Asians* Unmasked

Anti-Asian scapegoating, sentiment, and hate have caused devastating psychological and behavioral challenges among Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. This case study aims to understand Asians’ and Asian Americans’ experiences of racial discrimination during the pandemic, examine their reflections on the impacts of anti-Asian racism on their emotions and coping, and explore their perspectives on teaching Asian American history in combating anti-Asian racism. The results of this study showed that the participants articulated an array of profound emotional challenges in response to the deleterious effects of personal and vicarious experiences of racism. They used varied coping strategies, exhibiting heightened vigilance and intentional proactive measures to protect themselves and their communities against anti-Asian racism. The participants also underscored the intersectionality between race and gender, highlighting the vulnerability of Asian women. Additionally, the participants advocated for the inclusion of Asian American history in the school curriculum to dismantle and disrupt systematic racism. This study reveals the emotional and behavioral effects of anti-Asian racism on Asian and Asian American individuals and communities. It illustrates the crucial role of amplifying Asian and Asian American voices in the school curriculum in combating anti-Asian racism beyond the pandemic.

The Name of Hate

Asian American graphic narratives typically produce meaning through arrangements of images, words, and sequences, though some forgo words completely and others offer an imagined “before” and “after” within the confines of a single panel. Created by or featuring Asian Americans or Asians in a US or Canadian context, they have appeared in a broad spectrum of formats, including the familiar mainstream genre comics, such as superhero serials from DC or Marvel Comics; comic strips; self-published minicomics; and critically acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels. Some of these works have explicitly explored Asian American issues, such as anti-Asian racism, representations of history, questions of identity, and transnationalism; others may feature Asian or Asian American characters or settings without necessarily addressing established or familiar Asian American issues. Indeed, many works made by Asian American creators have little or no obvious or explicit Asian American content at all, and some non-Asian American creators have produced works with Asian American representations, including racist stereotypes and caricatures. The earliest representations of Asians in comics form in the United States were racist representations in the popular press, generally in single-panel caricatures that participated in anti-immigration discourses. However, some Asian immigrants in the early to mid-20th century also used graphic narratives to show and critique the treatment of Asians in the United States. In the realm of mainstream genre comics, Asian Americans have participated in the industry in a variety of different ways. As employees for hire, they created many well-known series and characters, generally not drawing, writing, or editing content that is recognizably Asian American. Since the 2010s, though, Asian American creators have reimagined Asian or Asian American versions of legacy characters like Superman and the Hulk and created new heroes like Ms. Marvel. In the wake of an explosion of general and scholarly interest in graphic novels in the 1990s, many independent Asian American cartoonists have become significant presences in the contemporary graphic narrative world.

Guest Editors' Introduction

Between Empirical Data and Anti-BlacknessA Critical Perspective on Anti-Asian Hate Crimes and Hate Incidents Janelle Wong (bio) and Rossina Zamora Liu (bio) After a US president (with connections to white nationalists), raised the specter of Yellow Peril and white shooters engaged in mass killings of Asian Americans in Atlanta and Indianapolis in the spring of 2021, white violence toward Asian Americans was difficult to ignore. Yet one leading story of anti-Asian violence in the wake of the pandemic is of an Asian American senior, often termed an "elder" in reporting, or young woman brutally beaten by a person who "appears to be Black." This story and others like it have circulated throughout the Asian American community via viral videos. The story has been the subject of calls for attention to "Black-Asian conflict" in the recent past.1 In March 2021, for example, Vox reporters noted that "Many of the attacks that have gained widespread attention have featured Black assailants, and have threatened to inflame tensions between Asian Americans and Black Americans."2 In April of 2021, a story by an NBC local affiliate in Seattle observed that "There have also been widely circulated videos that show Black men attacking Asian Americans."3 Meanwhile, survey and crime data suggest a different trend. Empirical data, for instance, shows that, compared to their share of the population, Asian American elders (over age 65) are underrepresented among victims of Asian American hate crimes and hate incidents. While women are more likely to report a hate incident to the StopAAPIHate reporting site, multiple sources of data show that men are as likely or more likely to experience a hate incident than women. Further, the vast majority of violence against Asian Americans [End Page 387] consists not of physical assaults but of verbal harassment and "shunning." The data also shows that Black offenders make up a minority of offenders. And, comparatively, Black Americans are up to ten times more likely to report being the victim of a hate crime than Asian Americans, and this pattern persists even in places like California, where Asian Americans comprise nearly double the population of Black Americans.4 This is true despite the fact that people of all racial backgrounds indicate that they are reluctant to report hate crimes. The point here is not to minimize the disturbing incidents, crimes, and even killings that have been widely circulated as part of anti-Asian hate media coverage; rather, placing these incidents in a broader context allows them to be better understood and ultimately addressed by well-informed policy. As two Asian American women and non-Black educators of Color, we seek to better understand the disconnection between the empirical data and the many Black-Asian conflict narratives of anti-Asian violence. We note that, despite a wealth of compelling empirical data, the media arc of anti-Asian violence—historically a symptom of white supremacy—quickly turned from the China-focused rhetoric of a white president and the heinous actions of white mass shooters to a focus on Black individuals physically assaulting Asian American elders. What is disturbing about this second narrative, which we describe as the "Black-on-Asian crime" narrative, is that it eclipses systematic racism captured by data, while gaining a widely accepted place in the discourse of Black aggression as a root cause of anti-Asian violence. The Black-on-Asian crime narrative has not only (re)ignited the Black-Asian conflict trope but seems to have also illuminated an undercurrent of anti-Blackness in narratives of Asian American victimization and perceptions of safety. In this paper, we present data regularly ignored in widely circulating Black-on-Asian crime narratives around anti-Asian violence, followed by a theoretically grounded reflection on the gap between empirical data and viral videos that emphasize Asian American vulnerability against the threat of Black violence. To be clear, we acknowledge that the anti-Asian incidents shown on viral videos are not only real and abhorrent but they have understandably elicited anger and fear in our community. What we hope to illustrate is the way in which these incidents have become prominent in discourses around anti-Asian violence, even though...

