In order to understand how the legal framework for labeling hate crimes has been especially hard for crimes against Asians and Asian-Americans, we’d have to examine the history of violence and racial injustice against Asians in this country. It’s not easy to put into words the kind of violence and racial injustice that Asians have experienced. We haven’t had a singular moment in history where we have collectively, as a nation, stood up and said enough is enough.
And there have been plenty of moments that gave us opportunities to be disgusted and outraged as we witnessed unfettered violence against Asians unfold, yet our outrage never found a collective voice. We didn’t find it when Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American mistakenly assumed to be a Japanese worker who stole American jobs, was murdered; we didn’t find it when Asian students at Syracuse were denied services at Denny’s and later attacked; we didn’t find it during the Chinese Massacre of 1871; and we certainly didn’t find it when Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps during World War II. In fact, the only times we really talked about the internment of Japanese-Americans were when that narrative was used to pit Asians against other minorities by using the Asian-American experience of discrimination to illustrate how Asians, despite their hardship, have been able to rise above their circumstance and find “success” in America. This narrative would later become the myth of the “model minority.”
Since its conception in the 1960s, the “model minority” narrative has been pervasive in informing the collective consciousness of the American perception of Asian-Americans. The narrative is one that views Asians as a monolithic group of people who are hardworking, uncontroversial, cooperative and smart. Our invisibility is a direct result of the impact of casting such stereotypes on Asians. We are only recognized as long as we fit neatly into this mold, but when we don’t, we become irrelevant.
Asians are smart but they can only be engineers, programmers or any in professions that involve a proclivity for math. But when measured against any accomplishments that are open for interpretation, Asians are often dismissed as too “safe, ordinary, unadventurous and uncreative.” While others are taught to dream, we quietly learn that we can never be writers, actors, artists or athletes. We see less of ourselves represented in these fields and our experience becomes less relatable to the general public on an emotional level and on a human level, making it easier for others to view us as the perpetual foreigner.
It is equally important to note that the image of Asians as the “model minority” has always been juxtaposed against more insidious portrayals of Asian men as the villainous and sneaky “Fu Manchu” and Asian women as the “exotic flowers” and “dragon ladies.” This historical representation of Asians in the American consciousness is important to recognize in order to understand why, when we see over and over again an Asian grandmother being attacked in an Asian neighborhood by a person of a different race, it is hard for Asians to accept that it could be anything but racially motivated.
The burden of proof to label a crime a hate crime is very high. Most cases that involve Asian victims can only be prosecuted as hate crimes when the perpetrators have been caught saying something specifically racist before or after the attack. Data shows overwhelming incidents of elderly Asians being attacked in urban cities on both the East and West coasts and in areas that are heavily Asian populated. While it is true that the perpetrators of these crimes may have picked these older Asian folks because they are easy targets — weak, fragile, possess limited English language skills and less likely to fight back — these factors separately could apply to any old person. But we see these incidents in very specific neighborhoods and happening almost exclusively to Asians. An elderly person who isn’t Asian would be able to go to the supermarket without fearing that he would be beaten to a pulp or get burned alive while taking the trash out at night. The key difference here is Asians seem to exist in an America that is alienated from the rest of America and where we are viewed as foreigners who are less likely to receive the kinds of protection and support afforded to everyone else. Our cries for help have gone unheard.
When we reflect on these crimes, we know that we are targeted because of the stereotypes that are assigned to us. A white man can justify his killing of several Asian women by claiming that he is a sex addict and therefore can escape being prosecuted as a hate crime perpetrator because the legal system failed to recognize that race is connected to the way Asian women have been objectified and exoticized. Asians aren’t afforded to use stereotypes about Asians the same way that other marginalized groups can use stereotypes about themselves to inform when a crime has been motivated specifically by those stereotypes. We can be targeted for being small, timid, quiet and when we are, we have no recourse to say that “I was attacked because all of those stereotypes have deep connections to the very essence of my racial identity.”
And finally, we can’t talk about violence against Asian-Americans without recognizing the ugly history of how we have been both victims and perpetrators of hate by and against other minority groups, specifically the Black community. Our relationship with the Black community has been tumultuous at best, starting with the “model minority” narrative which used the success of Asian-Americans to justify very racist policies that included redlining and housing mortgage practices that discriminated against Blacks and allowed for White flight into suburban areas while creating slums and violence in urban cities. Asians have been the beneficiaries of structural racism that have kept Blacks from being able to secure financing, which opened up opportunities for Asian-owned businesses to grow and operate in Black neighborhoods. We have furthermore made it impossible for Blacks to compete by controlling the supply chains to most of these businesses. Our communities have been fighting for the same small piece of the pie. But instead of working together to end racial inequality, we have kept ourselves insulated. We are afraid of them. We treat them like criminals. In short, we discriminate against them and we do it openly and unapologetically.
But the truth is more complex than simple racism involving one race hating another because of the difference in the color of their skin. Many Vietnamese refugees, particularly the third wave of Vietnamese immigrants, were relocated in urban cities of the East and West coasts where there were scarce resources and support for them. They were placed in existing poor communities where they had to compete for limited resources provided by the government. Asians in these neighborhoods lived in fear of being robbed and harassed and the truth was, these incidents happened very often and created an atmosphere of fear and hatred. So, while many Vietnamese who opposed the Black Lives Matter movement were motivated by racist rhetoric, I think it’s important to understand the context of how that animosity has developed historically and continues to perpetuate today.
We need to talk about violence against Asians and we need to do it openly and honestly. The ways in which we have been spat on, verbally abused, physically assaulted and even murdered have left us stripped of our humanity, while the rest of the
country stood by and watched in silence.
Ngoc Cong
East Williston
