b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 1 http://time.com/3606900/ferguson-asian-americans/
Ferguson isn’t simply black versus white
The short video shows an Asian-American shopkeeper standing in his looted
store, with a hands-in-his-pockets matter-of-factness and a sad slump to his
facial expression. “Are you okay, sir?” an off-screen cameraman asks. “
Yes,” the storeowner says, dejectedly.
The clip is only a few seconds, but it highlights the question of where
Asian-Americans stand in the black and white palette often used to paint
incidents like Ferguson. In the story of a white cop’s killing of a black
teen, Asian-Americans may at first seem irrelevant. They are neither white
nor black; they assume the benefits of non-blackness, but also the burdens
of non-whiteness. They can appear innocuous on nighttime streets, but also
defenseless; getting into Harvard is a result of “one’s own merit,” but
also a genetic gift; they are assumed well-off in society, but also
perpetually foreign. Asian-Americans’ peculiar gray space on the racial
spectrum can translate to detachment from the situation in Ferguson. When
that happens, the racialized nature of the events in Ferguson loses
relevance to Asian-Americans. But seen with a historical perspective, it’s
clear that such moments are decidedly of more colors than two. | b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 2 Michael Brown’s death has several parallels in Asian-American history. The
first to come to mind may be the story of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American
killed in 1982 by a Chrysler plant superintendent and his stepson, both
white, both uncharged in a racially-motivated murder; like Brown, Chin
unified his community to demand protection under the law. However, most
direct parallels have often had one distinct dissimilarity to Ferguson: they
have not spurred widespread resistance, nor have they engraved a visible
legacy.
There is the story of Kuanchang Kao, an intoxicated Chinese-American fatally
shot in 1997 by police threatened by his “martial arts” moves. There is
Cau Bich Tran, a Vietnamese-American killed in 2003 after holding a
vegetable peeler, which police thought was a cleaver. There is Fong Lee, a
Hmong-American shot to death in 2006 by police who believed he was carrying
a gun. None of the three cases resulted in criminal charges against the
police or in public campaigns that turned the victim’s memory into a
commitment to seek justice. One op-ed even declared how little America
learned from Tran’s slaying.
While Ferguson captures the world’s attention, why do these Asian-American
stories remain comparatively unknown?
One possible answer could be found in the model minority myth. The myth, a
decades-old stereotype, casts Asian-Americans as universally successful, and
discourages others — even Asian-Americans themselves — from believing in
the validity of their struggles. But as protests over Ferguson continue, it
’s increasingly important to remember the purpose of the model minority
narrative’s construction. The doctored portrayal, which dates to 1967, was
intended to shame African-American activists whose demands for equal civil
rights threatened a centuries-old white society. (The original story in the
New York Times thrust forward an image of Japanese-Americans quietly rising
to economic successes despite the racial prejudice responsible for their
unjust internment during World War II.)
Racial engineering of Asian-Americans and African-Americans to protect a
white-run society was nothing new, but the puppeteering of one minority to
slap the other’s wrist was a marked change. The apparent boost of Asian-
Americans suggested that racism was no longer a problem for all people of
color — it was a problem for people of a specific color. “The model
minority discourse has elevated Asian-Americans as a group that’s worked
hard, using education to get ahead,” said Daryl Maeda, a professor of
ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “But the reality is
that it’s a discourse that intends to pit us against other people of color.
And that’s a divide and conquer strategy we shouldn’t be complicit with.”
Through the years, that idea erased from the public consciousness the fact
that the Asian-American experience was once a story of racially motivated
legal exclusion, disenfranchisement and horrific violence — commonalities
with the African-American experience that became rallying points in
demanding racial equality. That division between racial minorities also
erased a history of Afro-Asian solidarity born by the shared experience of
sociopolitical marginalization.