As COVID-19 crisis emerged in the USA, anti-Asian racism and xenophobic rhetoric, as well as reports of hate incidents against Asian Americans, began to rise. Understanding how such a rapid increase in racist and xenophobic incidences may affect Asian Americans’ physical, mental and social health is important, as racism and xenophobia are fundamental causes of inequalities in health in general and for Asian Americans in particular. Furthermore, this understanding is critical for reducing and eliminating the barriers for Asian Americans seeking medical help during the coronavirus pandemic, which is important not only for Asian Americans’ health, but for the total US population. Thus far, research on the health implications of the social, cultural and political dimensions of the coronavirus pandemic on Asian Americans are limited, due to the conceptual and methodological challenges in studying health and health disparities among Asian Americans. Drawing from histories of structural racism against Asian Americans through exclusionary immigration policies, and post-1965 racial policies that contributed to the emergence of Asian American stereotypes as a ‘model minority’ and perpetual foreigners, this chapter discusses the sociohistorical contexts in which Asian Americans have been invisible in sociology of health research. It discusses the importance of examining the roles of racism and xenophobia on Asian American’s health in a broader contexts of the parallel pandemics of COVID-19 and racism; and provides suggestions for future research and policy advocacy.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian racism has surged, yet little is known about Asian Americans' experiences of social support. Therefore, we designed a qualitative, intrinsic, revelatory case study to examine the nature and quality of social support for Asian Americans during the first 6 months of the pandemic. Our sample consisted of 193 Asian Americans (from over 32 U.S. states) disclosing their experiences of inadequate social support. They described their support network as (1) Being unable to relate, (2) Encouraging their silence, (3) Minimizing anti-Asian racism, (4) Denying anti-Asian racism, and (5) Victim-blaming. Regarding our participants' recommendations for increasing social support for Asian Americans, a total of seven recommendations emerged: (1) Legitimize anti-Asian racism, (2) Teach Asian American history, (3) Destigmatize mental health resources to make them accessible for Asian American families (4) Promote bystander intervention trainings, (5) Build solidarity with and beyond Asian Americans to dismantle racism, (6) Increase media attention on anti-Asian racism, and (7) Elect political leaders who will advocate for Asian Americans. Altogether, our findings underscore the need for systemic forms of advocacy to combat anti-Asian racism, and shed light on the injurious nature of social support for Asian American victims of racism.

Psychoanalytic therapy has been considered ineffective for Asian Americans and clinicians in the field recommend family therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as the preferred modality of treatment. I explore factors within psychoanalysis that contribute to its negative perception as a treatment option for Asian Americans; (1) gross misattunements caused by an inappropriate use of psychoanalytic theories that claim universal application and (2) psychoanalysis’s disregard of sociocultural factors as playing an important role in individuals’ psychological make-up. When these impediments are addressed, psychoanalysis has a lot to offer Asian Americans; its regard for the sanctity of individuals’ subjectivity can be a god-send to Asians whose individuality is eclipsed in collectivistic culture. Furthermore, psychoanalytic theories offer rich potential for understanding many aspects of the Asian and Asian American experiences, including trauma associated with immigration, anti-Asian racism, and racialization in the American context. Using a case example, I demonstrate psychoanalysis’s rich potential to accommodate the full complexity of the Asian American experience.

