Look at this nonsense. The headline is
“How Black People Can be Strong Allies to Asian Americans Right Now.”
"A big part of how to be allies in this moment is advocating with us,” said Alvina Wong, of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network
www.nbcnews.com
Thousands of hate incidents against Asian people across the country
have been documented by advocacy groups in the last year, ranging in severity from
spitting to the
unprovoked push of an 84-year-old Thai American man in San Francisco who died of his injuries a few days later. These incidents have prompted the renewal of conversations about security in Asian American neighborhoods, privilege, solidarity and even anti-Blackness in response to the violence.
That last element, activists say, devalues the
decades of coalition building and allyship between Asian American and Black communities. But Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of
Stop AAPI Hate, notes that efforts to create a racial wedge between such groups only empowers the white supremacy that makes racist violence possible.
The racism overall against Asian Americans is another form of white supremacy. As Asian Americans dismantle the racism directed toward us as outsiders, we’re partnering with African Americans in dismantling how they’re racialized and oppressed,” Jeung said. “In a lot of Asian American issues, we become the wedge group to divide and conquer people of color rather than focusing on our unity and trying to dismantle the overall system. We need to dismantle white supremacy together.”
This is not lost on organizers and activists who have worked to combat this narrative for decades. With that, here are a few ways for Black people to practice solidarity and allyship with Asian American communities.
It’s important to recognize how acts of hate rely on a group’s history of neglect, oppression or violence, organizers said. Through education it becomes easier to recognize bigotry as linked to a larger history of violence, said Alvina Wong, of the
Asian Pacific Environmental Network.
Education is also key to resisting the “
model minority” myth, and cuts down on the idea that Asian American communities are monolithic, experts point out. There are a host of disparities within these communities. For instance, Vietnamese Americans have a much higher poverty rate than Japanese Americans,
according to a 2017 report.
Try to learn history and learn about Asian American histories and cultures, the migration patterns of immigrants and refugees, and why we have an Asian population in the U.S. to begin with,” Wong said. “From there, look at the history of Asian and Black solidarity and joint struggle … the civil rights era and even the early joint labor movements. I think people could do their due diligence to seeking it out and learning it up.”
Mutual aid is a centuries-old radical political practice that emphasizes solidarity and interdependence to meet people’s basic needs. Mutual aid happens when everyday people come together to meet one another’s needs, like providing food and
domestic violence resources, without relying on government power structures.
“Mutual aid is really beautiful in that it really recognizes that if I have something I can give, someone who needs it can benefit and we can all be in community together,” Wong said. “Last year, through the pandemic was a really big showing of how mutual aid is so effective, especially when our government isn’t taking care of us or investing in us and the resources that we need.”
Several
mutual aid efforts have popped up across the country in response to anti-Asian sentiment and Covid-19’s devastating impact on Asian American communities. In Oakland, California, hundreds of people have volunteered to escort fearful elders on walks and errands around Chinatown. Asian and Black
creatives have raised more than $150,000 for Asian American advocacy groups in California that serve several Asian American communities through everything from food delivery to legal help. In New York, a coalition of activists have
filled refrigerators with food in Manhattan’s Chinatown.