This week's cover is inspired by personal cravings for lotus root stir fry.
We are still looking for more people to join us. 😊 If you or someone you know has thoughts on the AAPI experience and wants to write something about it, please fill out our 20-second nomination form here for any suggestions of people for us to reach out to, and it takes to fill out. We highly encourage self-nominations!
Also, we forgot to include a prompt in our last email, but this week we wanted to reflect on the more political aspects of identity and the engagement of Asian Americans in politics.
Prompt - From your local city council and school board, to state legislature, to US Congress, who are your representatives? What policies do they stand for?
As always, you can email aroundthetablenewsletter@gmail.com or provide feedback through our anonymous form. If you actually like this, forward it to a friend and have them sign up on our website.
Jamie & Melinda
We don't condone cannibalism, but I swear if you deport my international friends I will eat you ALIVE
This week, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a ruling that would prohibit international students on F-1 visas from staying in the US if all their classes are online (or switch to being fully online). The new guidance, which follows recent bans on new H1B immigrants, undermines efforts by colleges to create a safe and accessible reopening plan.
We see this decision as primarily xenophobic and unjust, not only because of the economic value that immigrants and international students bring to the US but also because of the existing instability of being international in a global pandemic. Working regulations where people had to physically be in the US, travel restrictions, and inability to make it home to see family make the already-opaque experience more difficult on top of existing barriers like higher tuition and living costs and difficulty in obtaining on-campus employment.
Having to choose between continuing their studies or being detained/deported puts international students at a much higher risk of contracting COVID and, for many, does not present many options forward. MIT and Harvard just announced that they would be suing the administration to repeal the decision, but other students can help by emailing institution administrators, calling/emailing Senators and Representatives in home and college districts, and signing petitions.
International students are being politicized in this ruling, and, while this is happening, it is important to remember that this is not new.
The past couple of months have seen increased anti-immigration sentiment towards those in higher education and high tech jobs, but they were (and still are) preceded by increased deportation and gross injustices (ICE is still detaining children at the border). Executive orders in 2017 worked to remove anyone who entered the country illegally (though, it is also important to note that deportations also occurred throughout the Obama administration). Calls to abolish the agency spiked in 2018 but have since been renewed as election-year immigration concerns amid COVID continue.
Why is Veep not on Netflix?
Recently, I had a text conversation with my friend John about Biden's potential VP picks, and he mentioned the possibility of the having first female Asian American nominee. In the context of the larger discussion nominating a woman for the role, especially a woman of color, the potential of an Asian American as VP is not something I have thought that much about. Currently, two of the front runners for the position of Asian descent are Kamala Harris and Tammy Duckworth.
We're definitely not political writers, BUT we do want to learn more about prominent political figures, platforms, and policies. We encourage people to find more information for themselves on potential VP nominations (I personally think that it would be good to have a Black progressive woman in the office, but I also have doubts about how impactful the VP nom will actually be).
Tammy Duckworth
Tammy Duckworth is a Democratic Senator representing Illinois. Born in Bangkok, Thailand to an American father (whose history traces back to the Revolutionary War) and a Thai mother of Chinese descent, she spent her childhood in Thailand, Singapore, and Hawaii. After getting her master’s degree in International Affairs at George Washington University, where she joined the ROTC and later would become part of the Army National Guard as a helicopter pilot, she pursued a Ph.D. in public econ and health in Southeast Asia at Northern Illinois University. In 2004, she was deployed to active combat in Iraq, and later that year, lost her legs when her helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Upon returning state-side, she launched and lost her first Congressional campaign and, in 2006, became the Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. During the Obama administration, she was appointed the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs from 2009-2011, where she focused on decreasing the cycle of homelessness among veterans. Her tenure was interrupted in 2012 when she won the US House seat for the 8th District of Illinois. Later, in 2016, she would become the second Asian American female Senator (first was Mazie Hirono, third was Kamala Harris).
Well known for her military career and advocacy for veterans’ and women's rights, Tammy Duckworth is a Purple Heart recipient and carries with her a litany of "firsts". First American female double amputee from the Iraq War. First Senator to give birth in office. First woman with a disability to be elected to the House. First US Senator born in Thailand.
Policy-wise, she is "left-center" and supports "public options for healthcare", actions to address climate change by 2050 (though not the Green New Deal), and a focus on military and veteran's affairs. Check out her voting record here.
