Black-Asian solidarity in the wake of today’s racist events

titotibok:

jhameia:

titotibok:

After ESPN called Jeremy Lin a “chink” in an article headline and KPOP songwriter Jenny Hyun argued for genocide against black people, race scholar Dr. Sarah Jackson tweeted about things that blacks and Asians in the US share:

On the real though there is a lot of love and history between Black folks and Asian folks no matter what these individual a-holes do/say.

So I will now tweet some facts in the name of Afro-Asian love. #spreadlovenothate

(click on the link to read more!)

I have many feelings about this.

On the one hand, yes, absolutely, we need to remember the histories of black and Asian peoples working together in cooperation, that we benefited from relationships with each other long before white supremacists came to fuck shit up and before many Asians started drinking the whiteness Kool-Aid. We need to remember those histories because they give us a point of reference to move forward with, and also to help us envision what solidarity looks like.

But.

I also feel it’s necessary to recognize the systemic privilege that Asians benefit from, even as it’s from a Model Minority position, especially those of us who are of East Asian descent (and as ardhra reminded us yesterday, those of us who are upwardly mobile and affluent). Not just within the U.S./Canada, but elsewhere as well, where in Asian countries, black peoples face racism, and colorism/shadism further complicate and drive in the divides. 

There’s room for both sets of conversations, right?

^^ Yes to THIS!

I really don’t have much to say about Jenny Hyun. There’s nothing to be debated and nothing to be added or adjusted; what she said is wrong, and if it was the public backlash that led her to return to treatment for her mental illness, so be it. Education is the most appropriate response.

(via midori-fairy)

10:38 am  •  20 February 2012  •  139 notes
#racism #jenny hyun #jeremy lin 

Deadspin: What We Talk About When We Talk About "This Jeremy Lin Nigga"

Yellow Mamba. Fortune Rookie. The Linja.

Oh boy. Obviously, it’s completely impossible to talk about Jeremy Lin without talking about race. Mindful of the other Asian players who’ve played in the NBA, I think it’s still safe to say that Lin is the Asian player who, through a combination of circumstance, luck, timing, and some monster performances, has captured America’s admittedly infantile and famously fickle imagination.

But the true testament to how rare a phenomenon Jeremy Lin is in the NBA is this: NBA fans have almost no vocabulary with which to talk about him. As with any Asian person in popular culture, people’s first resort is a torrent of pan-Asian racist gibberish: If it has anything to do with any country, food, product, concept, or stereotype involving Asia, the rule is basically, “Make any association or equivalence you want, whatever….”

The case of Lin, however, brings out another issue unique to basketball, summed up fairly succinctly in this Tweet, from @itsGQ: “Where tha fuck this Jeremy Lin nigga came from??”

And with that, we have a bit of unpacking to do.

I have to admit that I’ve been pulled in by Linsanity, or at least reading every news article and thinkpiece I come across. In part it’s because I’m looking to groan at a writer who gets it wrong when talking about him and/or his race (the same impulse that keeps me reading the comments sections of online news stories). Despite being neither Taiwanese nor American, I definitely have felt the “one of our own” pride that many have described, which is maybe what keeps me reading.

What I’m really hoping for, I think, is that this is the beginning of a dialogue about how we talk about Asian people, and especially North American-born Asian people. This piece demonstrates that the current vocabulary is fairly limited, and that for Asian-Americans, in the public mind, what comes before the hyphen is the only thing that matters, so much so that it’s a surprise when what comes after the hyphen is demonstrated to any extent. As Edmund Lee writes at Capital New York:

The connection Luo describes [in the New York Times] is real and it’s one I feel too, but I also can’t help but feel it’s a reaction to the reaction as much as anything else. We Asian Americans are pointing to the TV screens and the Twitter streams and saying, “See, see, as long as you see what I know, then we’ve won.” Meanwhile, really, I know that Jeremy Lin is as distinct from me as anyone else on the court.

We are not Jeremy Lin. Rather, the triumphal narrative here is that the rest of the world now has some small clue about our own miscellany, our own idiosyncrasies and beliefs. We are not all Tiger Mom cubs. We are not so uniform and so blind to feeling and emotion and that we can’t swagger and sway. We’re not merely silent strivers. Some of us can dunk and drive and smile like everyone else.

11:12 am  •  15 February 2012  •  4 notes
#race #racism #north america #jeremy lin #identity #not kpop