Anti-Asian Racism Resources

How can we be more anti-racist? We will provide resources to combat stereotypes, myths, and other manifestations of anti-Asian racism. If there is anything you’d like to learn more about, please share through this anonymous form.

Becoming an Ally

Allies make a conscious effort to align themselves with targeted groups and respond to these groups’ needs, and being an effective ally often means learning how to help use your privilege to support marginalized groups and amplify their voices. Becoming a successful ally is a continuous process: keep yourself educated, research topics, and learn from your mistakes.

Most importantly, an ally shows up in ways that matter. We often see examples like taking the time to educate your peers, signing petitions, attending protests, etc, that are amazing ways to show up but it is also important to keep in mind that sometimes the most meaningful thing can be just reaching out and asking if someone is okay or checking in to see how they are holding up. It is just as important to reflect on our community, by taking responsibility for your actions, and putting the work in to be there for the people you know who are impacted. The following content on being a good ally is not meant to be exhaustive, but to help you start figuring out how to shape what your allyship looks like.

Guide_of_Allyship

Common microaggressions towards Asians and Asian Americans and how to avoid perpetuating these behaviors

In the penultimate AAPI Heritage Month post, we are sharing a resource on common microaggressions that Asians and Asian Americans face in academia and society. The slides below groups common microaggressions that we have experienced into broad categories, explains what each suggests to the receiver of the offensive behavior, and ways to reword potentially offensive statements or to reframe microaggressive behavior. At the end of the slides, there is a list of further reading that can help broaden one's understanding of various issues.

"Microaggressions are defined as the everyday, subtle, intentional - and oftentimes unintentional - interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups." Often microaggressions are born out of one's implicit (unconscious) bias and frequent exposure to these statements and behaviors can affect mental health, increase stress levels, lower productivity, etc. By bringing visibility to these issues, we hope that this becomes a helpful resource to foster a more inclusive, supportive, and safe climate and culture for all within our department.

Microaggressions_AsianAmericans_AAPIHM

You can download the pdf here.

The Myth of the Model Minority

The stereotype of the model minority paints Asian Americans as exceptional examples for other minorities to follow as a successful assimilation story. It categorizes Asian Americans as naturally smart, hard-working, self-reliant, and as obedient citizens; in other words, Asian Americans were successful as minority groups because they adopted ‘traditional American values’.

US immigration laws and geopolitical relations serve to define Asian immigrants into groups based on desirability. An extension of the Civil Rights movement, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 decreased restrictions on Asian immigration, while prioritizing family-based immigration and heavily emphasizing Asian immigrants of high professional and educational backgrounds. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in certain Asian groups leading in annual household income and education levels. US immigration policies' selectivity for Asian immigrants shaped the stereotype of the model minority, and not because of the adherence to ‘traditional American values’. Asian Americans internalize an unrealistic stereotype, and although it seems to be complimentary at a glance, leads to an underestimation of racism and an overestimation of the privilege and success of a monolithic group of Asian Americans.

Though the idea of the model minority has percolated throughout American history, the term was coined in the 1960’s to describe the Asian Americans as the pinnacle of success despite marginalization in the US. In his essay, William Peterson pits ‘problem minorities’, like black communities, against ‘successful’ minorities, like Japanese Americans, who ‘overcame’ their oppression. This thinking unfairly compares the struggles of Japanese Americans to those of Black Americans, thus, the model minority myth creates tension between Asian and Black communities. By creating these tensions and elevating specific groups of Asian Americans above other Asian Americans and other minorities, the myth of the model minority erases the diverse experiences, cultures, and struggles of minority groups through a dangerous assimilation narrative.

Lack of representation

Despite the fact that there are roughly 20 million Asian and Pacific Islanders living in the United States, we still remain one of the most underrepresented groups in entertainment, sports, politics, and many other fields. The few examples of representation we do have show a disproportionate favoring of East Asian and Indian stories over other groups, such as Southeast and West Asian Americans that contribute to a significant proportion of the Asian American population. Oversimplification of Asian groups creates differences within groups and highlights the accompanying socioeconomic tensions and privileges associated with certain groups.

This lack of representation also creates a false image of what being AAPI looks like, and most often that experience is characterized solely by East Asian or Indian narratives. More often than not, the history of the Pacific Islands are completely neglected, as we learn even less about their histories in school than we do Asian history. Thus there is also a certain discomfort in even the term, AAPI, one that was created initially to combat the use of the term “oriental,” which has both colonial and racist connotations, but now becomes unwieldy with the over and underrepresentation of certain groups. There is also the fact that in our lives, we have heard time and time again that “we all look the same” and could be considered to be part of the same group, despite centuries of cultural differences and geopolitical conflicts between groups that have created enormous amounts of diversity among us.