In an article originally published on June 29, 2024 highlighting the long-lasting impacts of the murder of Vincent Chin on Asian American activism, there is a section titled “A chorus of Asian American voices.” In documenting the persistence of Asian Americans in seeking justice for Vincent Chin in the 40 years that followed his murder, the article highlights many significant milestones that deserve further study and remembrance. In a lecture by activist and sociologist in 2021, Tamara K. Nopper also noted how much of Asian American community organizing in the 1980s and 90s was galvanized by the murder of Vincent Chin, which was also the first instance of anti-Asian violence that was investigated by the Department of Justice.
A similar chorus of Asian American voices rose as Stop AAPI Hate, an organization founded in March 2020, released a document that stated 6,603 “hate incidents” had been reported from March 19, 2020 to March 31, 2021. In that time frame, news outlets were regularly reporting on anti-Asian racism, including the high-profile murder of Vicha Ratanapakdee in January 2021. When Stop AAPI Hate co-founder Cynthia Choi was asked to reflect on some of the similarities and differences between the Asian American organizing of the 1980s and 90s and the current day, she said, “What’s different for our community today is that we are speaking out. We are speaking out loudly.”
So where has the chorus of Asian American voices gone in the wake of the nation learning the name of Usha Vance? Or reading statements consistently given by Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign? Why then, are we simultaneously quick to remind people of Vice President Kamala Harris’s South Asian heritage in addition to her Blackness? Many Asian Americans were quick to disown Tou Thao, the Hmong police officer who watched as his white colleague, Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on George Floyd’s neck. Kimmy Yam noted that this was a “pivotal moment for Asian Americans to tackle the subject of anti-blackness in a productive way, beginning with unpacking the biases in their own communities by first confronting the historical context behind it.” When Asian American actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu personally offered a $25,000 bounty to anyone who caught the Black man pushing an elderly Asian man to the ground in Oakland’s Chinatown in a viral video, many Asian Americans called them out, saying that kind of response only perpetuates racial harm and trauma. This fueled questions within Asian American communities about carceral responses to community grief. The chorus of Asian American voices, reviving education on the history of Asian American activism and cross-racial solidarity, such as the Third World Liberation Front and the problem of the model minority myth as the culprit. But holding a myth accountable is like trying to grab smoke with your bare hands. Who is the “we” that is being hurt by the myth? Who is the “they” that perpetuate the myth? And who gets to decide? In essence, who actually makes up the chorus of Asian American voices?
Rose Nguyen, writer and PhD student, puts it this way: “Who, exactly, has been calling for Asian Americans to atone for their own anti-black racism, and who has been framing anti-Asian violence in the language of hate? Who, in other words, has been speaking for ‘Asian America’?” If Tou Thao served as an (re)awakening for a new generation of Asian American activism, then the 8 murdered individuals in Atlanta spas, including 6 Asian women by Robert Long, a white, Christian man served to concretize a convenient, yet limiting, “hate” framework that seems to inspire further funding and support for policing. The horrifying massacre fit a simple liberal narrative for moral outrage — white male shooter, vulnerable victims of color, inclusive of the working class, racist cops — and the chorus of Asian American voices crescendoed to its climax.
On social media, Asian Americans grew increasingly insistent about pointing out anti-Asian “hate” incidents, such as in the painful and tragic murders of Michelle Go and Christina Yuna Lee, or the vicious assaults of Cesar Echano and Hoa Thi Nguyen. The awareness raised through the StopAsianHate hashtag and the growth of new Asian American justice organizations would seem to indicate that there was a solid foundation built for a burgeoning social justice movement. Organizations such as the Asian American Christian Collaborative and Stop AAPI Hate put out numerous public statements utilizing the “hate” framework to condemn racist whites and police. But this kind of loudness manages to avoid deeper discourse around what it means that high-profile individuals such as Usha Vance and Steven Cheung are part of a political party that pushes the same “hate” towards other Asian American individuals and communities. Instead of Asian American education and discourse, many of the voices, white liberals and white conservatives alike, express confusion and let out Freudian slips of anti-Asian sentiment while trying to distinguish between the “good ones” and “bad ones”.
At first glance, the simple liberal narrative would look at Usha Vance and Steven Cheung as assimilated Asian Americans. At best, they’re unaware of the model minority myth and need to be educated on everything Asian America relearned in 2020-2021. However, this is quite unlikely, as Usha Vance’s Yale education and Steven Cheung’s work with the Trump campaign since 2016 might indicate. At worst, they’re “sellouts” that just want proximity to whiteness. But if that’s the case, why isn’t the chorus of Asian American voices quick to disavow them as with Tou Thao? Or Peter Liang in 2014? A closer look shows how perhaps Usha Vance and Steven Cheung’s presence pull apart the fragile narrative for people who built their social media platforms on the limited “hate” framework, based on a lack of sensationalism as well as the audiences social media activism influencers appeal to.
First, sensationalism is a key component of garnering attention and social media engagement around the “hate” framework. Viral videos, compelling one-liners, and the need to share to “raise awareness” around anti-Asian hate were key ingredients around how an organization grew follower numbers, and subsequently, an image of expertise. However, Usha Vance never entered the public sphere before JD Vance was announced as Trump’s vice presidential candidate for his campaign. Though she has her own experience in the political scene, in this case, she just happened to be JD Vance’s wife. The same goes for someone like Steven Cheung. Though his name is attached to quotes fairly commonly in current news articles about the GOP and Trump’s campaign, he’s simply just doing the same job he’s been doing since 2016. Because there’s nothing sensational other than some anti-Asian rhetoric directed towards Usha Vance from the Republican party, some Asian Americans who were a part of the most recent wave of social media activism influencers struggle to know how to speak about them. In fact, more sensational is the “I understand the assignment” meme that started making waves on social media among non-Black populations stating their support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy for the presidential election. This fits the idea of social media sensationalism as it is a quick one-liner that is easy to say, yet is rather performative in nature as making that statement holds no requirement for any sort of subsequent action.
Second, social media activism, community rallies, and public statements that utilize the “hate” frame appeal largely to the part of the nation that would identify as liberal. Additionally, the efforts to educate people on the history of Asian American activism and the “hidden” histories of racism against Asian Americans could be said to largely be targeted at white liberals and Asian Americans who have mostly spent their time in majority-white spaces. After all, many veteran Asian American activists are likely to have already received this education and are perhaps busy putting it to use, in this current moment, for organizing for issues such as Palestinian liberation. Maybe the newer activists and organizations have outpaced their learning and don’t know the intricacies and nuances of “Asian America” to know how to properly talk about Usha Vance and Steven Cheung. Maybe some have, in the words of Kendrick Lamar, just been faking for likes and digital hugs this whole time, simply appealing to white liberals to gain acceptance, ironically, in another form of assimilation. After all, what happens when “hate” has been your currency, but now suddenly the buyers (white, liberal) are the haters?
This seems to align well with Rose Nguyen’s assertion that “racial identification, while a starting point for solidarity, cannot be the sole organizing principle for mass politics. Yes, I feel afraid for myself, my friends and family, and the people who “look like” me, but I feel even more afraid that this fear will justify solutions that hurt others on “our” behalf — more policing, more punishment. This is what assimilation looks like: the more “we” appeal to “your” (white, liberal) moral sympathies, the more we assert common ground with whiteness and distance ourselves from those exiled from its borders.” And if this is happening, how do we distinguish between the fakers and the community organizers?
Even in recent days, there have been Asian Americans who participate in a viral meme, and yet there have been other Asian Americans who, following a template set by Black women, started organizing fundraising calls to put their money where their mouths are. Perhaps this is an active picture of some of the diversity in the broader Asian America as a voting bloc. Research done earlier this calendar year noted that in 2020, “72% of English-speaking, single-race, non-Hispanic Asians” voted Democratic. However, prior to Vice President Harris’s nomination, another study showed that fewer Asian Americans planned on voting for Joe Biden than in 2020, and there was a 1% increase in Asian Americans who stated they planned on voting for Donald Trump. In the disaggregated data of the same study, survey results showed that Chinese and Japanese participants indicated the most significant increase in plans to vote for Donald Trump, offset by a strong decrease among Vietnamese and Filipino participants. However, 68% of Chinese participants said they viewed Donald Trump unfavorably, as well as 63% of Japanese participants.
Though this research affirms that Asian Americans, contrary to model minority myth narratives, have actually been strongly Democratic-leaning as a general collective, it also highlights the need to understand the reasons behind the recent shifts within some portions of certain Asian American communities. Who was surveyed? Is there a difference in generations of Asian Americans that wasn’t clear in the disaggregated data? In what category does protesting Palestinian genocide fall under among the survey choices? When 71% of Asian Americans say that “immigration” is an important issue, how do we distinguish between aspects related to undocumented immigrants, family immigration, naturalization, refugee status, and/or adoption? If the “hate” framework were truly as comprehensive as some Asian American organizations and influencers made it out to be over the past 4 years, one would expect the shifts to have surged in the Democratic direction instead of what the research shows. When we say “Asian Americans” are a certain way, which ones are we really talking about? Which Asian Americans are building coalitions that lead to life-affirming structures and institutions? They are definitely out there. And which ones are faking for likes and digital hugs? They are out there as well.
Over the past several years, we’ve had brief shimmers of wonderful moments of coming together as Asian American communities and snapshots of what coalition-building can actually look like. At the same time, we’ve also seen the problematic limitations of simple narratives and, perhaps, the dangers that can do when combined with social media virality. The truth is that the limitations have been the same for generations and that activists and coalitions have also existed for generations. Perhaps it’s time to reshuffle our gaze, away from whiteness altogether–for real, this time–and towards what our elders and children alike may have to say about what a more liberated, expansive future can look like.
