anti-Asian violence—especially the Black community. Even though white people commit the majority of anti-Asian hate crimes, there’s also a significant pattern of Black people doing it too.
But according to elitist Asians tokens, that pattern isn’t relevant, and Asians shouldn’t be upset or talking about it. This is because, in internalizing the Model Minority myth, elitist Asians see themselves as above other POC and think accountability is anti-Black. It’s not.
Let’s be clear: assaulting Asians for being Asian is violent racism. The attacker’s race doesn’t change this. While we should be sensitive to the context of white supremacy when holding Black people and other POC accountable, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss it at all.
Yet elitist Asian tokens sabotage efforts towards solidarity, healing, and progress because they project their class privilege onto a community that is larger and far more vulnerable than them. Meanwhile, white people are happy to let tensions between Asians and Black people remain.
The situation is frustrating and sad. How much violence could we have prevented if our communities did a better job of educating and tackling difficult conversations head-on instead of avoiding them? How much solidarity is lost because we’re at the whims of tokens who don’t care?
It’s ironic that the ones who supposedly understand the power of education the best are using it the worst. But that’s exactly what white supremacy wants: violence, division, and ignorance. That’s why it’s up to all of us to speak up and spark these conversations—so we can learn.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agent
Make America Mask Again (even though it barely did to begin with).
Unlike Asia, the West associates wearing masks with weakness and fascism, rather than a civic duty to protect themselves and others. As if forcing sick individuals to work or be in situations that can literally kill—just to keep the capitalist machine running—isn’t tyrannical.
Asians are triply targeted in this pandemic. We are potential COVID victims like anyone else, yet also get blamed for the pandemic, and then get treated as “dirty” carriers of the disease even more when we wear a mask. This leads to violent anti-Asian hate crimes against us.
It isn’t Asian to care about others and mask up. It’s basic empathy and hygiene—which many Americans lack. To my fellow Asians out there who’ve been masking from the start and never stopped even though it added another target to your back, I see you. Hang in there.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
Although the popularity of K-pop and K-dramas has increased the visibility of Asian men in the U.S., it hasn’t cured anti-Asian racism—it just gave it a facelift.
Before we begin, let’s remember plastic surgery is a sensitive topic. This isn’t about body-shaming individuals who get it. It’s about understanding the broad patterns of racism and systemic body-shaming that pressure Asians (and other POC) into getting surgery in the first place.
Many people see K-pop and K-dramas as an organic expression of Korean culture, immune to the long reach of U.S. imperialism. This is due to the misconception that Asians in Asia are culturally purer, a group untouched by Western influence, compared to a “diluted” Asian diaspora.
Yet South Korea is like the Philippines—their wars with the U.S. may have ended years ago, but U.S. influence and control didn’t. Instead, these countries became de facto neo-colonies, which is reflected in the kinds of media that gets produced and is allowed to reach U.S. shores.
In the Philippines, 333+ years of Spanish and U.S. colonization created a preference for actors with Spanish/white features. This minority population is used to represent the majority and to promote narratives that depict their features as superior—thus reinforcing the preference.
This is similar to the U.S., where white-mixed and white-passing Asians dominate the few Asian media roles available—like Keanu. He’s often touted as the most famous AsAm rep, yet always avoids directly calling himself Asian and said he doesn’t want to be a spokesperson for AsAms.
Korea is different. It doesn’t have a sizeable white-mixed population like the U.S. or Philippines. If the U.S. had a foothold in Korea for as long as Spain did in the Philippines, we’d likely see the same casting preferences. Instead, cosmetic surgery is used to compensate.
Double eyelid surgery was popularized during the Korean War by Ralph Millard, a white male military doctor who first used it on war brides brought to the U.S. His goal was to “deorientalize” them. To him and other whites, bad Asians had slanted eyes, and good Asians had surgery.
Since then, double eyelid and other surgeries have been normalized for all genders in Korea. Boys as young as 13 start to visit clinics for procedures. The current estimate is that 20% of Korean men get surgery, but some surgeons say it’s 30-40%. All agree the number is growing.
This violent “deorientalization” of the Asian face doesn’t stop with eye shape. Jaws, noses, cheeks, lips, brows, and dark skin are all eligible for being broken, shaved, filled will silicone implants, bleached, reshaped. The ideal Asian face has as few Asian features possible.
After all, the U.S. has always depicted Asian men as violent and misogynistic savages. Whether it’s Little Brown Brothers, Yellow Peril, or current tensions with China, the message is the same: Asian men are a violent threat to be exterminated. This pressures Asians to be “good.”
That’s why K-dramas are increasingly filled with U.S.-friendly content—like product placement (Subway, eat fresh!), English loan words, clothing with U.S. college names on them like Harvard or UCLA, and storylines that portray the U.S. as a superior destination to study and live.
