Standing in Solidarity With AAPI
The senseless murders that took place in Atlanta last week are not unique nor are they a singular event to the violence experienced by the Asian community in the United States. What happened should not come as a surprise to anyone, considering it was just one of the latest examples of anti-Asian violence that has stained our history over the centuries. It has been incubated by the tenacious and deep-rooted flames of xenophobia and white supremacy in the United States.
Even though the increase in anti-Asian violence seemingly coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic and the reechoing of the former 45th U.S. President’s references of COVID-19 as “kung flu” or the “China virus,” the racist fear-mongering we are witnessing isn’t anything new. We saw it in the Chinese lynching of 1871 when 20 Chinese Americans in Los Angeles were murdered in cold blood, when the immigration restriction legislation of 1875 prohibited the migration of all Chinese women because they were “lewd and immoral,” and when the U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Japanese Americans into internment camps.
In 2020, anti-Asian violence rose by 150%. The massacre that happened in Atlanta was the water boiling over. It was a hate crime because it targeted a single minority demographic, simple as that. When the Sheriff’s spokesman, Jay Baker, explained the Atlanta massacre away by saying that the murderer “was having a really bad day,” it set the precedent for communities across the U.S. to refuse accountability for rising anti-Asian violence.
As much as I have grown to love St. Lawrence and call it my home, we still have a long way to go when it comes to critically analyzing and drawing attention to the discrimination and white fragility present on campus. We should be amplifying the voices that have been marginalized, while fostering the spirit of Laurentians who are there for each other in their darkest times. Since arriving on campus, a SLU student ‘22 shares “I have been called a “chi**” half a dozen times.” The isolating feeling of being Asian at SLU can be better understood by another current student at SLU ‘21 who said, “I have friends on campus who have a thing for Asian women. We think it’s all fun and games to have a fetishization until it’s taken too far.” The feelings of “othering” that many of our minority students feel is often accompanied by feelings of invalidation of their experiences with racism and white supremacy. According to another SLU student ‘23, “As Eastern Asians, we aren’t considered diverse enough because we are model minorities but we also experience the effects of white supremacy.”
To my Asian brothers and sisters, I see you and I stand in solidarity. I think I speak for many of us when I say that I am sick and tired of the voices and experiences of my community being ignored by the media and not being amplified on campus, that I am more than frustrated that the BIPOC communities are, more often than not, the only ones spearheading efforts toward justice and equality while also being the very people who have to trudge through the mire of white supremacy.
Although working to be anti-racist is a lifelong journey and a commitment that does not always happen overnight, let us acknowledge that it is a privilege to even say that these things take time. The inability to change our mindsets and actions in order to address the urgent need to eliminate white supremacist thinking on our own campus is a reflection of the privilege of our positionality. We say these things take time, but it’s the precious seconds, hours and years of all our BIPOC and AAPI brothers and sisters that is at stake. As a community, let us step up to the challenge of radicalizing our approach to address white supremist thinking on campus. Let us ask ourselves what are the ways in which we can truly show up. The climate is shifting fast and we are no longer tolerating the things that used to be so easily swept under the rug, so you can choose the temporary comfort of your own privilege or you can pull up a seat at the round table.