Major Feelings: Part 2

Earlier this week, Stop AAPI Hate released an update to their national report. You may remember back in March when I wrote the first Major Feelings post that each of the article’s 3,795 words represented an incident from the March 2021 report. Well, reader, buckle up, because even though the May update only adds one month (covering the span of March 19, 2020 to March 31, 2021), there were an additional 2,808 incidents reported, bringing the grand total to 6,603 reported hate incidents since the pandemic began. Today’s article will be 2,808 words long so that the two posts combined will total 6,603 words.

For the last post I used excerpts from Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings as section breaks. Today I’m going to use language from the incidents quoted in the Stop AAPI Hate report itself. I actually wanted to incorporate those excerpts last time, but surprisingly the post was long enough as is and I didn’t have the space for them.

We received discriminatory, targeted poor service at [a restaurant]. We were the only Asian party there. The server mocked us by imitating an Asian language, purposefully grated a pile of parmesan cheese over my friend's lap, and hovered over her when delivering her check... The other parties in the restaurant were treated warmly and with welcoming attention. We were explicitly ignored throughout the duration of our lunch. (New York, NY)

If you haven’t already, I would highly encourage you to check out the 11-page Stop AAPI Hate report. It’s very easy to read and understand — not at all stuffy and academic. Page six is particularly interesting since it lists the 20 states with the most number of reported incidents. Can you guess what state is number 1? It’s both surprising and maybe not all that surprising to learn that the top state for reported incidents (by a margin of 25 percentage points!) is California. California accounts for 40% of the 6,603 reported incidents, or about 2,641 incidents. That means that this article today is only 167 words longer than all of the incidents in California alone. That’s pretty mind boggling. If you erase the first two paragraphs of this article and only start counting at the start of the quote above, each word in the rest of the article will represent a single hate incident reported in California alone. (The state with the second most number of reported incidents? New York, with 15%).

I said in the last paragraph that it is both surprising and maybe not at all surprising that California would have so many anti-AAPI hate incidents. It was a little surprising to me only because we think of California (and New York, for that matter) as a liberal bastion. So what does it say when California and New York — our country’s two most left-leaning poster children — are also the two places that have the most overtly racist incidents?

Here’s why it’s less surprising that this is the case. First, California and New York both have larger AAPI communities than the rest of the country. Part of the reason Idaho didn’t make the list of states with most incidents is because there aren’t many people living in Idaho to begin with, let alone members of the AAPI community. According to the 2020 census, Idaho has around 1.8 million people. The latest demographic data available is from 2016, but it shouldn’t be at all surprising to learn that Idaho’s population is 91% white. Asians were 1.4% of Idaho’s population, which, out of 1.8 million, comes to 25,200 people. So, a small general population with an incredibly small AAPI population means that Idaho didn’t make the cut.

Now, this is not to say that there are no hate incidents in Idaho or that life in Idaho is a breeze for AAPI folks. As any POC knows, traveling to a remote place with a 91% white population is going to make us feel uncomfortable because such an environment emphasizes our non-whiteness. Here’s a quick anecdote to convey this point: Back when my mom and step-dad were dating, the first time I remember meeting my step-dad was for a karaoke night. My step-dad is a very talented singer and musician, and one of his favorite post-divorce activities was to go to bars and sing karaoke. Great! I also love karaoke. So this one night then me and my sister and mom met up with my step-dad to go to karaoke.

My step-dad lives in the northwestern part of Virginia, so the drive out to the bar was through dark, winding side roads. I think we actually crossed the state line into West Virginia. When we finally got to the bar, it was this small cabin-like building in the middle of nowhere. We walked inside, and there were two things I immediately noticed: 1) my sister and I were the only non-white people there, and 2) people were smoking inside. This was in the late 2000s, mind you, when most places had banned indoor smoking. But this was a bar in the middle of nowhere, so they either didn’t have a law against it or simply chose to ignore it. I felt incredibly uncomfortable the whole time we were there since I was bracing for something bad to happen: namely, someone to call me a racial slur. I don’t think there was a Confederate flag up on the wall, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I saw one.

