Let’s eviscerate the Model Minority Myth
Officer Tou Thao and George Floyd
(Part 2 of 2 ) Asian Americans, Anti-Blackness, and COVID-19
This post used to be called “There Is No Solidarity in Silence.” But I’m just over it. People are dying, communities are being terrorized, black folks are being murdered for the 400th year in a row, and we are having sedate little reflections about the model minority myth. Let me say from the jump, I want Asian Americans to rise up and eviscerate the model minority myth. Literally disembowel it. Model minority is such a sanitized phrase for standing silently by in the face of evil and violence. Let’s be done with it. I want to see a generation of Asian Americans unequivocally, mercilessly, and radically rip this framework to shreds. A generation that refuses to conform to it, and refuses to be complicit to it in any way. If I could sum this blog post up in a sound, it would be a primal scream after ripping out the guts of my mortal enemy.
So let us continue.
“And we are either helping to facilitate death or radically dismantling the systems of evil that long to domesticate us. ”
I wrote most of this blog post a couple weeks ago, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to post it. Then today I saw the headline about Officer Thao’s role in the murder of George Floyd, and I knew it was time. This terrible incident is a painfully graphic snap shot of what happens when Asian Americans align with white supremacist systems and conform to the model minority myth.
He is standing by as a white police officer publicly murders a black man.
Thao doesn’t put his hands on George Floyd, but what he does is a wicked complicity. His proximity and silence make him culpable.
This moment perfectly exposes why Asian Americans,* must reject every form of white supremacy, anti-blackness, and the model minority myth. It leads to death. And we are either helping to facilitate death or radically dismantling the systems of evil that long to domesticate us.
The Multi-Headed Beast
White supremacy is like a multi-headed beast. It is always the same beast, but it comes with different looking heads. One head comes at Native Americans through genocide, erasure, and settler colonialism. Another head comes for Black folks through the school to prison pipeline, state sanctioned violence against Black bodies, and voter disenfranchisement. Another head comes for Latinx folks through narratives of being illegal, dangerous, and stealing jobs. Recently the beast incited violence against Asian Americans, but for a long time it was using the more beautiful and sultry head of the model minority and that lulled many Asian Americans into a sense that the beast was in fact a friend. But whatever head we see, it is all the same beast, patriarchal white supremacy wrapped in predatory capitalistic skin.**And it always leads to death.
In these last few months I have seen many Black folks who do anti-racist work speaking up against anti-Asian racism. But I have felt the ambivalence, because they aren’t sure that we will show up for them in the same way. And I understand, because frankly, most of us haven’t.
As I see Asian Americans, and more specifically Asian American Christians, make calls for solidarity against anti-Asian racism, my main thought is, “Where have you been?” There has been an aching silence from many Asian American communities and pulpits about racism. However, when violence comes for our aunties and grandmas, and for us, it turns out we will speak up about it. And we want others to speak up about it. Because that is what solidarity looks like. If this season of anti-Asian racism has woken you up to the realities of white supremacy, then good. If it is waking you up to how violent and unpredictable and dehumanizing white supremacy is, then take it as a gift and WAKE UP.
WAKE ALL THE WAY UP!
Actually Love Our Neighbor
You don’t have to be Christian to say, “Stop being a racist towards me and my people.” But a Christian ethic says, I must care as much about the racism my neighbor experiences as the racism that I experience. ( Love your neighbor as yourself.)
Theologically many East Asian American churches have aligned with white theology, which justifies and perpetuates white supremacy, anti-blackness, and settler colonialism. If this isn’t you, then don’t trip. I’m talking to my family who is staying silent. That silence ends up supporting narratives that black folks must somehow be guilty or deserving of the violence they are experiencing by police. That Latinx folks deserve the violence of being separated from their children. And that Native folks deserve the violence of militarized police action. These narratives always justify whiteness and dehumanize people of color. Too many Asian American pulpits stay silent as black folks are experiencing violence.*** Just as Officer Thao stayed silent.
“Too many Asian American pulpits stayed silent as communities were experiencing violence. Just as Officer Thao stayed silent. ”
Solidarity
Fortunately the opportunities to stand in solidarity abound, because even in a pandemic, white people got time. Since my first post there has been a major campaign to bring the men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery to justice. There is another to amplify the story of Breonna Taylor. Yesterday we watched Amy Cooper lean deep into her white womanhood by weeping tears when asked to put her dog on a leash, and weaponizing her white woman status by leveraging the police against a black man TRYING TO WATCH BIRDS!!! She was playing with that man’s life. And today we see a police officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck as he begged for breath. All this as a disproportionate number of black people are dying from COVID-19.
And we must refuse to stand adjacent to whiteness as it perpetuates violence and evil because we think it will get us into Harvard.
My Dream
“ They wanted to domesticate us with this bullshit, let’s overthrow it instead. ”
There are a lot of terrible things happening during this pandemic. My hope is that some good things will also be birthed in this season. I hope that Asian American Christians will fully destroy the model minority myth. I hope we slash it to bits with our refusal to stay silent, our unflinching resistance to white supremacy, our commitment to creating a contextualized theology, and our refusal to be used as pawns in white hierarchies. I hope that we will speak courage and healing to each other so that can we imagine new ways to be part of the movements for justice and liberation. I hope that this snapshot of Officer Thao will devastate us, grieve us, transform us, catalyze, mobilize us, and embolden us to become so much more than people waiting for white approval and permission. They wanted to domesticate us with this bullshit, let’s overthrow instead.
* I speak as a Korean American, and primarily to the East Asian American experience.
**There is a great, and more academic, discussion of this in Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes’ book I Bring the the Voices of my People.
*** These posts are specifically about anti-blackness, and anti-asian racism. I know there are many other layers to being anti-racist.