Asian Americans are situated in a triangulated role in a black-white racial hierarchy designed to legitimize white supremacy (Kim, 1999). However, little is known about the lived experiences of Asian American triangulation and even less so in the context of anti-Asian racism. The present study was initially designed to examine anti-Asian racism at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, in a sociopolitical climate described as a "racial reckoning," our study evolved to capture the process of racial triangulation and the interplay of anti-Asian racism and antiblackness. Based on the online responses of 201 Asian Americans (from over 32 U.S. states), four themes emerged to showcase the ways in which Asian Americans suffered from and recapitulated racial oppression: (a) anti-Asian racism is overlooked in the black-white racial discourse, (b) anti-Asian racism is not taken seriously, (c) anti-Asian racism is also perpetrated by people of color (POC), and (d) anti-Asian racism is deprioritized in the presence of anti-Black racism. Regarding participant recommendations to combat anti-Asian racism, our second research question focused on areas of convergence with dismantling anti-Black racism. Two key themes emerged: (a) foster Asian American pan-ethnic solidarity and (b) build and strengthen cross-racial coalitions (POC solidarity and White allyship). Altogether, our study descriptively captured the process of racial triangulation to showcase the manifestation and recapitulation of anti-Asian racism and antiblackness. While Asian Americans suffered as victims and perpetrators of racial oppression, they also recognized the need to dismantle white supremacy with racial solidarity, coalition-building, and advocacy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Mental health care among marginalized populations in the United States

Since the mass outbreak of COVID-19 in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, racist attacks, harassment, and hate speech towards people of Asian descent have drastically increased in the United States and many other parts of the world. Drawing on the social-ecological perspective, this chapter examines anti-Asian racism and discrimination experienced by Asians and Asian Americans, their responses, and the impact that such experience has had on their lives in the United States during the pandemic. The study sample consisted of 249 adults from 20 states who are primarily Taiwanese, Chinese, and of other Asian ethnicities. The chapter also examines approaches that governments and nongovernmental organizations have taken with regard to the rise of anti-Asian racism amid the pandemic. Results have implications for policy, practice, and research.

Abstract: Anti-Asian violence during the pandemic has been largely framed by mainstream media as an individual response to the pandemic and reduces anti-Asian violence to "hate" toward Asians, therefore justifying increased use of law enforcement and carceral punishment of individuals committing hate incidents. Additionally, some members of the Asian American community advocate for policy changes and collection of hate crimes statistics that rely more on carceral punishment. Other members of the Asian American community argue that hate crime statistics and legislation do not provide systemic changes necessary to address anti-Asian violence. Specifically, Asian American abolition feminists are challenging mainstream narratives that isolate violence to conversations of racism alone and calling for the abolition of the carceral system that is historically and inherently responsible for violence against Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities and women. This paper addresses carceral solutions to anti-Asian violence and the opportunities of abolition feminism as an Asian American feminist praxis to challenge violence against Asian Americans. Focusing on survivor-led movements and responses to violence in its multiple forms, I discuss how abolition feminism may be necessary for redressing anti-Asian violence. I also consider how Asian American abolition feminism can achieve truly liberating, transformative solutions and healing to violence through an abolitionist and decolonial feminist praxis that centers and engages with Indigenous Pacific Islander communities.

The early months of 2020 witnessed a spike in anti-Asian violence in the United States, which many commentators attributed to President Donald Trump’s racist remarks calling the coronavirus the ‘Chinese virus’. This essay offers a historical lens through which to understand anti-Asian racism within the current conjuncture of the COVID-19 pandemic and US racist state violence. It argues that anti-Asian violence should be seen not merely as episodic or as individual acts of violence targeting Asian peoples but as a structure of US settler colonialism and racial capitalism. The first half of the essay examines this history; the second half focuses on Asian American activist organisations that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, including the Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence: Organizing Asian Communities and Nodutdol, to illustrate their abolitionist visions of justice and how they are finding space to enact these visions in the current moment. The essay ultimately argues for the need to approach the struggle against anti-Asian racism expansively so as to encompass the struggle for decolonisation and Black liberation.

