Two and a half years into the pandemic, and it finally happened. Not COVID-19, but a COVID-related hate incident.
Asian people draw Asian people like this
White people when an Asian people calling out the way their features is demonized by white people:
One quiet morning, I went out for a run. Walking ahead of me was an older, white woman. As I ran past her, she screamed, “Social distancing!”
While stunned, I didn’t respond until moments later after she screamed, “F*CK YOU!” at which point I stopped, turned, looked directly at her, and calmly said, “DO NOT talk to me like that.” She proceeded to yell, “You saw me from behind!
You should keep your distance! You see I’m wearing a mask!” to which I responded, “Since I’m coming from behind, how could I have seen that you’re wearing a mask?”
Without acknowledging what I said, she proceeded to scream, “You’re threatening my life by breathing hard while jogging past me! You’re F*CKING threatening my life by breathing on me!”
Well over six feet away from this hysterically screaming woman, I repeated, “DO NOT talk to me like that. DO NOT curse at me.” She then turned away from me and shouted, “I’m not having this conversation!”
Believing that this was the end of the exchange, I continued running, but when she was far from me, she screamed even more loudly, “You’re F*CKING worried about a four-letter curse word when you’re threatening my life by breathing on me! I hope you get run over by a car!”
This woman never used an anti-Asian slur, so this would not be considered an anti-Asian hate incident.
But I ask myself, would she have felt that a white woman jogging was threatening her life by breathing? And would she have screamed and cursed at a white woman as she did so boldly with me?
Asian Americans who have lived through two and a half years of exhaustion, mourning, anger, and fear, see themselves in these statistics. For many non-Asian Americans, however, they come as a surprise.
But what happens when we shift the frame from the social scientists who study assimilation and privilege to the voices of the populations we study? A different narrative emerges.
In addition, the majority of Black Americans (63%) and Hispanic Americans (56%) also perceive Asian Americans as closer to people of color than to white Americans.
By stark contrast, 69% of white Americans perceive the status of Asian Americans as closer to white people, pointing to a disjuncture in the way that white Americans perceive Asians compared to all other groups, including Asian Americans.
Ensuring that the experiences, attitudes, and perceptions of Asian Americans are included in national data collection efforts will enable us to disrupt the narrative that Asians are becoming white, are honorary whites, or white adjacent.
This also requires a commitment on the part of social scientists to take experiences, belonging, and identity as seriously as we take education, income, and intermarriage in our studies of racial progress, inequality, and assimilation.