Dear Somebody:
Stuff has been...awfully racist lately.
I don't really know how to respond to it or help. Sinophobia is real and scary. Before, I just read about it once in a while, but now it's everyday and even my own friends or people that I met are experiencing it. It just feels a lot closer to me than it used to and I feel the effects of it. The fear and frustration in my community of friends mostly. It's palpable. In a way, this kind of reminds me of Black Lives Matter. I remember how heard and validated I felt when I saw a sign reading this in a window or on a t-shirt. So, in solidarity on this blog, I simply just feel the need to say that Asian Lives Matter. Racism is real and scary. I don't fully understand the intricacies of racism for Asian people or those racialized as Asian. I don't know any of the politically correct terms and I have heard from limited perspectives (Tufts friends and friends in the south). I have picked up one book about what it's like to be Asian in America and to be honest I don't even remember the title.
I've read:
Memoirs of a Geisha
Girl Overboard by Justina Chen
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki (Graphic novel)
Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester
But that's the limit of my reading about living in Asia, being Asian, or Asian culture. I learn through my friends and what I come across when I'm trying to learn languages (a favorite hobby of mine). I've read some other stuff, but it was required reading. I hope that Asian people read more about/from Black people and vice versa. I hope Asian and Black people can be friends in a context beyond niche interests and transracial/culutral experience. Like I wish more people were just genuinely interested in each other and concerned with mitigating the struggles we know other people face.
It's times like this when I'm reminded of how there are people out there besides me, who don't look like me but still have the same fears. Not only do they have the same fears, they face similar violence, trauma, and invalidation of their experiences. I really don't know what to do to support my friends right now. I don't know if they are retreating inwards and if that's what's best for them or if they are just afraid to reach out. I don't know if they know they can reach out to me or to the people that they want to reach out to (that sucks: wanting to reaching out to someone but not knowing whether they are available to you, fearing that you will cross an emotional boundary, concern that "all your friends" have these emotional limits and maybe you have the wrong friends when you can't talk to them about race, not actually knowing how to communicate to your friends or people generally about race in an appropriate manner, not knowing if you can cry to your friends).
I don't know. I think if I were Asian right now, I would be so sad and scared it made me angry. Or so angry it made me sad and scared. Like I was during the height of Black Lives Matter protests. The scary and weird thing about now is that everyone is worried about an epidemic, so there aren't protests in the streets to counteract the violence happening right now. And questions come up like, if the violence was this prevalent but the coronavirus wasn't, would we see protests? Will we see protests after the height of the pandemic? Why or why not? What can we do to counteract violence right now? How can we support the vulnerable and stand against this violence now?
I don't know how to write about this, how to write about race. It has been bothering me, but fears of accidentally speaking for a race or speaking out of ignorance originally deterred me from saying anything about race. Race is so hard to talk about and I guess I want to say that even as a person of color (I'm black), I still think racial fragility affects me and there isn't just "white fragility". I once heard "race is a social construct" and I guess within that premise lays an inherent fragility that perhaps not only makes it hard for Whites to ally meaningfully with BIPOC but also presents different facets of BIPOC communities with difficulties forming genuine solidarity with one another.
More on COVID and race later as I read more about the subject. Right now, I am just writing based on the vibes I get from my network and from the headlines I see on facebook, but one thing I can say is that this pandemic is affecting many communities of color and that the hate crimes occurring in the United States connected to COVID19 are not just in the form of violence and racial profiling but also in the form of environmental and medical neglect. I'll be sure to list sources as I write more about it. I just wanted to write a post to acknowledge fears and concerns around sinophobia/xenophobia, relate to it a bit, and perhaps start a conversation about what can be done to help protect and uplift people. I hope friends and family are finding restorative practices as well as actionable steps to combat the stress and trauma of racism that can affect you mentally and cause you to spiral. Sending love and prayers your way.
peace,
Faith
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