Prior studies have shown that Christian nationalism, an ideology combining Christian identity with American identity, is a powerful predictor of public attitudes toward racism. However, less is known about how Christian nationalism might affect Asians and Asian Americans’ racial attitudes, who have increasingly been the targets of anti-Asian hate crimes since the COVID-19 pandemic. This study surveyed 356 Asian and Asian American adults residing in the US. Among them, a stronger belief in Christian nationalism was associated with the perception that anti-Asian racism had stayed about the same or decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Surprisingly, this Christian nationalism effect on perceptions of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic was more salient among Asians and Asian Americans, who perceived a greater importance of Asian solidarity. Finally, Asians and Asian Americans who held a stronger belief in Christian nationalism also tended to deny the existence of White privilege.

Reviewed by: White Pearl by Anchuli Felicia King Jenna Gerdsen WHITE PEARL. By Anchuli Felicia King. Directed by Desdemona Chiang. Studio Theatre, Milton Theatre, Washington, D.C. December 13, 2019. In the final moments of White Pearl, a smartphone and fried chicken flew across Studio Theatre’s stage. Desdemona Chiang’s staging of Felicia Anchuli King’s play literally left Washington audiences with the gross impact of globalization. The production explored the violent and unchecked reach of globalization through the perspective of diasporic Asian women. Chiang and King demonstrated Asian women’s influence on the global economy, provided a nuanced dramatization of diasporic Asian women, and highlighted Asian American theatre’s ongoing global turn. The play follows six Asian and Asian American female employees of Clearday, a Singaporean cosmetic company, as they furiously address a leaked skin whitening cream advertisement that uses blackface in a poor attempt at humor. This public relations nightmare becomes intertwined with their own interpersonal conflicts and cultural values. An online debate ensues about the ad’s level of offensiveness, which creates chaos among the women and illuminates the internalized misogyny, intra-racism, and anti-blackness found across Asian communities. King’s satirical commentary on global capitalism and the beauty industry (which she based on a racist 2016 ad for a skin whitening cream from a Thai cosmetic company) fills an important gap in Asian American theatre and is a much-needed contribution to Western theatre. Although King is not Asian American, her collaboration with an Asian American director invites critical discussions of Asian American theatre and its global trajectory. In 1993, Asian American director Roberta Uno stated that Asian American theatre has changed from a fine, nearly invisible thread to a sturdy one, stretching across the Pacific and acting as a dynamic cultural continuum. Asian American theatre scholars such as Josephine Lee and Daphne Lei have challenged the geocultural boundaries of the genre. Lee has analyzed Asian playwrights of Hawaii, many of whom do not identify as Asian American, while Lei has examined the work of Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang in a transnational context. Scholars have questioned the productivity of exclusively using cultural and national boundaries to define Asian American theatre because it relegates it to an ethnic or minority theatre within American multiculturalism. The occasion of Studio Theatre’s White Pearl allows for a reevaluation of Asian American theatre’s development within the context of globalization, where there is more opportunity for actors and flexibility around representing Asian-identifying people. White Pearl extends the cultural continuum first established by Asian playwrights of Hawaii and the US mainland. Not only does King undercut assumptions of Asian homogeneity, but she also shows Asian and Asian American women as intermediaries of a Black/White paradigm. The collaboration between the Chinese American Chiang and Thai Australian King deepened this continuum by magnifying how Asian women exist in a troubling, liminal state between perpetrator and victim of racism and sexism. Click for larger view View full resolution Jody Doo (Sunny Lee), Diana Huey (Built Suttikul), Shanta Parasuraman (Priya Singh), and Resa Mishina (Ruki Minami) (l-r) in White Pearl. (Photo: Teresa Wood.) In this production, “Clearday” was projected onto a gray wall upstage and framed by a plexiglass double door. The projection signified the company’s pledge to “make skin clear and bright,” and the wall emphasized the women’s racial in-betweenness, positioning them in a moral gray area. This door acted as an insightful signpost, informing the audience that this pledge was present with every step they take. The set displayed the performers’ reflections and shadows, embedding them in the [End Page 347] building like phantoms. The office became their haunt, and a haunting reminder that Asian women have unconsciously become subject to ideology and are complicit in upholding whiteness as the ideal standard of beauty. Under Chiang’s direction, White Pearl highlighted the problematic inbetweeness of Asian women. Previously, Asian American plays like Julio Cho’s BFE and Diana Son’s R.A.W. have critiqued the racism underlying Western standards of beauty and cast Asian women as victims, but King shows Asian women as perpetrators and complex figures in a warped industry. Indian...