#yellow peril

Gil Kane.

The Yellow Peril podcast #24: http://www.yomyomf.com/say-aloha-to-more-whitewashing-the-yellow-peril-podcast-024/

Yellow Peril podcast ep 22: http://www.yomyomf.com/john-cho-is-the-goat-and-lily-may-mac-is-a-goat-the-yellow-peril-podcast-023/

Yoshinoya Is Great For A Date? / The Yellow Peril Podcast Ep. 033

Yellow Peril podcast #32

Why pho is the best, Steven Yeun vs. John Cho, and all hail Rep. Ted Lieu!

#YellowPeril podcast #27: Bruce Lee’s passion project finally comes to life, cultural appropriation and food, and Stephen Chow: http://www.yomyomf.com/this-flan-is-your-flan-this-niu-rou-fan-is-my-fan-the-yellow-peril-podcast-025/

Order our UNMASKING YELLOW PERIL zine and all funds will go to CCED’s mutual aid work in Chinatown Los Angeles and beyond! CCED is supplying hundreds of hot meals and care packages with groceries and cleaning supplies to elders and community members in critical need.

Unmasking Yellow Peril is a colorful zine full of archival images, forgotten histories, and critical analysis about Yellow Peril. With this project, we seek to ground ourselves in the long history of Yellow Peril, uncover its main forms, and resist it in the time of COVID-19.

Order your zine here! Or, you can read Unmasking Yellow Peril online here.

CCED is an all volunteer, multi-ethnic, intergenerational organization based in Los Angeles Chinatown that builds grassroots power through organizing, education, and mutual help. Learn more and sign up to volunteer at ccedla.org!

Unmasking Yellow Peril was created in collaboration with the Asian & Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, and Jason Oliver Chang, Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Zine art + design by Bianca Nozaki-Nasser, photos from CCED

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.

Learn more about the history of Yellow Peril and download our free Unmasking Yellow Peril zine!

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.

Queer Vietnamese American art we can get behind! These pieces by Antonius-Tín Bui reclaim the Asian craft tradition of paper cutting.
“As a queer, gender-nonbinary, Vietnamese-American artist, Bui’s work celebrates, honors, and challenges assumptions about intersectional identities.” Learn more at antoniusbui.com

I love Steven Yeun as much as the next person (he is my #1 celebrity crush), but what the fuck even is this article?

Aside from reasons #1 (I guess……. s/o to Asians with skin problems, I feel it and I have love for you) and #10, this article is pretty much trash. But since the author is filled to the brim with yellow fever, this article is entirely trash.

While I appreciate that she calls out stereotypes that Asian men are “effeminate, passive, docile, and submissive” her list is pretty much racist and classist. It ranges from “Asians make more money than whites!” to “Asians are more gentle than others!” Like?????? Doesn’t that just perpetuate the stereotypes you were trying to disprove?

This article reeks of fetishization/yellow fever and model minority myth praises. I would even go as far to say that it is anti-Black and Brown POC. Not blatantly of course, and I know she makes a point to compare Asians specifically to “Western Men” but there are underlying messages that get communicated nevertheless. 

ALSO THIS. LIKE????????????????????????????????? PLEASE UNPACK THIS FOR ME SIS.

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.)

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 agenthttps://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics