Welcome Back, and…
Happy late Father's Day to everyone except Tzi Ma!
Thank you for sticking around to read this newsletter and especially to those who provided feedback on the first post! We're having a lot of fun writing about and dissecting our experiences within the AAPI context, and we hope to share some of our thoughts and random musings with you all. (Note: we wanted to make this one shorter, but we had so much to cover, so bear with us as we try to make things more digestible 😄)
As a reminder, the top half is news (and how it relates to the AAPI community) and the bottom half is historical, cultural, or educational content. If you have any recommendations, complaints, things you would like to see, please email us at aroundthetablenewsletter@gmail.com or fill out the anonymous form. If you actually like this, forward it to a friend and have them sign up on our website.
Writing has really helped us stay engaged and able to speak on more complex topics, so we're proposing another prompt to reflect on (feel free to send us responses)!
Prompt: What is your relationship with "identity"? Is it something you talk about? Think about? If you were to describe yourself to someone you trust, what are the identifiers that you would choose?
❤ Melinda and Jamie
AAPI DREAMers
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court blocked Trump's attempt to abolish the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which protects undocumented youth from deportation. Normally, we hear about DREAMers in the context of the Latinx community, but there are over 1.6 million undocumented immigrants from all parts of Asia. A tenth of immigrants who are eligible for DACA are Asian, many from "Korea, China, and India". 90% of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants and owe our current lives to the family-based immigration established in 1965. People like Jin K. Park (Harvard Med & first DACA recipient to win a Rhodes Scholarship), put it best when they say, "we have always known that we are Americans and that our advocacy for our place here is an essentially American endeavor."
LGBTQ Rights
More SCOTUS news - this week saw a 6-3 decision that expanded the 1964 prohibition of sex discrimination to sexual orientation and gender identity. 🎉 (this is also the first major ruling for protecting trans folks).
I don't know about the rest of you, but LGBTQ+ experiences and rights are not normally conversations I hear about in Asian American communities. Stay tuned for a longer segment on this later (because there are a lot of thoughts and history here), but we wanted to highlight some resources for Asian and Pacific Islander LGBTQ individuals: HRC's AAPI and LGBTQ Statistics, Asian Pacific Islander Resource Kit with a list of local support organizations, and multilingual public service videos for families.
kpop stans are truly so powerful
Korean pop (K-pop) fans seem to have taken part in supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement. Over two weeks ago, in response to the Dallas Police Department's call to the public to share videos of illegal activity during protests, K-pop fans flooded the app with fancams to protect protestors.
On social media, they've tagged K-pop content with #WhiteLifeMatters in attempts to fight against white supremacists, and most recently, TikTok users and K-pop fans reserved a ton of tickets to Trump's recent rally in Tulsa, OK so that he'd be speaking to plenty of empty seats.
A lot of this activism seems to be K-pop fans jumping on the bandwagon in the speedy, competitive fandom way—the effect has been notable, and we applaud that! But, the K-pop industry itself is not innocent of cultural misappropriation from Black culture... and BIPOC fans have often felt unwelcomed in K-pop fandoms. Lots to think about... if any K-pop fans out there have thoughts let us know!!
Immigration
As a US citizen, I generally don't think about the experience of immigration, but recently, I've been seeing my friends go through the long, complicated, and (frankly) gross af process as they graduate or enter internships. This week, the Trump administration blocked new visas for "skilled workers who enter under the H-1B visa, ... seasonal workers, students on work-study summer programs, au pairs, and ... spouses of foreigners who are employed at companies".
This news comes after a visa ban on Chinese graduate students and affects a large portion of AAPI immigrants (especially from India and China) tied to industries like tech and medicine. For context, recall earlier administration policies of travel bans from the Middle East and border closings in the south. I guess the only consolation is that OPT (the Optional Practical Training program), which allows for college grads to stay in the U.S. for up to 3 years after graduation, wasn't affected. 😰
BLM Follow Up
Don't think we've forgotten. Change demands attention, and we're in it for the long run. Our last newsletter covered quite a few resources that were helpful, so we're not going to go too much into recent content (though if you do want an update, look here). Instead, we wanted to share 2 conversations that we've had in the past week:
Dinnertime talk with my parents about "Defund the Police". Mom, who is pretty "law and order" conservative, was initially scared of what a community without police would look like. We talked through the unnecessary use of force and weapons on civilians and how shifting funding away from police towards things like social services would produce healthier communities. They were concerned about the "efficiency of public services", and to my surprise, agreed with some what I said. I felt motivated after this, and I think it opened a gateway to talking about things in more of a racial justice context.
Facetime with a close friend about the civility of conversation and the display of anger in communication. We had a very honest conversation about feeling disengaged at times or @'d by social media and how sometimes those feelings are important to initiate action and get people around you listening.
Questions we're asking ourselves: How do career decisions and purchasing behaviors factor into systemic inequality? Are our intentions reflected in our actions/the effect we have on others? It very much feels strange to be writing about Asian American issues in a time of protests against violence/racism towards Black communities, so how can we be better allies in the movement?
🐉 America's Next Top Model (Minority)
First, please check out this wonderful Instagram post drawn/written by Chanel Miller that describes model minority myth really well, esp. in the current climate.
The term "model minority" comes up pretty early on in discussions about AAPI identity. It refers to a minority group that has done “particularly well” in the eyes of White Americans, the star student that other groups should look up to. It's used to generalize how Asian American "work ethic and centrality of family" led to glowing success here in the U.S. of A. Many of us grew up embracing and striving towards this stereotype—(ex. "you're smart b/c you're Asian"). Over the years, we’ve gotten pats on the back for our diligent work and quiet success in all domains of life: academic, financial, educational, and cultural.
There's something satisfying and validating about being called the "model minority"—it feels like a unique badge of success. We think, huh, why don't other communities emulate us to get to where we are? However, as our consciousness surrounding identity develops, more and more of us realize that the term "model minority" is not telling the whole story and (!!) might actually be 1. a misnomer and 2. a harmful stereotype. How can this be, if it seems to paint us in a seemingly good light? Well, let's dig into some of its history... 😉
Sociologist William Petersen coined the term "model minority" in 1966, saying that Japanese Americans "overcame" discrimination in the U.S. (...sure...did he forget about internment...). What we don't emphasize is that this term came about a year after the 1965 Immigration Act that finally allowed for a greater influx of immigrants from Asia, who were mostly highly educated professionals and scientists. This subset of immigrants led to this model minority stereotype and was not necessarily representative of all Asian populations in America. But, this stereotype was spread and reinforced.
We take issue with the term because it treats the incredibly diverse experiences of Asians in America as a monolith. Asian American includes everyone from the more populous Chinese, Indian, Filipino, and Vietnamese, to communities from Pakistan, Samoa, Cambodia, Laos, and Bangladesh. Plus, Asian Americans have the largest income gap of any racial group. When we hear that higher proportions of Asian Americans live below the poverty line than White Americans, that Asian Americans require more years of education to reach the same income level, and the like, we also realize... no matter how well we seem to have assimilated in America, we continue to live under institutions and systems that were built to prioritize and benefit White Americans first. The developments in immigration have only highlighted this reality.
The "model minority" stereotype also dismisses racial inequities and discrimination that Asians in America have experienced (e.g. think of the recent coronavirus-related hate crimes on East Asians 😢). As Professor Choi of the University of Chicago said, "the 'model minority' stereotype has been used to justify glossing over serious barriers and adversities that Asian Americans face, and, worryingly, impede the proper policy prescriptions." It invalidates our needs and problems and fosters resentment between other racial minorities.
“Growing up during the 1980s and 1990s, the Asians we saw were East Asian, and often images of the model minority. And that never felt like us. We were failing out of schools, we were being harassed and profiled by the police, and there was a really fast school to prison pipeline — and now, a school to deportation pipeline. When I wanted to join Asian-American groups, I always felt like I was othered by my skin color, my class or my refugee experience. I’ve always felt, personally and as a community, rejected by Asian America.”
Sarath Suong, executive director of the Providence Youth Student Movement
Being named the "model minority" creates a hierarchy of people of color (POC) in the U.S. which is problematic, as we've been seeing 😕. It is used as a wedge between Asians and Blacks, perpetuating anti-blackness and colorism within our communities. Allyship and advocacy are rooted in the dynamics of identity and power - taking the time to understand and dissect these dominant narratives can be a step in educating ourselves and our communities as we become more conscious of our racial identities and relations with other POC communities. ❤️
(Info in this summary drawn from Harvard's Asian Americans in the Law, University of Washington, and the Teaching Tolerance Magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Center.)
💡 S P O T L I G H T 💡
Naomi Osaka
Japanese professional tennis player
This bada$$ 22-year-old is a half-Haitian, half-Japanese champion tennis player. She grew up in New York and South Florida but recently gave up her U.S. citizenship to represent Japan in time for the 2020 Olympics (RIP Tokyo 2020...). We're so in awe of her insane tennis achievements, one of which is being the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam singles title (she defeated Serena Williams for this!!). This year, she became the highest-paid female athlete, earning $37 million between June 2019-May 2020!! Just...wow.
Recently, she's gotten more attention for being vocal about #BlackLivesMatter and the importance of protesting for racial justice, which we stan! But, many criticized her, saying that athletes shouldn't comment on politics or that she wasn't "proud of Japan." Last year, two Japanese comedians had made racist remarks about her, saying she "needed some bleach." 😡
Thankfully, many others offered strong support for her, and we're confident that she'll keep standing up and speaking out. ✊🏽 Check out some of her Tweets below and see this article for more.
~ Culture ~
small stories on culture, history, mythology section
Book Recommendation: Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong. I (Melinda) only just started but it's very good - I wanted to share quotes from it every 2 pages, e.g. this one...
"Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it’s even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don’t exist.”
88rising and the makings of Asians in hip-hop
Protest history in Asia: - 80s Gwangju Uprising in South Korea, Taiwan’s Wild Lily student movement, and 1989 Tiananmen Protests in China. (A friend recommended using these as discussion points to talk about similar issues in the US)
Also, my mom says "congrats to Malala for graduating from Oxford" 🎉
Upcoming Events
Thursday, June 25th - Dragon Boat Festival (brief background on the holiday mainly celebrated in China, called DuanWuJie. Japan, Korea, and Vietnam have their own versions of the Dragon Boat Festival too). Here's a zongzi recipe if you're feeling ambitious.
Saturday, June 27th - Black & Asian American Feminist Solidarities Workshop
Monday, June 29th - Pan Asian American Community House discussion on family discussions of racism (facilitated by two Penn friends of ours!) - get the Zoom link here
Up Next
History and experience of Pacific Islanders (thank you to the person who suggested this!) and the evolution of my conflicting feelings on anime. Please share this and give suggestions if you have anything. Thank you! With love, Jamie & Melinda. <3