The U.S. is more than happy to encourage this. It’s consistent with its strategy of dividing “good Asians” from “bad Asians.” It’s the same reasoning for the Model Minority myth, Mixed Marriage Policy of 1942-1943, and the separation between North and South Korea. (Mixed Marriage Policy: https://joshualunacreations.tumblr.com/post/652731177564766208/masticasian)
The Mixed Marriage Policy and War Brides sound like a bygone era. But a recently released American Girl doll is a modern example of how this racist messaging persists. The doll is meant to raise awareness of anti-Asian racism, yet Asian males are not included as victims.
This disturbing storyline suggests an off-screen Asian ex-husband (their kids are monoracial) who offers less money and less of a home environment than the rich white new husband. This teaches Asian kids to think white men are superior and not the architects of anti-Asian racism.
Those who are threatened by Asian men having a healthy self-image often dismiss these issues as “desirability politics” and don’t treat it as the violent, hateful racism it is. Normalizing this dehumanization leads to violence like COVID hate crimes and war. It’s not trivial.
So while we can enjoy K-pop and K-dramas for the entertainment they give (I certainly do), we can also critique the damaging anti-Asian narratives they’re promoting and not internalize them. Everyone deserves to love their face and their body as it is—regardless of race and gender.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
Last weekend at Diversity Comic Con, I spoke at the Countering Asian Hate panel with Enrica Jang, Wendy Chin-Tanner, and Dr. Kyunghee Pyun about anti-Asian racism, institutional barriers in comics and publishing, and how Asian American creators can confront it.
This panel was a great opportunity to have difficult but necessary conversations about issues our community is facing. For me, I shared my experiences of being rejected by Image and getting harassed online for my AsAm comics, and my journey of developing racial awareness in my work.
Even though AsAms are struggling, I find hope in how we’re coming together as a community to tackle these issues, and using art & storytelling as one of our tools to do so.
Thank you Ramon Gil for inviting me and creating a space for AsAm creators to speak about our experiences.
#StopAsianHate is meaningless until we acknowledge white men as the architects of anti-Asian racism, and the blueprints they use to divide the Asian community and sabotage progress.
Understanding anti-Asian racism means connecting its history in the U.S. with its history in Asia, instead of treating them separately. U.S. imperialism, war, and colonization abroad directly informs the racism Asian Americans experience because the goal is the same: divide, conquer, and kill.
White men used war to split Korea and Vietnam in two, and divide AsAms the same way. One blueprint of the U.S.’s domestic anti-Asian strategy is the Mixed Marriage Policy of 1942-1943. Implemented during Japanese Internment, it gave certain Asians special exemptions to leave camp.
Internment was meant to harm Japanese Americans, not white men with Japanese families (whiteness is why few German and Italian Americans were interned). So, the Mixed Marriage Policy let Japanese leave camps if they:
1) married a non-Japanese
2) proved a “Caucasian environment.”
The Mixed Marriage Policy had two versions. In 1942, few Asians were eligible—especially monoracial Japanese men. The 1943 version greatly expanded eligibility for monoracial Japanese women and mixed-Japanese adults, but eliminated nearly all eligibility for monoracial Japanese men.
Each eligible case required proving a “Caucasian environment.” So while on paper the MMP offered exemptions to non-white mixed-Japanese couples and their kids, they were rarely granted. The MMP’s real goal was to benefit white men with Japanese wives and mixed-white Japanese children.
Overall, the Mixed Marriage Policy reveals white men’s hierarchy of Asians:
1) mixed-white Asian adults
2) monoracial Asian women married to white men and with white-mixed children
3) monoracial Asian men—preferably deported, divorced, detained in an internment camp, or dead.
By explicitly laying out white men’s hierarchy of Asians, the MMP is an incredibly revealing anti-Asian document. Which is perhaps why it’s so difficult to find—the original documents are at the National Archives and aren’t digitized (must pay to see them).
There’s good reason for white men wanting to hide the MMP. It’s a Rosetta Stone for understanding the motivations of many modern anti-Asian hate crimes like the NYC Hammer killings, Atlanta spa shootings, and Isla Vista massacre. Each can be directly tied to the roadmap MMP provides.
The 2019 NYC hammer killings occurred when a white man saw films vilifying Asian men and wanted to “defend” Asian women. He entered a buffet to hammer random Asian men in the head. They all died slowly: Fufai Pun later that day, Kheong Ng-Thang 3 days later, Tsz Pun a week later.
The 2021 Atlanta spa shootings occurred because a white man blamed Asian women for his “sex addiction.” He shot at multiple Asian massage workers and planned on targeting more. Victims include Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue.
The 2014 Isla Vista massacre occurred because a functionally-white, white-mixed Asian hated white women who rejected him & men of color. He assaulted monoracial Asian men several times and murdered three—Cheng Yuan Hong, Weihan Wang, and George Chen—by stabbing them 15, 25, and 94 times.
Many people believe anti-Asian racism started with COVID, but as these examples show, Asians have always suffered violence. The problem is our stories are purposely erased and twisted to double-victimize us and reinforce the lies of the Model Minority Myth. This happens two ways.