Thankfully, the night was uneventful and we made it back home without incident. But that didn’t change the fact that I was on edge the whole time. And while no one verbally or physically assaulted us, there were definitely stares. This is what happens when you’re the only non-white person in an otherwise complete white space. I’m just glad my white mom and white step-dad were there, since their whiteness offered us protection.

So: Just because Idaho didn’t make the list of top 20 states, that doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk for POCs. For our next point of comparison, let’s look at New York. The 2020 census shows 20.2 million people living in New York. According to 2019 demographics data, Asians make up 9% of the state’s population, or roughly 1.8 million people. Thus, New York’s Asian community is the size of all of Idaho’s population! You can see now why there would be more reported incidents in New York than Idaho.

Which brings us to California. California was just shy of 40 million people after the 2020 census (39.5 million), and data from 2018 shows a remarkable 15.3% AAPI population. That’s over 6 million people — more than three times the entire population of Idaho. Thus, it’s no longer surprising that the two states with the most population — and, by extension, the most AAPI population — are the states with the most reported incidents of hate.

My elderly mother (65 years old) was waiting for the subway. Someone tried to push her off the platform down into the train tracks. She screamed and a fellow bystander chased off the perpetrator. The good samaritan stood nearby my mom until she boarded the train safely. (Boston, MA)

Of course, numbers are only half the story. The truth is, racism is everywhere. Even in the North, even in states like California or New York. There’s no question that when I was living in New York City I felt more comfortable and at ease than anywhere else I’ve ever lived, but that doesn’t mean that I had outrun racism.

It’s been a little over a month, but the news of the 65-year-old Filipino woman who was repeatedly kicked in the stomach and head still makes me angry. I mean, all of the incidents we read and hear about make me angry, but there’s something about this particular attack that upsets me more than others. First, that it happened in broad daylight on 43rd Street in the heart of Times Square, an area of Manhattan that has become so sanitized it’s hard to imagine any sort of violence occuring there. Also, the woman was on her way to church and was so clearly not a threat to anyone. There’s the fact that the perpetrator, a 38-year-old man, picked an incredibly easy target — a disgusting act of male bravado that means nothing when the person you’re beating up is almost twice your age. And finally, the fact that the onlookers inside the building didn’t do anything to help the woman or stop the attacker. Everything about this assault makes me angry.

And yet a week ago today there was another hate attack in Times Square: this time around a 31-year-old Asian woman was walking along 42nd Street with her friend when another woman demanded that the Asian woman take off her mask. The Asian woman refused, so the other woman hit her in the head with a hammer. Thankfully, the Asian woman (who is only identified by her first name, Theresa) is physically okay, but this line from the article really stuck out: “her physical pain doesn't compare to the psychological scars. She is shaken up and traumatized and in total shock.”

This is something that I don’t think a lot of white people really understand: Just because a hate incident has passed doesn’t mean it’s over. In Theresa’s case, this one event will continue to affect her. Now imagine smaller incidents like these slowly accruing over the course of a lifetime. Some we can eventually put in the past, but others — like this hammer attack — will have much longer (and larger) repercussions. That’s what’s so painful about incidents like these. They’re not one and done; they’re one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one…

My mother was ordering food at [a restaurant] when a man tried to hit her in the face. She was able to avoid him, but he yelled a bunch of slurs — “Go back to China!” and “Corona!” — at her before he ran out. (Northridge, CA)

There’s one other detail about the attack on the 65-year-old Filipino woman that I didn’t mention above: The guy who was kicking her also told her “You don’t belong here.” This is a sadly common refrain among the excerpts from the reported hate incidents. Many of them involve harassers saying things like “Go back” or “You don’t belong here” or some other variation on that theme. There’s something about looking Asian (and that includes both East Asian as well as South Asian) that seems to indicate, more than any other race, that we are foreigners, that we are outsiders. That we are more “them” than “us.”

British accents and French accents are considered sexy, yet no one calls East Asian accents sexy. Accents of any kind indicate an other-ness, but it’s only the accents that white people have which are desirable. I think this is why so many AAPI folks get asked the “Where are you from?” question. Asian accents (and Asian languages as a whole) aren’t ones that Americans can readily differentiate, so it immediately flags for the listener that there is something seemingly un-American about the speaker, hence the question.