As with Ferguson, it’s easy to say the Civil Rights movement was entirely
black and white, when in reality there were many moments of interplay
between African-American and Asian-American activism. Japanese-American
activist Yuri Kochiyama worked alongside Malcolm X until he was assassinated
in front of her. Groups protesting America’s involvement in the Vietnam
War, like the student-run Third World Liberation Front, united resisters
across racial lines under a collective radical political identity. W.E.B.
DuBois called on African Americans to support the 1920s Indian anti-colonial
resistance, which he compared to whites’ oppression of blacks. Chinese-
American activist Grace Lee Boggs, who struggled as a female scholar of
color, found passion in fighting similar injustices against African-
Americans alongside C.L.R. James in the 1950s. Though Afro-Asian solidarity
wasn’t the norm in either groups’ resistance movements, the examples
highlight the power of cross-racial resistance, and what hardships they
shared as non-whites.
The concept of non-whiteness is one way to begin the retelling of most
hyphenated American histories. In Asian-American history, non-whiteness
indelibly characterized the first waves of Asians arriving in the mid-1800s
in America. Cases like People v. Hall (1854) placed them alongside unfree
blacks, in that case by ruling that a law barring blacks from testifying
against whites was intended to block non-white witnesses, while popular
images documented Asian-American bodies as dark, faceless and
indistinguishable — a racialization strengthened against the white
supremacy of Manifest Destiny and naturalization law. Non-whiteness
facilitated racism, but it in time also facilitated cross-racial opposition.
With issues like post-9/11 racial profiling, anti-racism efforts continue
to uphold this tradition of a shared non-white struggle.
“This stuff is what I call M.I.H. — missing in history,” said Helen Zia,
an Asian-American historian and activist. “Unfortunately, we have
generations growing up thinking there’s no connection [between African-
Americans and Asian-Americans]. These things are there, all the linkages of
struggles that have been fought together.”
The disassociation of Asian-Americans from Ferguson — not just as absent
allies, but forgotten legacies — is another chapter in that missing history
. In final moments of the Vine depicting an Asian-American shopkeeper’s
looted store, the cameraman offers a last thought in their conversation that
had halted to a brief pause. “It’s just a mess,” the cameraman says. The
observation, however simplistic, has a truth. That, as an Asian-American
who’s become collateral damage in a climate often black-and-white, he, like
all of Ferguson, must first clean up — and then reassess the unfolding
reality outside. | b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 3 What kind of person thinks that Asians were put forward to shame another
minority, rather than serve as an example to follow? | b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 4 Asian Americans are consistently, relentlessly screwed by the left, just
like the Jews. | x******g
发帖数: 33885 | 5 这段说出了索男们在美国社会的四不像的困境
Asian-Americans may at first seem irrelevant. They are neither white
nor black; they assume the benefits of non-blackness, but also the burdens
of non-whiteness. They can appear innocuous on nighttime streets, but also
defenseless; getting into Harvard is a result of “one’s own merit,” but
also a genetic gift; they are assumed well-off in society, but also
perpetually foreign | x*f
发帖数: 902 | | b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 7 所以索男需要北斗星。北美无太祖，万古如长夜。
【在 x******g 的大作中提到】
: 这段说出了索男们在美国社会的四不像的困境
: Asian-Americans may at first seem irrelevant. They are neither white
: nor black; they assume the benefits of non-blackness, but also the burdens
: of non-whiteness. They can appear innocuous on nighttime streets, but also
: defenseless; getting into Harvard is a result of “one’s own merit,” but
: also a genetic gift; they are assumed well-off in society, but also
: perpetually foreign
| z**m
发帖数: 3080 | 8 老蒋的白爹杀华人，老蒋只会为他们的白爹辩护。
老蒋认为华人素质太差，该杀。 | L****1
发帖数: 460 | 9 无聊的文章。想煽动亚洲人来帮老黑闹事么？不顾事实是非硬要归结此事为种族问题。
就跟布朗的妈说 this could be yor child一样。关我屁事。 |
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