Kamala Harris
Image Source: Flickr
One of the more prominent figures from Democratic Primary, Kamala Harris is the junior senator from California. Born to a Jamaican father who taught at Stanford and an Indian mother (who met as civil rights activists in the 60s after she immigrated from Chennai to study at Berkeley), Kamala has a storied career as a prosecutor for San Francisco and the state of California.
She got an undergrad degree political science and economics at Howard, where she was a member of the Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, and later a law degree from Hastings before starting out a deputy district attorney starting in Oakland in 1990. In 2004, she became the district attorney for San Francisco, and in 2010 was elected Attorney General of California.
In 2016, she made waves in the primaries running on a platform to address immigration, criminal justice reform, minimum wage, protection of women's reproductive rights. Performance in early debates bolstered her popularity, but issues with fundraising, campaign organization, and criticisms of her prosecutorial record and her commitment to policy stances led to her eventual withdrawal in December.
Like Tammy Duckworth, Kamala Harris is "left-center" (they agree 88% of the time!) and oriented towards "practicality". While Kamala does not often lean into the topic of identity, there is abundant coverage of her policy positions and voting record in the Senate.
Anti-Asian Violence (Part 1)
This week, we wanted to talk about Anti-Asian violence, as we've been digesting conversations on protests, police brutality, racism, and elections discourse on the discrimination of Asian Americans in the time of COVID-19. We'll try to unpack this topic as we continue to grapple with the violence against Black communities. Like many of y’all, openly talking and sharing coherent thoughts on violence is quite new to us (usually it’s like sad and angry thoughts running through my head), and I feel unqualified to write anything since I’m not an expert... but of course, I’m encouraged that we can all learn together. In Part 2 next week, we want to dedicate time to discuss how the portrayal of anti-Asian violence often communicates anti-Blackness.
Ever since we first immigrated to the U.S. in the 1800s, Asians have been seen as uncivilized, dangerous, and diseased. With COVID-19 originating from Wuhan, China, and being called "kung flu" by Trump, images of East Asians as the "Yellow Peril" seeped back into the dialogue and minds of Americans.
On Looking East Asian...
For a lot of East Asian-passing people, it seems, this is the first time in recent history in which walking outside carried a fear of being watched and receiving harassment. Before COVID-19, not having this worry was a privilege that many of us were not sufficiently conscious of. Now, having this fear reveals to us our conditional "place" in American society—we've been immediately reminded of our "otherness" here.
During times of fear, change, and uncertainty in American history, folks often needed a scapegoat and blamed foreigners, leading to acts of violence and hatred against their perceived "enemies." So now, with this virus upending everyone's lives, acts of racism, xenophobia, and violence against Asian Americans—anyone who looks remotely Chinese—has risen. Stop AAPI Hate, as of May 20, 2020, received over 1700 reports of anti-Asian incidents. They come from 45 states, with the most from New York and California. 80% of these self-reported anti-Asian incidents happened outside the home.
We've seen some of the triggering videos and news reports 😖 everything from attempted murder and physical attacks (e.g. using acid, other items) to vandalism, property damage, and most commonly, verbal harassment, which my sister and I (Melinda) experienced a block from my house near our school’s campus... it was pretty jarring tbh. We knew to brace ourselves for such comments but still felt surprised and a lil unsafe when someone actually cursed and blamed us for the virus.
In the past...
Throughout American history, Asian bodies were often seen as vectors of disease, "yellow" and unclean. As Professor Ericka Lee, author of The Making of Asian America, noted, the idea that "China [is] a place of billions of people living together with unsanitary health habits and strange eating customs that mark them as uncivilized in comparison to the West" is still held by many today. When SARS hit in the U.S. in 2003, it was racialized too—people who "looked" Chinese faced discrimination and disgust, the main targets being those who lived in places like Chinatown.
Violence against Asian Americans has not been unusual in America's history, although, sadly, I only knew a few examples before this year. The patterns throughout history suggest that we shouldn't see these incidences, including the one right now, as isolated. One of the most horrendous incidences of violence early on occurred in 1871, when 17 Chinese people were lynched by a mob of 500 that attacked the Chinese community in LA after a policeman was shot by a Chinese suspect. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, as Asian immigrants built communities and became a more noticeable presence in the West, the threat of Asians "taking" jobs and "tainting" American communities led to retaliation by White folks through acts of violence.
