Solidarity is Only Response to AAPI Hate

Diana Hwang

Over the last couple weeks, as people started wearing masks in public to protect themselves, I resisted. As an Asian American woman in the time of COVID-19, I walk around knowing I am already perceived as a threat. I’ve thought to myself: if I put on a mask, it will only get worse. People will think I have the virus, and I’ll only be putting myself at greater risk of more attention and the possibility of harassment.

In just the span of one week in March, a new #StopAAPIHate reporting center received nearly 700 reports of coronavirus-related discrimination against Asian Americans across the country. Recent news stories have documented rampant verbal and physical attacks against Chinese Americans, with the bigotry enflamed by the deliberate use of terms like “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus” by the President and other elected leaders around the country. Anecdotal and statistical evidence suggests that Asian American women are significantly more likely to report harassment than AAPI men.

As an Asian American, as a person of color, I am intimately aware of the politics of exclusion. In the early 2000s, I was just out college and got my first job working as a legislative aide at the Massachusetts State House.  In this building of incredible influence and power, I was one of the only Asian American faces; out of 200 legislators, there were no Asian Americans. When I first told my dad I’d gotten the job, he was so worried about me, he almost started crying.  “You’ll never be one of them,” he told me. And what he meant was that for Asian American women, and all women of color in this country, we have to struggle every day just to belong. 

In this time of COVID-19, I hear his words again. Not everyone considers Asian Americans to be people of color; this is true of many Asian Americans too.  There is an internalized form of oppression that comes with being Asian American in the United States today. Many Asian Americans lean into the dangerous stereotype of the “model minority” in the hope it will save us and help us fit in. But that only harms and limits us, and creates more division by pitting us against the Black and Brown Americans with whom we share so much.

Claiming that Asian Americans somehow have a special responsibility to show our true American colors during this crisis, as Andrew Yang recently said, gets it so wrong. Yes, we all have a responsibility and an opportunity to step up and support our communities right now. But we need to do it in solidarity to challenge the systems and rhetoric that serve to oppress and harm all of us, not to prove a point and definitely not to prove that we’re American. The system that has sparked ramped-up hatred and harassment toward Asian Americans since the emergence of the coronavirus is the same system that paints immigrants at our Southern border as a threat, or that makes Black people an overwhelming target for police violence. 

To change the system, Asian Americans need to work together with Black, Latina, Muslim and Native Americans. That’s why I work with She the People. We’re building a multi-racial coalition of women of color across the country, with a focus on growing voter turnout and representation in government at all levels. We believe in a politics grounded in love, justice and belonging.

At She the People, we’re playing the long game through organizing, movement-building, get-out-the-vote efforts and more. But we know that we also have to pay attention to the more immediate issues facing our communities. That’s why we’re supporting policies that provide emergency money to vulnerable populations, including women of color whose lives have been upended by the COVID-19 crisis. It’s also why we stand behind the Congressional resolution recently filed by Congresswoman Grace Meng that condemns anti-Asian American rhetoric.

This is a moment that calls for deep solidarity across race and ethnicity. In times like this, the only way to survive is together—we need to protect and speak up not just for ourselves and our family members or friends, but all of our communities. 

Diana Hwang is political and organizing director with She the People.