A foreign feeling at home
Local Asian Americans seek support as they come under attack
Elaine Wong Viscovich doesn’t like to call too much attention to an incident in which she was harassed with anti-Asian remarks at a Lodi grocery store last March.
“I had my cart full of stuff, and this young man started screaming at me,” she said. “And he used some words that I hadn’t heard for a long time. I very quietly smiled at him and said ‘gee, I’m so sorry you’re having such a bad day. Are you in a hurry? Why don’t you get in front of me if you need to.’”
Viscovich, a native San Franciscan of Chinese descent, said while the defamatory comments directed at her were hurtful, she was hurt more by the fact that other shoppers in the store turned away and ignored the incident.
It was even more bothersome because Viscovich had received an email just a week prior describing an incident at a Los Altos Post Office where a Chinese American woman was barraged with insults from a white woman.
However, in that incident, another bystander began recording the harassment on their phone. The video ended up going viral, Viscovich said.
“I think people saying ‘hey, that’s not good behavior and you need to back off ’ would have been really supportive,” she said.
“That doesn’t take a whole lot, but it depends on the degree or severity of the verbal attack. For all you know, he may be mentally ill. But that sign of ‘that’s not appropriate behavior’ (should be given).”
Viscovich was asked by The Breakthrough Project for Social Justice to share her experiences of racism this week, as the Lodi organization publicly denounced the recent acts of violence and intimidation
against Asian Americans and people of Pacific Island heritage across the country.
The Breakthrough Project was founded in 1998 after a cross burning incident on the Tokay High School campus, with a mission statement to respond to hate crimes in Lodi.
The organization has held an annual Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial event, and has had a close relationship with Lodi Police Department, which has referred possible hate crime victims to them for support.
With the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last summer, several protests and marches were organized to bring awareness to the incident, and it made Breakthrough Project shift its focus on crime beyond Lodi.
“We started thinking it’s appropriate for us to start speaking out against all hate crimes wherever they occur,” member Lusandra Vincent said. “Especially in Lodi, where we have friends and family, and a large part of Lodi is Asian American and Pacific Islander, so that just seemed really close to home to us.”
On March 16, a white Atlanta man opened fire on three spas and massage parlors in that city killing eight people. Six of the victims were Asian women.
In addition, an East Sacramento business owner has had his gelato vandalized several times, and he believes it is simply because he is Asian.
Breakthrough Project member Ellen Tanouye, a Bay Area native of Japanese descent, says she was also the target of racial bias in Lodi as she walked her dog shortly after the election of Donald Trump as president.
“I was walking the dog near Legion Park at Vine and Hutchins streets,” she said. “It was a green light, so I had the right of way and I was crossing with the dog. There was a woman in a gold car. I was crossing, and I was almost halfway across. She looked at me and then she turned into me. I ran back to the curb. It was intentional and she saw me. That scared me.”
Tanouye said history is repeating itself, and it was really important for older adults like her and those in the Breakthrough Project to support some of Lodi’s younger residents who have organized demonstrations over the last year denouncing anti-hate rhetoric.
“Maybe we’re not on the front lines, but we can provide examples and the history of how this keeps happening again and again,” she said. “And it makes this story richer, and it makes it clear that we’re not done with this yet. It keeps happening again.”
Tanouye’s wife Suzie Endow is a Lodi native, a Breakthrough Project member and also of Japanese descent. Endow said anti-Asian sentiment is not something that has just recently appeared in America.
She recalled a time when her father — a U.S. Army veteran who served in World War II — took his uniform to a local dry cleaning store when she was a child. The store owner told her father that “they don’t serve (insult) here,” she said.
“I was in the third grade and I had another classmate call me a (insult),” she said. “And that was surprising. We weren’t the closest of friends in that class, but that was the first time I experienced it.”
Breakthrough Project president Nancy Martinez said it seems that many people of color, experience small, not-so-blatant instances of racism on a daily basis that builds up tension and fear in their communities.
“It’s physically detrimental to constantly be in that state of tension and stress all the time,” she said. “I think a lot of people don’t think they’re racist because they don’t do something blatant, and they don’t quite understand that the things triggering these ‘micro-incidents’ are built into the system.”
Endow, Viscovich and Tanouye said people have to have some self-confidence to want to fight back against hate, but it’s difficult in some cultures where children are conditioned to not make waves and blend in with the community.
“After the war, my parents didn’t speak Japanese, unless they didn’t want (the children) to understand,” Endow said. “I think it was just, ‘blend in, don’t make yourself stand out any more than what everybody already sees you as. They never spoke about (racism), unless they were speaking about it to someone else, that’s when I would say ‘wow, I never knew that.’ There was a lot I never knew they experienced.”
In the last year, the three women have said things have changed for the worse for the country’s Asian population, given former president Trump would refer to COVID-19 in a manner derogatory directed at China, such as “kung-flu” or “the China virus.”
Tanouye said in the last year there have been times she has been afraid to leave her house. If she does, she remains aware of her surroundings.
“I think the extra caution is there,” Viscovich said. “It does affect your daily life, and I guess what bothers me is when your Asian friends send you a note that the lady that got knocked off the subway is now brain dead. How could somebody do something like that to another human being?”
The three women are disappointed it took a mass shooting in Atlanta to bring awareness to antiAsian sentiment, however, they don’t believe the hatred will disappear anytime soon, even with a new presidential administration.
They said one of the only things the community can do to stop hate speech or actions is to educate each other.
“A lot of times it’s so subtle, it doesn’t look like they mean anything out of it,” Viscovich said. “And if you can joke around and bring them back to reality and why its’ hurtful ... but if you say it too hard to them, there’s just no going there.”
“We started thinking it’s appropriate for us to start speaking out against all hate crimes wherever they occur.”
BREAKTHROUGH PROJECT MEMBER LUSANDRA VINCENT