HOW WE ARE PITTED AGAINST EACH OTHER
The recent violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), including the fatal shootings of six Asian women in the Atlanta area, is extremely heartbreaking, devastating and terrifying. The perpetrators of these violent acts are not only often White men, they are also often detained without incident even though they are armed, while unarmed people of color such as Breonna Taylor are shot by police without notice in their sleep. This racial violence against people of color — specifically against Black and Asian people — is the representation of decades of discrimination maintained by American xenophobia and oppression.
It reminds me of racial triangulation, a concept created by UC Irvine political science professor Claire Kim, which argues that Asian Americans “have been racialized relative to and through interaction with Whites and Blacks,” and that Asian and Black Americans have been pitted against each other by systems of White nationality that benefit from excluding others.
Concepts such as model minority are the manifestation of racial triangulation today and maintain such structures of racialization and racially charged violence. It imposes a rigid set of “respectable” roles upon Asian Americans under the guise of a compliment while simultaneously demeaning Asian Americans who don’t follow the accepted roles and other races such as African Americans who are then compared to the model minority, creating a social hierarchy upheld through discrimination.
The claim that all Asians experience success through hard work dismisses the possibility of anti-Asian sentiments and violence. It downplays the racism and discrimination experienced by Asians through minimizing their struggles and becomes a form of erasure, especially in Asian minorities such as Hmong and Nepalese Americans, who experience higher poverty rates and lower education levels than the median Asian in America.
Furthermore, the myth demeans Black Americans by claiming that hardships (read: racism and oppression) can be overcome with hard work, and are caused by lacking the necessary work ethic and not by systems of structural racism.
This success is not because one group works harder — it’s simply because Asians in America have lately experienced less labor market discrimination than other minorities.
It tires me to think of how we are continuously being put in relation to one another in a way that highlights alleged flaws to create discord. It is not a zero-sum game — one race’s loss does not put the other race ahead in some contest, nor should races be “taking turns” being discriminated against.
Racism and violence through oppression have been utilized to push Asian and Black people to the side, perpetuating a divide between people of color. The model minority myth is used as a racial wedge between Asian and Black people and creates the idea of one monolithic Asian or Black culture across all space, generations and time that can be packaged into one form, undercutting the vast diversity within each population to maintain racial schemes built around White privilege.
There is no simple solution to fight against these systems that sow violence and discrimination. Arguments for increased policing inadvertently disregard the fact that not only is American policing heavily entrenched in racial biases against people of color, but increased police presence would also further the already heavy-handed policing against people of color.
There are many steps to take before equity can emerge. We must call out racism while holding others accountable, and unlearn the model minority myth. It is through teaching current, older and future generations the reality of the systems of oppression in America that we can begin to dismantle them and then tackle systemic racism in health care, education and politics.
We must also continue establishing solidarity between communities of color to fight the systems of discrimination that keep communities separate, and understand that these are issues that have deep roots in our country.
The current racial violence is a brutal reminder that this is our America today, but this landscape is not new. A year has passed since the revitalization of the Black Lives Matter movement, yet no meaningful change through policies has been made. It frustrates me that even though there are many proposed interventions against racial violence, these crimes that reflect America’s deep history of racial animosity are likely to continue — it feels like our calls are falling on the deaf ears of the very same people who we are trying to address. It will take time to process our traumas; the cycle of violence has to be broken and justice restored to communities of color who have been relegated to the margins for far too long.