The first erasure comes from white people in government, news, education, and more. White men know coverage can humanize—or destroy. That’s why the racial component of Isla Vista was removed, the hammer killings were downplayed, and “sex addiction” was used to justify Atlanta.
The second erasure sadly comes from complicit Asians. The MMP’s core concept is clear: to be spared fatal anti-Asian racism, you must actively show loyalty to whiteness by proving a “Caucasian environment"—in other words, dodge the bullet by redirecting it to another Asian’s head.
Complicit Asians say criticizing their complicity condemns interracial relationships. It doesn’t. There were Japanese whose white spouses stood by them—like Arthur Ishigo, whose wife Estelle voluntarily joined his camp. He later died of cancer and she lost her legs to gangrene.
These days complicit Asians aren’t restricted by gender or marriage. Anyone can be one (although partnering with white men remains the easiest way to do this). To prove their "Caucasian environment,” they must punch down on Asians with equal or greater hate than white men do.
For ex, complicit Asians write articles telling Asian Americans to not label anti-Asian violence as hate crimes until white officials say so, disrespect Asian male Isla Vista victims by blaming their deaths on Asianness, and so on. They’re not bringing awareness—they’re sabotaging it.
That’s by design. White men know in-fighting wastes AsAm energy. So, they recruit complicit Asians, give them a monopoly on AsAm resources, microphones, and platforms—despite being a minority in AsAm spaces—and watch as they perpetuate the status quo rather than dismantle it.
This all comes back to the same violent, imperialist strategies white men have used against Asian countries for centuries: rape and pillage, divide and conquer, install puppet leaders. Drive Asians out of Asia through violence, dangle the “American dream,” then murder us more.
This means the MMP’s relevance is twofold: 1) white men’s hierarchy of Asians endures to this day, and 2) rising hate crimes show how easy it is to bring internment back. Between 2020 and 2021, overall hate crimes dropped by 7%, but anti-Asian hate crimes spiked 149%.
So to #StopAsianHate, it’s not enough to talk about the "easy” topics. We must also address the “taboos.” This includes the violent ways whiteness recruits Asians so it can Trojan Horse its way into our communities, shut down progress, and endanger us all—exactly as intended.
Thank you to Ashlynn Deu Pree, Paul Spickard, and Adrienne Edgar for their help with points of contact and data.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
The reason America hates wearing a mask is because it prefers showing its true face.
For some, this spike in anti-Asian racism comes as a surprise, or seems like it’s the first time it’s happening. But that’s because the Model Minority Myth—created by white people—has tricked both white people and POC into thinking Asianness is a privilege. (For more info, see my comic “Asian American Monomyth” https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1107709119992119297)
But history shows what America really thinks. The Page Act of 1875 legally codified Asian women as immoral, disease-carrying prostitutes in order to ban them from the US and extended that ban to Asian men with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. These sentiments have never left. This is why Asian Americans are always portrayed as the perpetual foreigner—we “don’t belong here” and can be removed on a whim via ongoing deportations or mob violence, such as the 1930 lynching of Filipino men in Watsonville and the 1871 lynching of Chinese in L.A., and the current COVID-inspired attacks.
Trump calling COVID “the Chinese virus” has the same intent—to distract from his violent negligence, stump for war with China, and put a target on Asians so we’ll bear the brunt of COVID frustrations instead of him. Over 2,500 anti-Asian incidents have been reported since March. As if anti-Asian violence weren’t enough, structural racism means COVID is more deadly to POC. For example, Filipinx nurses comprise 4% of nurses in the U.S., but make up 31.5% of all nurse deaths. Also, many Fil-Ams live in multi-generational households—which increases risk.
Trump and his supporters know COVID is deadly, but sabotage efforts to stop its spread because their goal is eugenics—the same way the U.S. infected Native Americans with smallpox, or how the Reagan administration ignored HIV since it disproportionately killed LGBTQ and Black communities.
But right-wingers aren’t the only racists. If you’re wondering how a man who wants to “Free Hong Kong" hates Asians, it’s the same reason why racists claim to support Uyghurs yet don’t care about Trump’s Muslim ban, U.S. atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, or oppression of Palestinians. It’s the same reason the U.S. “supports” Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, Hawai'i, and Japan, and why U.S. soldiers took Asian wives via the 1945 War Brides Act (a loophole to anti-immigration laws). It’s not because they like Asians and Pacific Islanders—they see us/our lands as strategic assets or spoils of war.
This shows how diasporic Asian lives are always inextricably linked to the fate of Asians abroad & vice versa. US imperialism has murdered millions of Asians via war in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos & left a multi-generational impact. (For more info, see my comic “Detonasian” https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1181638490120957952)
So it isn’t enough to stop the spread of COVID—we have to stop the spread of anti-Asian racism too. That means rejecting the lies of the Model Minority, speaking out against anti-Asian COVID attacks, and acknowledging just how pervasive and deeply embedded anti-Asian racism is.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
