A Response to Asian Hate

A few years ago, I heard George Takei (a.k.a. Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise on the original television series, Star Trek) speak about his family’s imprisonment in US camps during World War II. He was taken prisoner at the age of five with his baby brother, sister and their parents in California. They were not charged with espionage or any other crime, instead, his family, along with approximately 120,000 other Japanese Americans, were placed in camps solely because of their Japanese ethnicity.

Takei’s story highlighted another aspect of our country’s deep systemic racism. This legacy of racism and anti-Asian xenophobia reared its “ugly head” again this week in Atlanta with the targeting and killing of six Asian women. Sadly, we have been seeing an increase in the number of Asian hate crimes around allegations that Asians are at fault for the Coronavirus. This is reminiscent of the widespread targeting of the Muslim community after 9/11.  

As Quakers who will be discussing our distinctives of Community and Equality in the coming weeks, and who are called to Speak Truth to Power and speak up against racism where it is found, I would like to offer us these helpful suggestions from American Friends Service Committee (https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/how-to-respond-to-coronavirus-racism) on how to respond to Coronavirus Racism, specifically. They have narrowed it down to a four-step process – Interrupt, Question, Educate, and Echo. 

Interrupt

Interrupting means taking a time out. It shows the person you’re talking, texting or chatting with that what they’ve said is important enough to pause your conversation to address—that you need to talk about the racism before you talk about anything else. Here are a few phrases to try: “Hang on. I want to go back to what you called the virus.”

“Just a second—let’s get into your point that the virus is somebody’s fault.” “Before we talk about that, I want to talk about the language you just used.”

Question

We’re all familiar with “questions” that are really warnings: What did you just say to me? or Are you really going to do that? But in this context, the goal of questioning really is to better understand why the person said what they did. You might ask: “Why did you call it the ‘Chinese Coronavirus’?” “Why do you think that?” “Where did you get that information?”

One note: Asking someone to explain why a racist joke is funny is a great way to stop them from making racist jokes to you again. But if you want to have a real discussion about what they’ve said, it might work better to ask something like, “What made you say that?”

Educate

The key to educating is to continue the conversation. The goal here isn’t to just provide facts about the topic generally to the person you’re talking to with, but to explain why what they’ve said needs rethinking. That means that, to educate folks around racism associated with the coronavirus, we need to understand not only the virus but also the racism. For example, you might explain that it’s actually not common anymore to name a disease after its place of origin, that there’s a long, bad history of associating diseases with specific groups of people and that the name COVID-19 was chosen very carefully to avoid repeating those mistakes. 

If someone doesn’t understand why a comment they made was racist, you can educate them about the long history of stereotyping immigrants—and Asian people, specifically —as people who bring disease. You can explain how this stereotype is both wrong and harmful. And if someone tries to play down racist phrases as “just a joke,” you can educate them about the discrimination and racism many Asian-American/Pacific Island folks are facing right now, so they better understand the impact of their words.

Echo

It takes an effort to speak up against racist ideas and language. This is particularly true of people who are targeted by that language. That’s why we need to have each other’s backs. When someone else speaks up, echo them. Thank them and emphasize or amplify their message any way you can. This not only encourages more speaking up—it also ensures that no one thinks your silence in response to biased ideas or language means you’re OK with it. Of course, echoing is harder while we’re social distancing, but there are many ways to do it. Online, we can re-share antiracist messages. And in chats or conversations, we can respond to offer support and agreement. 

If we all commit to interrupting, questioning, educating and echoing to fight racist rhetoric, we can start making our communities safer and healthier today.