By: Denise Kyeremeh (’23), Staff Writer
In elementary school, we used to celebrate Lunar New Year with an annual assembly. My Chinese friends would dress up and perform dances for the whole school to watch. Asian students made up about 40% of the student body at my elementary school. Many of them were first-generation Americans like me. We shared the experience of having parents who were navigating American culture for the first time, making the rules up as they went. I sometimes felt more understood by them than the other Black kids at my school. Unfortunately, there are still separations between Asian American and Black American communities in the United States, although both contribute to American culture in important ways.
Both Asian and Black hands built much of the United States. The West and the expansion of the transcontinental railroad can be credited to Asian immigrants. In the South, cotton catapulted the U.S. into a major economic world power. The U.S. would not be where it is today without the contributions of Black Americans and Asian Americans, yet have experienced violence and oppression because of their minority status. The histories of both minority groups differ, but there are many similarities of the oppression they face in America. The infamous 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka resembles Tape v. Hurley. In 1885, Chinese immigrants Joseph and Mary Tape sued a primary school principal who refused to admit their daughter because of her ethnicity. The exclusion of stories like the Tape’s and the white-washing of American history contributes to the distance between Asian Americans and Black Americans.
The oppression and stereotypes that Asian Americans suffer are described as more positive than those of the Black community. The model minority myth, for example, stereotypes Asian Americans as being perceived as academically intelligent and headed toward financial success. While we can acknowledge the benefits of those stereotypes, we can also assert the damage it causes the Asian American community. Being stereotyped as smart and well-mannered can lead to better employment opportunities and positive assumptions about character or work ethic which many Black people do not have. But the myth creates damaging expectations for Asian Americans and isolates them from other minority groups. Asian students are expected to achieve high levels of academic success, attend prestigious universities, and enter lucrative industries. According to an NIH study, the model minority myth is closely related to poor mental health outcomes in Asian American youth. The study also indicates that Asian American youth are less likely to seek counseling because of negative perceptions of psychological treatment in the Asian community. For the Black American and Asian American minorities to come together in support of one another, we must seek to understand each other’s cultures and the way they impact our experiences.
The coronavirus pandemic has illuminated racism against the Asian American and Black American communities in different ways. For the Black American community, protests against unjust racial attacks by police received multicultural and international support. Almost as if the stay-at-home orders finally gave people time to watch and listen to the cries of the Black community, we saw a racial reckoning unique to its time in 2020. But we also saw how quick people were to scapegoat and discriminate against Asian Americans because of the coronavirus.
The Stop AAPI Hate organization has been mobilizing a movement against Asian American hate incidents and promoting preventative, community-based measures since 2020. The March shootings at three Atlanta spas which killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women have sparked profound conversations about violence against Asian Americans. In recognizing the ways Asian Americans are perpetually othered as being foreign or un-American, we must also realize that their ways of protesting may be different than ours. Asian culture may often discourage Asian Americans from speaking out about their struggles which could impact the way they protest injustice in their communities. We must actively support the Asian community in ways that are most beneficial and natural to them to be effective allies.
One of the most powerful tools of white supremacy is to separate and pit minority groups against each other. Yet, we are united by sharing the terrifying experience of being hunted because of the color of our skin and the roots we carry from our ancestry. We don’t overcome it by being divided but rather by being each other’s champions. When we unite, our powerful voices only get louder. A win for the Black community should not be a defeat for the Asian community and vice versa. In a world that is quick to demonize us because of our race, we must seek to call out our communities for oppressing others and support our brothers and sisters from different minority groups in our workplaces, classrooms, and out on the street.
NIH study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296234/#R1
Tape v. Hurley: https://www.history.com/news/chinese-american-segregation-san-francisco-mamie-tape-case
Atlanta shootings: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/17/us/shooting-atlanta-acworth