1885: The massacre of Chinese at Rock Springs, Wyoming—28 Chinese miners killed, hundreds of the town drive out of the town.
1907: White mobs engaged in a multi-day attack on the Japanese in San Francisco (ruining businesses, breaking into homes, etc.)
1907: 30-40 white men force 200 South Asians out of Bellingham, Washington
1927: Yakima Valley riots—multi-day riots harming and killing Filipinos; drove many Filipinos out of the fruit plantation town.
1929: A mob of 400 white men attacked a Filipino dance hall in Watsonville, CA after a local paper had published a photo of a Filipino man and a white woman hugging. Four days of riots followed, leading to 1 death of a Filipino man and numerous seriously injured.
Headlines of a newspaper on 1929 riots in Watsonville, CA (Image Source)
During WWII, the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent after the bombing of Pearl Harbor again shows how White Americans continued to perceive Asian Americans as foreign threats, as enemies, even though many Japanese were second-gen/US citizens.
This "enemy" perspective persisted especially after the Vietnam War, when acts of racial violence against Asians rose.
1979: Ku Klux Klan attacked the fishing village of Seadrift, Texas, where many Vietnamese immigrants lived
1989: Chinese American Jim (Ming Hai) Loo was with Vietnamese friends at a pool hall in Raleigh, North Carolina. Two white men blamed them for the Vietnam War, used racial slurs, and attacked the group, leading to Loo's death.
In 1982, the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit sent shockwaves across the U.S. and ignited a wave of activism. After his bachelor party, Chinese American Vincent was killed by two white men, who blamed him for the layoffs in the auto industry due to the success of Japanese automakers. Each man got 2 years probation and a $3,700 fine!!! That's it!! Again, we see how the job/economic changes led to the blaming of foreigners.
There, of course, have also been acts of violence by those who couldn't tolerate the growing population of Asian Americans "crowding" up cities and towns.
1987: Navroze Mody was killed by a gang of 11 youth who were part of a group that vowed to rid Jersey City of Indians (they apparently also attacked Indian students at Stevens Institute of Technology before).
1997: 5 Cambodian and Laotian children were killed by a white man in an elementary school in Stockton, CA; he resented Southeast Asians in the area (reference anti-Filipino incidents in Stockton, CA in the previous century...)
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities were the targets of scrutiny and violence. In just the first month after 9/11, the Sikh Coalition received over 300 cases of violence against Sikh Americans. In the year after, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by 1600%. Even over a decade to two decades later, such violence, driven by the notion that anyone who "looked Muslim" was an enemy, a foreign terrorist, is still happening.
2012: Mass shooting at Wisconsin Sikh temple, where 6 people were killed and 4 were injured by a white supremacist.
2017: Olathe, Kansas shooting of two Indian men, who were mistaken to be Iranians and called "terrorists" by a white man.
As we continue to process the anti-Asian attacks during COVID-19, we must reflect on the history of violence against different Asian communities and communities of color in America. As Tajima-Peña (who we featured in our first newsletter), points out "Asian Americans need to stop invoking Vincent Chin’s name if they ignore the Ahmaud Arberys that happen on and off camera on a weekly or even daily basis."
A bit on police violence
In a 2016 poll, more than half of 14,000 Asian American voters didn't believe police departments treated racial and ethnic groups equally. That’s interesting to note as all of us are becoming more informed about police brutality against Black folks. That makes us wonder, what is the relationship between Asian Americans and law enforcement? Maybe we remember some uncomfortable or upsetting encounters with police as our parents got pulled over. Or maybe we remember the video of Dr. David Dao being dragged off a United flight in 2017 by aviation police officers.
Even before then, there was an outcry over the 2013 case of Chicago PD's violence against Jianqing Klyzek, a tanning parlor manager, and in 2014, over grandfather Subreshbhai Patel's being slammed by Alabama police while on a walk. But... we think back to a month ago when the world noticed Tou Thao's complicity in George Floyd's death. Then to 2014, when debates erupted over police officer Peter Liang's fatal shooting of an unarmed African-American man.
