Many people with brains are shocked at how Asians went from being the “model minority” one year to being moving targets the next. I’m not. Even as a kid I was well aware of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two as well as Chinese Exclusion Acts and the late 19th Century massacres of Chinese Americans, of which (until very recently) virtually nobody in America wanted to discuss in a public forum. Other incidents–such as the Watsonville Riot of 1930 and the Bellingham Riots of 1907 (against Filipinos and South Asians, respectvely)–I’m just becoming aware of.
This whole Asian “model minority” myth was precisely that: a myth. That’s a very banal way of putting it, but what else can be said? Asian-Americans became a “model minority” only recently–well after World War Two, and after the Civil Rights Movement began to destroy that other “model minority”–the old-fashioned, humorous, humble “Southern Darky”–in the eyes of mainstream white America. Prior to World War Two, the average Asian American was perceived as a social menace by his mere existence. Economically, he was not much better off than the average African or Latino-American, and was further down the social-economic totem pole than he was on the cusp of the so-called Reagan Revolution. In fact “in 1960, Asian American men, who were born and raised in the United States, had much lower earnings than white Americans with similar years of schooling and experience”(Duleep and Sanders, The Economic Status of Asian Americans Before and After the Civil Rights Act).
Asian Americans became the “model minority” of post-1965 America as long as they toed the line (the thin white line) and accepted (or pretended to accept) the white American system of reality. Asians were considered “acceptable” as long as they voted Republican, were “hard workers” (read: hard at work reinforcing white American hegemony) and kept their heads down (read: being passive and “not complaining” about their lot, the same way those pesky nigs and PRs (Puerto Ricans) keep on doing in New York and elsewhere). Asians appeared—publicly, anyway—to accept their own double consciousness or at the very least, projected their own racial anxieties onto racial groups “beneath” them. Radical activists such as Yuri Kochiyama, and groups such as the Asian-American Political Alliance (which coined the term “Asian-American” as opposed to “Oriental,” which was another version of “Negro” or “colored”), “I Wor Kuen” or the Red Guard Party existed, but generally not commonplace.
When Soon Ja Du shot up Latasha Harlins (over a bottle of juice) or when Peter Liang defended himself by shooting up Akai Gurley, well—white America found all that perfectly acceptable. Why wouldn’t a hard-working, go-getting American defend him or herself against “Negroes”? (On the other hand Mohammed Noor shooting Justine Damond in Minneapolis was not: Noor was still a youknowwhat.)
(Below: a threatening letter written in 1930, from the Watsonville Riot; right: another threatening letter written this year)
The hollowness of the whole “model minority” myth was made evident after the COVID-19 epidemic. That COVID-19’s spread in the United States is primarily the fault of lazy whites who refuse to put on masks (as well as the Trump regime’s refusal to deal with the reality of COVID-19) mattered little. As usual. The epidemic became a clever alibi to attack Asians regardless of nationality. For whites, of course, the hidden alibi was Asian-Americans questioning their status on the American totem pole.
For the African-American and Latino-American, however, the alibi to beat up on Asians was slightly different. Blacks were and are knee-jerk reacting against Asian anti-Black racism (endemic in Asian-owned restaurants, nail salons, shopping centers and Asian-American minds/spaces in general). But when I see clips of Blacks terrorizing Asians they often look to me like a bunch of black-faced rednecks, pantomiming the same honky-shines they see in their Asian-American counterpart. In one of the most recent incidents, a middle-aged negro screeches at an Asian woman who tells him to put on a mask. “Smile for this, Chink!” the negro snarls, as he flips her the bird.
Alas, with incidents like the one above, the white mainstream media has decided (once again) to make Afro-Americans the face of anti-Asian racism. Note how in the above incident, the perpetrator’s face (as in several other incidents) was made public immediately. White liberals, who are no better than their conservative counterparts at the end of the day, did not mind (in their obscene hypocrisy) using their Asian tokens to call out African Americans and our supposed “hatred of Asians.” Yes, there are plenty of Afro-Americans who despise Asian-Americans; one sadly sees this playing out in the streets of North America every day; the above examples (including this most recent brouhaha) speak for themselves. But to paraphrase James Baldwin, in all seriousness, Black Americans are anti-Asian because they are anti-white; they rightfully perceive Asianness as being in closer social, economic and cultural proximity to whiteness, and as a result, they generally are–at the very least–as deeply suspicious of Asian-Americans as they are of anybody who isn’t, to them, recognizably Black. (The last emphasized statement is important, because many Black faces aren’t trusted, especially if they are foreign or of a lighter hue.)
All of which, of course, is not to excuse this New Black Fascism. Whether black-faced MAGATs or drunken hoteps, collectively it’s just reactionary black (bourgie) nationalism carried to its natural extreme. Nationalism begetting ultra-nationalism begetting chauvinism begetting bigotry begetting–fascism. Black fascists have taken the inherent (and sadly justifiable) paranoia of mainstream Black America and fashioned a new identity out of it, calling themselves #FBA (if they are on Papa Tariq’s side) or #ADOS (if they are on Quisling Carnell’s side) and other things. Since these clowns are more or less as racist as their reactionary, petty-bourgeois, Trump-supporting (or Hillary/Sanders/Biden-supporting) Asian counterparts, one should not be surprised to find them riding the crest of the Yellow Peril 2.0 wave. (Three decades ago, these same petit-bourgie coloreds were riding an anti-Semitic/anti-Korean wave with the same emotional lack of nuance, reacting to the same ugly responses from their equally fascist Jewish and Korean counterparts.)
The Biden Administration–in contrast to Trump dragging his paws last year–has been quick to step up to the plate and lobby for “anti-racist legislation.” But to be honest, the swiftness of Biden’s response to these racist attacks on Asians is because Asians, frankly, are much higher on the American totem pole–meaning, they are considered more acceptable to the white world than Blacks, and share ethnicity with nations that are either world powers or on the verge of becoming world powers. If it had been Senegalese, Haitians, Papuans (or Native Americans) being beaten up in New York or San Francisco, nobody would have given a shit.
Yet on second thought, neither white liberals nor white conservatives–to say nothing of white fascists–really give a shit about what is happening to Asian-Americans. After 21-year old incel Robert Aaron Long, white, Christian and sexually confused, murdered six Asian women in suburban Atlanta (plus two others), his massacre was lamely excused as a result of Long’s having had “a bad day.” (Equally lame excuses have been used to justify many other white moral failures, including the Charlottesville incident of 2017, the Dylan Roof Shooting and naturally the Capitol Insurrection of 2021.)
Michelle Malkin, who (all appearances notwithstanding) is really white, lay all the blame for these attacks (in her usual crude, clownish and stupid way) on “thugs of color“–niggers, of course. Please note that this is the same goofy bitch who has been the valve on the shrillest trumpets of pro-white bullshit for the past quarter-century. Michelle Malkin, who blamed the internment of Japanese-Americans on the Nisei themselves; Michelle Malkin, who goosesteps with the goddamn Groyper Army–recently exposed by the ADL as being a “white supremacist, anti-Semitic” organization, and whose own extreme right views essentially make her an enabler of domestic terrorism. (Years ago Margaret Cho, comedian and social commentator, felt compelled to come to her “defense”–if only to point out that Asian-Americans can be just as reactionary as coloreds like Thomas Sowell, Condoleeza Rice, Jesse Lee Petersen or the grandaddy of them all, Lawrence Dennis, the man whom Life magazine called in 1941 “America’s No. 1 Intellectual Fascist.”)
This kind of lunacy is equally common on the pseudo-left wing spectrum as well–especially in hip-hop. As Andrew R. Chow pointed out in an article three years ago, “Black and Asian artists too often use hip-hop to reduce each other into stereotypes at a time when genuine solidarity is needed more than ever.”
“I love the Orientals,” spouted one of these toothless old white ethnics,* presumably some Italian guy who had hated “mulignans” his entire life–why, he probably didn’t want to know. He “loved” the “Orientals” because he saw them (the Chinese, of course) as one big race of Uncle Toms. “Moulies” and “spics” were a threat, no matter how hard-working, Republican or bourgeois. One can rest assured that during World War Two, this same fool was probably running through the jungles of Burma after the “Japs” (or were the “Japs” coming after him??). Today his junkie grandson is running through the jungles of New Jersey, Washington state, Oregon, or some other God-forsaken hole shrieking his white ass off about “China virus!” and “Fuck China” and all that other rubbish. In fact, one should not be surprised to find his grandfather right there with him, brandishing an axe-handle or a machete, screaming about “fucking Asians.”
Don’t even ask why such things happen. The answer is obvious. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the COVID-19 crisis, because as one can plainly see, “Yellow Peril” hysteria dates back at least 150 years. In fact possibly thousands of Chinese were massacred in the United States between 1870 and 1900. The official tally naturally is much lower, but sadly this is a universal phenomenon: when an oppressor massacres an oppressed group, one of the first things they do after the massacre is cover up shit, play down numbers, sweep embarrassing incidents and outrages under the historical rug. In my opinion the number of Asians (mostly Chinese) massacred between 1870 and 1900 is as high as the number of African Americans officially lynched between 1880 and 1950. (I said officially lynched. The true numbers are far higher, as they almost always are in these instances.) American “Yellow Perilism” was so intense that it even infected people north and south of its borders: for instance, the Torreon Massacre of 1911, in which over 300 Chinese were butchered at the hands of lynch mobs, occurred not in benighted Jim Crow America but more “tolerant” Mexico.
This might sound far-fetched, but in my view one of the real reasons why Asian-Americans are being attacked–other than emotional fallout from COVID-19 quarantining, and an irrational fear of Chinese World Domination–is because in the past 15-20 years, a younger generation of Asians has emerged that is considerably more outspoken about American racism, and far more willing to call out the hypocrisy of white Americans calling them a “model minority” while at the same time hypersexualizing Asian girls (the more boyish the better), projecting onto Asian women their own unresolved conflicts with white American women.
The young, conscious Asian is no fool. He (or she) clearly sees that “Model Minority” and “Yellow Peril” are two sides of the same coin, one that’s being flipped all too easily. The conscious Asian sees “Yellow Fever” as being a symptom of “Yellow Perilism” just as he can now see that Negrophobia can’t exist without Aunt Jemima, or to be more precise, Cardi B and Candace Owens. (Again, two more sides…of a Cadbury Easter coin.) The conscious Asian can and will say something about the sorry state of affairs of his country, regardless of how ambivalent he might be towards other non-whites, particularly Blacks. However, everyone still assumes that no matter how indignant, even furious, young Asians get about the shitty state of affairs in the United States, they are less inclined to violently fight back against racist attacks than any other persecuted “minority” group.
*Johnathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brookyln Against Liberalism, Harvard University Press, 1985
A Black Writer in Berlin 