The Daily Beast
The same hatred that the targeted Muslims are returning to Asian Americans now
Ron Adar / SOPA Images / APEarlier this week, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy used the House’s word to falsely blame Democrats for trying to cancel and “ban” Dr. Seuss, a dead author whose best-selling children’s books sellers are still available for reading. The decision to stop publishing six of his old, racist books was in fact made by the publisher and his estate, which admitted that the books “portray people” – including Asians – “in ways that are harmful and wrong”. Still, the rage of frantic masses who are still mourning the loss of the potato head pronouns, but are canceling democratic elections, had to indulge themselves with another scarecrow to shoot. Unfortunately, some of them target Asian-American communities across the country, which are experiencing an impressive increase in violent attacks. I haven’t heard McCarthy’s anger over more than 3,000 incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a California-based reporting center for Pacific Islander Asian Americans, or the 150 percent increase over the previous year in Crimes cases hate speech in 16 of the country’s most populous cities in 2020.Sen. Tom Cotton promised to “take a good look” to find out why we are granting visas to Chinese students. I didn’t hear Cotton’s plan to “take a good look” frown “on what compelled a man to almost stab a father and two children a year ago at a grocery store in Midland, Texas, after he falsely accused them of being from China. The man, who is now visibly scared, is from Myanmar. You must be wondering why I, a Muslim son of Pakistani immigrants, am using my column to discuss hatred against another ethnic community. It’s because I’ve been there. In 2021, my Muslim and South Asian communities are still oriented to “return to our country”. We just endured a Trump administration that continued and enacted a “Muslim ban”. Twenty years after 9/11, our acceptance is still conditional and under permanent surveillance. For some, we are perpetual suspects and villains, “invaders” in a caravan along with undocumented immigrants, who will “replace” and cancel the true American culture, which apparently includes racist children’s books. Hate does not require logic, it feeds on fear, misinformation and anger. When I read about the elderly Thai man recently killed in San Francisco, I remembered Balbir Singh Sodhi, the first victim of a post-9/11 hate crime. He was a bearded Sikh who wore a turban and ran a gas station in Arizona, whose killer boasted that he “was going to go out and shoot some towel heads.” White fanatics and supremacists have no nuances in their hatred, and all of us who will never achieve whiteness will always be in your sights. “After 9/11, Muslims in America knew what it was like to wear an outside shirt in their home country. Now, after COVID-19, we are seeing racial discrimination, targets, bullying and an increase in hate crimes against our Asian American brothers and sisters, ”comedian and actor Hasan Minhaj told me. He believes that Muslim communities have a responsibility to care for and protect Asian Americans who currently “feel terrified, scared and vulnerable to going out in public”. President Trump and his federal officials have repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus” or “kung flu”. Since then, Asian Americans have been spit, shouted, pushed and attacked since the beginning of COVID-19. They were made scapegoats for a virus that has no ethnicity, gender, religion or political ideology. However, graphic novelist Thi Bui, who came to America with her family as a refugee from Vietnam, said what is getting lost in the current conversation is that this hatred is not a new phenomenon. “I think I would like to remind people who are recently aware of anti-Asian violence and want to do something about that there is a long and documented history of anti-Asian violence in the US, which goes back to the furious mobs and exclusionary immigration policies of 1800s, “she told me. In fact, one of the first immigration laws to be passed in this country was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited all legal immigration of Chinese workers due to the” economic anxiety “of white workers at the time and the promotion of dangerous myths and stereotypes that portrayed Chinese and Asian immigrants as a “Yellow Peril” that would replace and conquer Western civilization. Tigers are not original thinkers and often recycle the same material in the 21st century. crude fears persisted and were used to arrest some 120,000 innocent American citizens of Japanese descent in elocation ”in all western states under the guise of national security. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, these whitish American countrymen became “them” overnight. “Japanese hunting licenses” began to circulate across the country and, in a 1944 opinion poll, 13% of the public agreed to exterminate all Japanese. Actor Kumail Nanjiani, originally an immigrant, has empathy for what is happening to Asian American communities. He said that Trump’s hateful rhetoric “does not happen in a vacuum. It affects the lives of real people ”, mentioning that their Pakistani family members are seen as suspicious by neighbors who have known them for 20 years. He is also critical of the Hollywood representation of Asians and South Asians in general, which has spread these villainous stereotypes. Historically, he told me, “we are sexless / non-threatening nerds or murderous terrorists with nothing in between. We either play the minority model or the worst of humanity. ”In If I Ran the Zoo, one of six books by Dr. Seuss that will no longer be published, an illustration shows a white boy holding a large gun while standing on the head of three Asian men. Subtle. The myth of the model minority that Nanjiani mentioned was one of the enduring and damaging tools used by white supremacy as a wedge to divide communities of color. It reduces the ethnic diversity and economic challenges faced by Asians and South Americans in particular, and instead elevates us as the ideal immigrant and the American minority that should be imitated by everyone else. Supposedly we work hard, we don’t complain, we succeed through courage, we seek academic and economic excellence and we never complain, all while we are politically neutral and smile in the midst of pain. We are used to systemic racism and discrimination against blacks and Latinos. America asks, “why can’t they be ‘role models’ like us?” It should come as no surprise that Bill Barr’s corrupt Department of Justice used Asian American candidates to attack affirmative action in his case against Yale University, which has since been dismissed by the Biden DOJ. Megan Black, who runs the Commonwealth program at the Western States Center, told me that it is “moving, but not surprising” to see that some of the attackers of Asian Americans were black and people of color. She told me that the recent increase in anti-Asian violence accompanies a similar increase in anti-Semitic violence. “Blame the Jew,” she said, becomes a “disturbingly effective decoy tactic that has a track record of successfully distracting and dismantling racial solidarity efforts, leaving the true perpetrators of the power of white supremacy untouched while placing Jews and communities. Jewish women at risk. ” She says that the rhetoric “blame China”, which has become so prominent in our political discourse in recent years, is simply following the same handbook with the same results. calls on communities of color to show solidarity with Asian Americans. Omar is a black Muslim woman who wears a hijab and is a former refugee and, as such, has emerged as the ideal bogeyman to the right and a frequent target of her hatred. She was also told by President Trump to return to the place where she came from. “There is a concerted effort by white nationalists to target and divide minority communities, pitting us against each other,” she told me. “We must remember that our destinies are tied up. An attack on a community is an attack on all. ”Bui agrees, but she believes that in order to really face violence, we have to talk about the root causes and identify them. For her, this includes white supremacy, “the common enemy” of all our communities, but also chaotic political leadership, income inequality and a scarce social safety net that creates conditions where people of color, who should be allies, come together. come back against each other. With this divided Congress that is barely able to approve a stimulus package during a paralyzing pandemic, this is a difficult task. Still, in a welcome relief compared to Trump’s persistent racism, President Biden signed in late January an executive action calling on the Justice Department to combat xenophobia and hatred against Asian Americans and the Isles of Pacific. But in the end, as always, it depends on us. All of us. At the very least, we have to do our part to stand up and speak out against this growing and organized hatred, which has Republican champions in Congress and Fox News, and work to create an America where a child and an elderly Asian American can walk the streets and be fully seen and embraced as “we”. Don’t just take my word for it. Since America is currently obsessed with Dr. Seuss, it may be more useful if you just listen to Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a lot, nothing is going to get any better. It is not. ”Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top news in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.