jhameia:

I know I was gonna go all STOMP THE BITCH and UGH EAST ASIANS WHY U SO RACIST LIDDAT and RARR DIAF but the other Big Thing about this is that

there is already so much tension between black and East Asian communities, and black and Asian communities in the first place. I’m thinking anti-black bullshit like the horrid racist against Lou Jing in 2009 and other personal things I’ve seen people say on the ground, like an aunt in England criticizing black people during the London riots and my mom reacting really negatively against the idea of my dating a black (and NDN) person. 

Incidents like these hurt anti-racism. How can Asians ever expect black people to trust them when so many Asians are willing to spout anti-black racism? And without that trust, what, really, is the potential for a black-Asian alliance to fight racism? 

And when everyone else just keeps silent, from corporations to Asian k-pop fans, it’s just another message to black people that our yellow skins are more important and we really didn’t care about this anti-racism thing after all, because fighting it in our own communities by ourselves is just too damn difficult. Because omg we can totes do it ourselves right? We can totally find our own theory of resistance and enact it, and totally ignore the long Asian-black history of sharing resistance modes. We can disavow our histories of racism that’s intimately intertwined with blackness because we are Asians therefore have Our Own Unique Historical Experience with white supremacy and we can totes do it ignoring what black people have done for generations. 

But of course when we’re accused of anti-black racism, we Asians also have our own black friends right? Those friends are only there when we’re accused of racism, OH NO, WE DON’T HAVE TO SAY ANYTHING WHEN SOMEONE DECIDES THAT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO ERADICATE OUR FRIENDS FROM THE FACE OF THE PLANET.

But hey, assimilation, it is awesome, we can prove that we can consume black culture and cast aside black people along with the best of ‘em (whites).

Except, we never had to prove that. The way racism is set up, we never had to prove that this was doable at all. All we have to do is just participate in it, and it doesn’t prove diddly-squat except to reinforce the idea that the world thinks black people are inferior. So here we are scraping for attention and the embrace of white supremacy and waiting for accolades and the money to roll in for being the Model Minority, good Asian, good! and the only satisfaction we can possibly get out of this? Is that we managed to prove ourselves just as genocidal, just as colonial, as the white people we complain so much about and yet whose ranks we would desperately like to join. 

Well that’s great Jenny Hyun. I’m glad that you managed to get yourself some new friends and followers who adore you for being “so brave” in “expressing your opinion”. 

Thanks for eroding further the trust black people could have had for Asians in fighting racism, thanks for taking a shit on any solidarity we could have had, thanks for kicking aside the long history of black-Asian alliances, thanks for participating in white supremacy efforts to divide POC.

In short, thanks for nothing, you racist little fuck. I hope you get cast aside and drug in the dirt and insulted like you just did AN ENTIRE RACE OF HUMAN BEINGS. 

The thing that makes me completely uninterested in “diasporic Asian” identity/community/solidarity is that I’ve been called a black shit and the n-word to my face.

Most Asians who want to be upwardly mobile, get ahead in politics, dominate“lead” their communities, etc. are perfectly happy to deny that this can even happen. Because we’re so different from black people. Because they’re very happy to say that Asian cultures are so much better, more “civilised”, so much more “educated” than black peoples. (And I don’t just mean African-descended people, but that this anti-blackness is targeted at Aboriginal, Pacific Islander, and Asian peoples who’ve been designated and identify as black.) This attitude is pretty much replicating (in my case) Brahmin supremacy over indigenous and dalit people in South Asia, and Indian racial privilege over black peoples in pretty much every place that Indians migrated/were transported to during the British empire. Because they are so different from us. We’re practically white, just look at how well we fit in.

And if you don’t fit in, then have fun under that bus, cos nobody’s gonna even recognise you, let alone address your needs.

This happened all the time when Indian international students were protesting about being regular targets for racist violence and abuse. The “community leaders” declared it impossible because Indians are so well-regarded in Australia, and placated the cops and politicians who blamed the victims. There was a strong undercurrent of “there’s no way white people would dare treat us like they do Aboriginal people, we’re all so rich and genteel”.

This is why I completely reject the notion that people of colour can’t be racist, and why I don’t call racism perpetrated by poc ‘colourism’. This is about historically constructed structures of racial privilege, not attitudes about pigment. Asian people are absolutely racially privileged over black people, and (as we’ve seen) perpetrate systemic violence against black people (and other poc).

EDIT: This is why I personally feel that it’s more effective to start from the point of combating anti-black racism. The anti-racist activities of so many groups of people who have relative racial privilege so often descends into protecting and enhancing that privilege, or bemoaning lack of access to privilege, rather than addressing racism. There’s a lot of work to be done before “why aren’t we seen as equal with white people,” coming from Asian people, can be something other than a bid for privilege.