Before now, I hadn't taken a supercritical eye to what these instances—and portrayal of these instances—reveal to us. The responses to such incidents and what they show about racial tensions and violence warrant more discussion... Next week, we'll go deeper into this and talk more about the anti-Blackness in the portrayal of anti-Asian violence...thanks for thinking through this hard stuff with us.
Small Feelings
I just started looking into what I'd need to do to study for the GRE (bleh), and I took one diagnostic test... it immediately took me back to those countless hours spent studying for the SATs... all the vocab word memorizing, practice tests, timed essays... I thought I was done with all that!! 😫 I remember memorizing so many things, like soh-cah-toa and whatever (I barely remember geometry but need to relearn it for this apparently). that got me thinking to like the stress and anxiety and fights that happened over SAT studying and scores... and reminded me how a lot of us became so good at test-taking... we were like robots lol. I mean that's not all bad since it's led us to where we are today, but I felt like a source of my pride was being able to ace tests, like I knew if I studied hard enough (even if it was really miserable), I'd be able to improve my scores... even since the 100 multiplication problem days of 1st grade LOL. but only entering college did I really think about how there were a lot of things NOT test-taking that I really wish I were better at... like forming and expressing an opinion, standing up for myself and for things happening in the world, knowing how to disagree and argue with people, exploring things that I was really curious about, etc. like those things obviously were underneath somewhere in high school, but they were overshadowed by other things... tests/grades but also doing "the things" that could hopefully get me into an "elite" college... anyhow yeah glad high school was a long long time ago but can't help but relive a bit of it as I start to study.
💡S P O T L I G H T💡
Yuna
Photo of Yuna sitting in a red dress by Steve Taylor
This time last year I sped through a flash thunderstorm with my friend to show up soaking wet to Sony Music Hall for a concert by the one and only... Yuna.
Yunalis binti Mat Zara'ai - known by her professional name, Yuna - is a Malaysian singer with a striking fashion sense. Today, she has 4 incredible albums, including the most recent Rogue and Chapters, which made Billboard's 10 best R&B albums of the year (and is also known to have fantastic breakup songs). In 2017, she became the first Malaysian singer to be nominated for a BET award for her breakout single "Crush" with Usher.
Born in Kedah, Malaysia and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Yuna was a self-taught musician who got her start while she was in law school. After auditioning and getting cut from the Malaysian singing competition One in a Million, she began posting cover songs on MySpace and self-released her first self-titled EP. At the age of 23, she moved to the US and signed with Fader Label. As her style evolved from pop-rock to R&B, Yuna's music also takes a deeper dive into identity. Rogue, which features collabs with KYLE, Tyler, the Creator, Lil Simz, G-Eazy, draws inspiration from her diverse cultural experiences growing up in Malaysia as a devout Muslim.
Today, Yuna spends most of her time between Malaysia and Los Angeles. On top of being a fantastic singer, she is a fashion icon who discusses racially biased beauty standards and an entrepreneurial queen who runs Tiny Forest, a home decor boutique, and Tiny Class, a curated seminar experience. She runs her own record label Yuna Room Records (YRR), which she started at the age of 20, and has signed two artists, Bil Musa and Pastel Lite.
To one of my favorite singers who single-handedly got me through my first semester in college and a terribly cold Megabus ride from NYC to Philly, 🥺 ily. Listen to my favorite song "Likes" or check out some of her other hits on the 🎶 collaborative playlist 🎶 we made.
Chef's Recommendations for Culture
🎬 If you have any free time, go check out some Asian American screenplays that didn't get produced.
🎠Hamilton was released on Disney+ this weekend. People around the world got to see Phillipa Soo, who's half Chinese American, as Eliza Schuyler Hamilton. Her performance was amazing! Of course, there is also debate about Hamilton's role in idolizing the Founding Fathers and their complicity in slavery.
📷 There's a photo/video series called Almost Asian, Almost American featuring Asian American women (note: 😕 they didn’t yet feature anyone of South Asian, West Asian, or Central Asian descent... it seems to be an ongoing project so hopefully they do. I'll DM them about this)
Events
Thursday, July 9 (and rest of the Thursdays in July) - Rock the Boat podcast's live Let's Talk Series. Melinda went to the first one last week, and it was great! The host/founder, a Penn alum, interviewed this guy, an actor in Dear White People.
Up Next
Part 2 of Anti-Asian violence, maybe thoughts on anime, maybe millennials running for congress midwest edition