Local Asian Americans seek to unite after tragedy
Bigotry around Albany prompts fear, vigilance
Dibao Zhou didn’t used to feel unsafe.
But amid the pandemic, he’s been accosted several times with anti-asian slurs.
“The atmosphere is not friendly to me,” Zhou said. “I do feel personally that it’s getting more frequent. When I’m on the street, I don’t feel as safe as before.”
Now Zhou, a semiconductor professional who lives in Halfmoon, approaches even ordinary tasks with an additional layer of alertness, and he’s taken to rolling up the windows in his car.
Anti-asian bias has long gurgled under the surface, according to local community members of Asian descent.
But the racism and xenophobia that has been simmering in
the coronarvirus era exploded earlier this week when a white gunman was arrested and charged with killing eight people, six of them Asian women, at Atlanta-area massage businesses earlier this week.
“There’s something rising,” said Jennifer Zhao, an adjunct professor at Russell Sage College. “It’s very concerning.”
The sense of unease that even creeps into nature preserves, where Hope Cheng wonders if she’ll be verbally confronted or attacked while hiking.
“I don’t feel safe now,” said Cheng, a research scientist who lives in Bethlehem.
John Aung, a semiconductor industry worker who lives in Saratoga Springs, questioned the prolonged impact of the national tenor on his children.
“We need to acknowledge and prevent this from
happening,” Aung said. “As Asians, we need to acknowledge we have equal rights.”
“As a first-generation American, I never feel as if I’ve belonged here, and I’ve always been viewed as a foreigner,” said Sue Lee, a pastry chef who lives in Niskayuna.
Anti-asian attitudes have waxed and waned throughout history, with cycles of intensified rhetoric pinned to the political climate tending to peak when people feel threatened, said Angie Chung, a sociology professor at the University at Albany.
The cycle began when Chinese emigrants ventured to California for the 1849 Gold Rush, continuing into World War II and well into the 1980s amid the economic rivalry between the U.S. and a rising Japan.
The fear surrounding the coronarvirus pandemic is just a continuation of falling back on xenophobia when confronted with perceived threats.
“This idea of a threat from Asia is really not a new one,” Chung said.
Over time, Asian-americans were used as a pawn by the U.S. government who furthered the “model minority” stereotype in an effort to drive a wedge between Asians and other ethnic groups, said Mary Szto, a teaching professor at Syracuse University College of Law.
Now Szto believes the U.S. is entering a new era of Asian exclusion, one many believe has been fanned by former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican officials’ repeated attempts to underscore the connection between China and the coronavirus, often using racist terms as a descriptor.
As a result, anyone who looks Asian falls victim to scapegoating and becoming a possible target of radicalized behavior.
“This is coming right from the top of the nation’s body politic, and that narrative permeates into society,”
said Aliya Saeed, a psychiatrist and community activist who lives in Niskayuna.
The anti-hate group Stop AAPI recorded over 3,800 incidents over the course of the past year.
The Asian community has historically been fragmented, Zhao acknowledged. But now in the wake of tragedy, local APPI members hope to steer their anger and fear into durable relationships and a climate of activism similar to the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We want allies,” Zhao said. “Whether you’re Black, Latino or white, as long as people are willing to learn and make a stand against racism, that’s where we start.”
Raj Benki, former president of the Tri-city India Association, said the Indian community stands with East Asians who have been targeted and shares in their outrage and grief.
It’s a situation India’s Sikh community knows all too well, having been targeted
in the aftermath of Sept. 11 attacks under the mistaken belief that they were Muslim, he said.
Now it’s time to band together, Benki said, and set aside the historical rivalries that have often exacerbated tensions, including China’s ongoing border dispute with India which has heated up in recent years.
“I think we should start something like Asian Lives Matter,” Benki said. “We should not bother with what’s happening back home because once we get to the U.S., America is our home.”
Asian culture is not a monolith, and Chung acknowledged deep-rooted historical tensions, including between China, Japan and Korea, have proven to be stumbling blocks in the past.
Yet sustained pan-ethnic coalitions tend to come from the second generation of U.S. immigrants, most of them collegeeducated.
The murder of Vincent
Chin in 1982 by two autoworkers upset over Japanese automakers’ entry into the U.S. market was a major turning point, she said.
But more work remains. “You can’t really get things changed unless you have allies,” Chung said. “But it will take several generations.”
For now, solidarity would be a good start.
That includes speaking out and coming to someone’s defense when hearing a slur, or if someone engages in racist behavior — even if unintended or bad attempt at humor.
“The biggest defense where this needs to happen is countering the narrative, and the narrative is the poison spreading through our communities,” Saeed said. “And unless somebody stands up and fights the narrative, it’s almost inevitable that these attacks keep happening.”
Anti-asian rhetoric is also often infused with
sexism and misogyny, which erupted in the Atlanta Spa shootings, Chung said, and Asian women are often targeted because they’re seen as sexual objects.
“The depiction of these women is embedded with a lot of racial and sexual stereotypes,” Chung said.
The number of attacks is almost surely unreported. While Stop AAPI has accrued
an ongoing database of incidents, experts say the number is likely higher due to engrained cultural attitudes about declining to speak out.
Chung acknowledged a cultural element of not wanting to air what can be perceived as dirty laundry.
But attacks also carry a blend of fear, anxiety and hopelessness.
“It’s difficult to react to it,” Chung said. “When you’re victimized, it’s difficult to think about it, much less report it.”
A recent series of assaults have also targeted the elderly, including a fatal assault of a 84-yearman in San Francisco.
Members of the AAPI community are tentatively assembling a rally on Monday in Albany’s Academy Park, an event organizers hope will continue to drive awareness and display unity.
Saratoga Springs-based attorney Ronald Kim is well-acquainted with racism, having not only experienced racist comments
growing up in the U.S. but also during his time in public service, including a stint as the city’s public safety commissioner and 2009 run for mayor, a race marred by racist commentary on local news websites.
At one point, he had to ask a local newspaper to scrub references to thennorth Korean leader Kim Jong Il from the comments section of their website.
Slurs like “Dictator Kim” and “Kim Il Ron” still rub him raw, he said,
as well as the superimposed image of his head on a dog’s body.
“If any good comes out of something terrible like this, it’s people who say they need to speak up,” Kim said.
Stzo, the Syracuse professor, believes the U.S. must directly confront its often-tumultuous relationship with Asians as part of a national reconciliation process.
While Congress eventually apologized for the Exclusion Act and World
War Ii-era internment camps that locked up American citizens of Japanese descent, they were low-key affairs.
What’s needed are national holidays and events celebrating Asian-american history.
“We need to tell the story of the past and celebrate the heroes,” Stzo said. “But we have to tell the story of anti-asian violence. Unless we tell the story, and admit the story, we’re going to repeat the story.”