How Tenn. senators contribute to Anti-asian violence in nation
My family and many others who are of Asian descent in America are at risk because of the vile and inciteful rhetoric used by politicians such as Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty.
My wife is Chinese-american, my three children are mixed Caucasian Chinese, my grandchildren are mixed Caucasian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mongolian.
All Asians, just because of their physical appearance, now fear verbal and physical attack by nationalist, white supremacists neighbors and senior elected politicians.
In Nashville we find cases of Asian school children accused by their classmates of carrying the coronavirus, of parents taking their child out of school because a Korean boy is in the class and Vietnamese restaurant workers mistaken as Chinese, then called out by customers for spreading the virus.
How did we get to this point?
Tweets by Blackburn and Hagerty vilify Asian people
Consider our Tennessee U.S. senagenocide tors. Marsha Blackburn tells us that the entire Chinese population is criminal, and has been forever: “China has a 5,000-year history of cheating and stealing. Some things will never change...”
And then there is Bill Hagerty.
The national watchdog, Stop AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Hate, records that in the recent election seven candidates issued tweets that used anti-asian rhetoric, and all were Republican.
Three candidates — Donald Trump, Tom Cotton, and our own Bill Hagerty — contributed the most tweets (93%) utilizing sarcastic, stigmatizing antichina rhetoric such as “kung flu,” “Wuhan flu,” “China flu”, seemingly unconcerned that this language gives a free pass to their white supremacist supporters to demean my family and the millions of other Asian families who thought they and their ancestors had immigrated to a country that honored hard work and civic engagement.
Heated rhetoric in politics is normal; denigrating cultures is not
I’ve lived in China and Japan, traveling extensively throughout Asia.
In all that time I have never heard one word uttered by an Asian politician denigrating the entire population of this country. Attack politicians? Yes. Attack government policies? Yes. Attack the history and people of a country in mass? No.
I’ve never heard Chinese politicians indicate that centuries of American culture can be summed up as a history of cheating and stealing.
Of course, they could find examples of that if they focused on slavery, of the Native American population and internment camps for Japanese during World War II.
But to denigrate an entire civilization, and by inference its diaspora, with thoughtless and uninformed pronouncements, I’ve not seen that. I’ve not felt that as a Caucasian American living in multiple Asian cultures. Ever.
Will the March 16 Atlanta shootings change senators’ tune?
Our politicians seem to tie much of their rhetoric to a concern for spies. Are there Chinese spies in the United States? Of course there are.
Are there American spies in China? Of course there are.
Are there spies in the United States from Russia, Israel, Europe? Does anyone doubt this? Do we send spies to those countries? Of course.
Are our Tennessee senators vilifying a whole history, a whole ethnic population from those other countries with stereotypical, denigrating racist language? No. Just those who look different from them.
Which begs the question: After multiple attacks, including the recent Atlanta murders, will our politicians be held accountable for their part in spreading anti-asian sentiment against my family and millions of others, or will they continue to embolden their core supporters through vile and inciteful language?
Edgar A. Porter, a native of Maury County, is Professor Emeritus of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan. He resides in Nashville, Tennessee where he is an international educator and writer.