The murder of the eight individuals, six of whom were Asian women, ignited a national conversation around anti-Asian hate. Yet there seem to still be much ambivalence about what truly motivated the shooter’s rampage.
Can we really call it racism when the shooter said it wasn’t racially motivated? Can we call it racism when he clearly said the rampage was because he was struggling with sexual addiction? Perhaps it’s not a race issue at all, but an issue of addiction, of mental illness, of gun control? Implicit in these doubts is the ultimate question: are Asian Americans just making a big deal out of something totally irrelevant? Are we making a big fuss about nothing?
Much ink has already been spilled on why the hypersexualization of Asian women is indeed racism and I encourage us to read the words of women who have articulated this issue more eloquently than I can.
Instead, I’d like to ask a question in return: does it matter what the shooter says his motives were?
Must we wait until someone else comes to kill more members of the community, put his hands up and openly admit “yes, I hate Asians and that’s why I killed them” before we can be moved by the plight Asian Americans facing discrimination in this country? Must the AAPI community, because we don’t want to stir up trouble, continue to put our heads down and gaslight ourselves?
There were 3,795 nationally reported incidents of anti-Asian hate from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021, though those reports are likely still a tiny fraction of the true number of incidents. Since the pandemic, hate crimes targeting Asian Americans have spiked by 150% in major US cities, and are on the rise worldwide. And the reality is we’re tired of being verbally harassed, sneered at, spat on, tired of watching on TV another elderly member of our community be brutally assaulted in broad day light.
As I sit with the events of this past week, and process my own grief and ambivalence, I reflect on the number of times in my life I’ve felt unwelcome as an Asian American woman and questioned whether or not I was making a mountain out of a mole hill.
The first time someone called me a racist slur was when I was in third grade. It was another child in my class whom I hadn’t met until that day. Having just immigrated to North American and not yet fluent in speaking English, I didn’t understand what was happening. But I remember the teacher immediately catching the slur and asking him to apologize. “It’s ok,” I tell him as he awkwardly stuttered through his apology. “It’s ok,” I say, because I didn’t want him to be any more uncomfortable.
Fast forward to medical school. I am taking care of a middle aged veteran in clinic. “What is your ethnic background,” he asks me as I examine his feet for swelling. I make a quick mental calculation on whether it’s worth rebuffing him, saying that my ethnic background has no relevance to the care I am providing. I decide it’s not worth the fight. “My family is from China,” I stand up, “but let’s take a minute to talk about your heart failure.” “Ah Chinese,” he smiles knowingly, “my nephew is married to a nice Chinese girl.” I feel sick inside. Perhaps I should have drawn my boundaries more clearly. It was my fault for miscalculating.
It’s Spring of 2020, the pandemic well underway in the United States. I am medical resident in Seattle taking care of patients in the first US epicenter of COVID-19. I feel symptoms of a sore throat and cough and know that I have to get tested before going back to work again. It was a time when masks were sparse and public masking was still discouraged. I didn’t want to be a source of contagion while I walked to get tested at the hospital. I put on one of my few spare masks. Will it draw even more attention to the fact that I am Asian? I had heard about incidents in New York and San Francisco where Asian Americans who were wearing masks were verbally and sometimes physically assaulted. Ironically their wearing of a mask, to protect those around them, was precisely what made them the target of abuse. And it felt so silly that in the height of a pandemic, a physician who wanted to protect those around her would be fearing for her own safety. But I prayed on that walk to the hospital that nothing would happen to me as I wore my mask.
While the gasoline of a global pandemic has fueled an ugly flame of Anti-Asian hate, the wick of anti-Asian racism roots deep. My anecdotes are but a few of the innumerable incidents that Asian Americans have experienced but have chosen to remain silent about, so as to not cause trouble, so as to not make others uncomfortable.
Yet it is our very silence that makes us easily erasable in the conversation about race. It is our invisibility that is literally killing us. That’s why further attempts to silence our grief are so enraging. I am proud of the AAPI community for speaking up. I am proud of the heads rising up to shout “that’s enough.”
So we can dissect all we want whether or not the Atlanta shooter’s actions were truly racially motivated. But I think it doesn’t matter. Six Asian American women are dead and their families are grieving. The Asian American community is grieving. This incident has opened up a deep wound that has been festering long before it. I think our time is better spent listening to those who are no longer interested in staying silent.
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A few ideas for getting involved (please leave a comment if you have other resources):
-Share your own story! Whether it’s in public or in private. And listen to the stories of others. Beat back the Asian Monolith Model Minority narrative.
-Check out Resources for supporting victim families in Atlanta and other AAPI community initiatives
-“Stop ASIAN Hate” Bay Area Rallies
-Be engaged in local policies around the AAPI community. I’m inspired by Actor Daniel Dae Kim testifying in front of congress and looking super fine doing so.
