The Silence of Our Friends
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let’s enlighten ourselves with what he once said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” This quote resonates with me a lot, as I ponder how we, as Asian Americans, can be better allies to the Black community. The summer of 2020 was very chaotic and painful, to say the least. We were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that didn’t stop the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes or police brutality against Black people. On May 25, 2020, Tou Thao, a Hmong American officer, was complicit in the murdering of George Floyd. Derek Chauvin, a white officer, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 minutes, and Thao didn’t once interfere despite being perfectly capable of doing so.
It breaks my heart to see that we, too, are complacent and complicit in perpetuating anti-Blackness and white supremacy. The truth of the matter is that we are privileged. We are victims of racism, but we are also privileged enough to not live in constant fear of being brutalized when doing mundane daily activities. We need to do better, and to start, we have to acknowledge that anti-Blackness has always had a seat at our table.
This anti-Blackness manifests itself in our standards of beauty. The practice of skin whitening has long permeated Asian culture, and that goes hand in hand with colorism and classism. Lighter skin is a symbol of wealth, because it is the poor people who have to work in the fields and expose themselves to the sun. Growing up, my mom’s friends would compliment her, “Your daughter is so pale. How is she not even a bit tan? So pretty! I wish my daughter is like her.” As I grew older, I began to recognize my heightened sense of privilege as a light-skinned East Asian woman. Compared to other ethnic groups under the Asian umbrella, my proximity to whiteness is greater.
Asian Americans’ relationship with anti-Blackness also exists somewhere beyond our control, in a gray area of race relations that is the model minority myth. The term “model minority” was coined by William Pettersen in the January 9th, 1966 edition of The New York Times Magazine, in an essay titled “Success Story, Japanese-American Style.” He acknowledges that Japanese Americans had been one of the greatest victims of discrimination in American history, but were able to prevail against all of the injustices that were committed against them by prioritizing education. As a result, Pettersen planted the seed of the generalization that Asian Americans “have established this remarkable record, moreover, by their own almost totally unaided effort.” It eventually led to a domino effect that still affects Asian Americans today: The model minority argument portrays Asian Americans as inherently more intelligent, and thus supposedly less in need of additional assistance.
Let’s take a look at the date carefully: January 9th, 1966. It is no coincidence that the magazine was released at the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement. The model minority myth suggests that Asian Americans are the ideal minority and should serve as an example to other minority groups. Thus, when people of color, especially Black Americans, attempt to advocate for change, they are confronted by government officials with the notion that they are not trying hard enough. The model minority myth then becomes not only collateral damage for Asian Americans, but also a racial wedge between Asian Americans and other minority groups.
Martin Luther King Jr. always emphasized the power of a multicultural coalition, and since then, we have seen it in action. As a Chinese American, the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) is very close to my heart because it is a constant reminder of how my parents and my citizenship came to be, and just how hard those who came before us had to fight. It remains the first and only federal legislation that was passed to prohibit immigration for a specific group of non-American nationals. But, can you guess which community helped us end this discriminatory law and reform immigration laws to end national-origin quotas? Black activists in the Civil Rights Movement! Without their efforts, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 wouldn’t have been passed and we certainly wouldn’t be the fastest-growing racial group in America today. Lifting as they climb, Black Americans deserve much more credit than is given for continually perfecting our union.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it: We aren’t doing enough to uplift the Black community. For all that our Black allies have done for us, we have to actively and openly participate in the Black Lives Matter movement. We have to start addressing the anti-Blackness in our community and having those hard conversations with our families. With all of the resources that are available to us, there are no excuses for us to continue to allow anti-Blackness to thrive in our culture—it is up to us to educate ourselves and break this cycle of racism. We have to stop performing Blackness and profiting from speaking in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). We have to condemn our fellow friends and family members who casually use the n-word and educate them on why it is derogatory. We have to stop the spreading of the false stereotypes of Black people, created with the mission to dehumanize and criminalize them. We have to be more aggressive when advocating for change because our position of power allows us to do so without repercussions. But most of all, we have to stop remaining silent when we are in the face of injustice. Just imagine what our community would look like today if our Black allies had done the same.
To further decolonize our minds:
NowThis | How Asian Americans Can Help Fight Anti-Black Racism
Twitter Thread | Being Asian and Raised by Anti-Black Parents
TIME | History and Asian American Response to Black Lives Matter
Wong Fu Productions | Black & Asian Solidarity (Video)
Letters for Black Lives | Translated for Our Family
NBC News | Stacey Abrams Mobilizing Asian Americans
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