In second grade I was one of two East Asian students in my class. One day we were sitting around in a circle and our teacher was telling us about how to pluralize nouns. After the lesson, our teacher went around the circle and asked each of us to give the plural of whatever noun she said. So, if she said “cat,” then I would say “cats.” And if she said “dog,” the person next to me would say “dogs.” Everything was going great until my teacher called on Timothy, the other East Asian student. “Foot,” she said, and Timothy said, “Foots!” The rest of the class burst out laughing. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I laughed at him too. Only now as an adult do I understand why I was doing this: by laughing at Timothy I was showing that I wasn’t like him, that I wasn’t that kind of East Asian. It was my Asian self-loathing manifesting in a new way: being dismissive toward someone by making him feel like he didn’t belong here.

Another thing that strikes me about this as an adult: Why did my teacher deliberately give Timothy an irregular plural noun? She very easily could’ve asked him “cat” or “dog,” but she chose to give him a harder noun to pluralize. I’m sure Timothy wasn’t the only one who thought the plural of “foot” was “foots,” even if he was the only one we were laughing at.

A little kid and kid’s dad yelled “Ching Chang Chong,” made the slanted-eye mockery, then stuck their tongue out to me, my husband and my friend; then ran away. [Reported in Korean] (Madison, WI)

I’d also like to take a moment to talk about something I’m calling Lazy Racism. Lazy Racism is the most overused and idiotic kind of racism. Going up to an East Asian person and making slanted eyes or saying “Ching Chang Chong” is Lazy Racism. But Lazy Racism doesn’t have to be quite so overt. Here’s a more subtle form of Lazy Racism: Arizona Republicans are so determined to find evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election that they’re performing an audit of the results. This audit comes after Biden won the state by more than three-tenths of a percentage point (and, thus, not requiring a recount since he won by more than one-tenth of a percentage point) and Arizona certified the election results. Basically, there were no serious cases of voter fraud found, and even if there were, they wouldn’t have occurred on a large enough scale to change the results.

Yet Arizona Republicans, rather than thinking “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” instead seem to think, “if we pretend there’s smoke, maybe we can create a fire.” This audit of theirs is a farce, and its only purpose is to create doubt. Even when (not “if,” but “when”) they complete the audit and come up empty handed, the mere fact that they did this will lend credence to their false claims of voter fraud. It’s this kind of shit that’s fueling super restrictive voting laws in states like Georgia, Florida, and Texas.

But okay, Lazy Racism. John Brakey is one of the officials overseeing this audit, and he’s spouting a baseless accusation that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona from China. While this is just absurd, here’s the best part: Because these supposed ballots were from China, then the auditors are looking to see if there’s bamboo in any of the ballots. I mean, what the fuck? If China wanted to send 40,000 ballots, they’d do so using, you know, real paper. Why would they use bamboo? This is Lazy Racism, folks.

The best part about all of this is that Brakey admits they’re not going to find anything. Here’s a quote of his from the article: “I do think it’s somewhat of a waste of time, but it will help unhinge people. They’re not gonna find bamboo.” There he is, saying the part he’s not supposed to say out loud: “it will help unhinge people.” The purpose of the audit isn’t to find bamboo-riddled ballots from China, it’s to sow doubt. That’s some sinister shit wrapped up in Lazy Racism.

I was at work, minding my own business and using the restroom, when one customer came up to me. As I turned around, he caught a glimpse of my eyes and began with the racial slurs. Eventually, as I was leaving, the customer spat on me. He even said things such as “Go home and take the COVID with you.” (Muskegon, MI)

My favorite part of the above quote? “He caught a glimpse of my eyes and began with the racial slurs.” The person recounting this anecdote conveys a level of exhaustion that I think any AAPI person would understand. It’s shorthand for “here we go again with this bullshit.” That’s certainly the way I feel every time I read the news or hear about another assault. It's the way I felt when Stop AAPI Hate updated their report to include 2,808 new hate incidents in a month. But the only way to change anything is for us to keep talking about it, no matter how exhausting it is. This is another post that wasn’t easy to write, but once again I overshot my word count and will have to pare things down — a sign that even though I’m tired of the bullshit, there is still so much more to say.