Amanda Nguyen has been talking about civil rights issues for almost a decade, but she did not expect a recent Instagram video to go viral and generate national conversations about anti-Asian racism in the United States.
On February 5, Nguyen posted a video on Instagram calling on national media to better cover the recent wave of anti-Asian violence against elderly San Francisco Bay area residents in New York City. She tried in vain to find reports on incidents, including those involving 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee, who died injured after being pushed onto the sidewalk, and Noel Quintana, 61, who was hit in the face during a subway confrontation in New York.
“I decided, ‘You know what? If we run out of access to mainstream media, I’m going to turn to social media and make a call to action for the media to dominate Asian stories,” Nguyen told CNBC Make It.
The message went off. The video has accumulated millions of views and responses from Instagram posts, Twitter and TikTok. She talked about it on news outlets like NBC, ABC and CNN; and on February 8, senior correspondent for CBS News at the White House Weijia Jiang asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki if President Joe Biden had seen videos, like Nguyen’s, about the attacks.
Last month, the millennium activist helped share the work of Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that documents and addresses anti-Asian discrimination during the pandemic and its efforts to support Asian American communities.
The Harvard graduate has worked in the field of activism since 2013, when she became a rape survivor during her time in college. Following her experience with what she felt was a broken criminal justice system, she helped draft the first Declaration of Rights of Survivors of Sexual Violence, which established consistent rules and procedures at the federal level to prosecute crimes of sexual assault. Since then, 21 states have adopted similar legislation, and Nguyen is working with lawmakers to pass legislation in all 50 states.
Nguyen ended up becoming the founder and CEO of Rise, a national non-profit civil rights organization, which helped pass 33 laws and created civil rights protections for more than 60 million sexual assault survivors through the approval of disability projects. state law.
She appeared on Forbes’ under 30 list twice, was included on Time’s 100 Next list in 2019, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her activism in 2019.
Nguyen, 29, recently spoke with CNBC Make It about his latest work to defend racial justice for Asian Americans and the Pacific Islands during and after the pandemic.
This interview was edited for its length and clarity.
Did you expect your message about anti-Asian racism to go viral?
No, absolutely not. In fact, I thought I would lose followers, because every other time I posted about race, I did. And I thought to myself, ‘You know what, I don’t care, because people need to know’.
People just don’t know. And I think that a lot of that happens because of ignorance. The problem here is invisibility. So the solution is visibility.
What kind of response did you get with the video?
We are in a moment of reckoning now. It has been so exciting and moving to see the wave of people talking – I am literally receiving messages from thousands of people every day with stories like ‘My father was murdered, can you improve the story?’ Or, ‘My grandmother was beaten, can you improve the story?’
I also received messages like: ‘For the first time in my life, I feel that I can talk about the pain I experienced or the racism I experienced living in this yellow skin’.
Reading this has been incredible and powerful.
Although the video was certainly a first domino, we wouldn’t be here without literally millions of people feeling like, ‘You know what, it’s okay to be seen and speak our truth.’
Anti-Asian discrimination in the United States dates back to the 19th century. How does this moment look different?
In Rise, we had people working on it for almost a decade. There is an inflection point now because we have had these horrible acts of violence captured by the camera. It is so difficult to escape what is recorded. It is also because these acts of violence are increasing.
On 2,800 attacks were reported for Stop AAPI Hate last year.
In addition, people are saying that they have already had this experience and are asking for help. When people come together in solidarity, it helps to create a new space to speak.
Social media is a powerful tool for raising awareness. How do you expect consciousness to turn into action outside these platforms?
It’s very simple. There are structural and systematic exclusions that have happened to the AAPI community. It is not just in the newsrooms; it is also clearly in our federal government.
Some federal agencies do not even include Asians in the definition of racial minorities. This is a generalized omission.
I want to hear from the secretary of education why the history of AAPI is not taught in schools. Why don’t people know about internment camps, or how one of the biggest lynchings in the history of the United States was against the AAPI community?
I want to know why people don’t teach our contributions, either.
There are so many things that people can do to educate themselves, not only about our history, but also about our culture. Empathy will be the solution to this and visibility creates empathy.
You can start at home. Turn on your computer and find out more about the AAPI community and listen to grassroots organizers on site.
The AAPI organization has a long history. What work has influenced your approach to activism now?
It is important that people not only learn about the history of AAPI as an elective subject in college, if it is offered in colleges. It needs to start from elementary, middle and high school. You need to start from the beginning so that we are seen as part of that community.
I don’t think there was ever an Asian American who didn’t ask the question, ‘Where are you from? Not really, where are you really from? ‘It seems innocent, but at the heart of it, it’s another. It’s the idea that you don’t belong. When you have this stereotype of a perpetual foreigner, it’s easy to use the scapegoat. The consequence of this was lost lives.
How do you plan to continue this type of work?
It is important to focus on education and allow people to understand where roots of misinformation [around the coronavirus, and related xenophobia] came from, where ignorance can and should be stopped and, moreover, how people can contribute and raise Asian-American voices.
At Rise, we are building the plane while it is flying and running a campaign that will educate people to learn about the Asian American experience now. Democracy is meant to be for all the people of the people. So Rise will provide educational content talking about black and Asian solidarity, talking about the history of AAPI and celebrating it.
As a community organizer who fell for this job because I needed civil rights and no one was going to write them for me, what I want people to get out of this is that you can totally change the world.
It really does matter what you think and your pain, your anger, your hope, it all matters. I just want people to know that the most powerful tool they have is the voice, and no one is powerless when we get together and demand to be seen.
Output check:
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