All of the Anti-Asian Violence Has Made Me Scared of the Country I Was Born In

I’ll be honest, the only reason I paid attention to the recent spate of violence against Asian Americans is because I had to for work. It’s not because I don’t care about violence against the elderly or about the Asian American community at large — it’s because I’m so tired. It’s the same reason I don’t watch the videos of violence against Black folks (or what I consider to be snuff films).

I don’t need to watch people get hurt to care and know that it’s wrong. If your morality only kicks in when violence is caught on video, that’s a problem.

Here’s the thing: As soon as COVID-19 hit the news in late 2019 and early 2020, I was already mentally preparing for violence against the Asian American community. Especially since then President Trump blamed the coronavirus on China and Chinese people. I was able to tune most of it out — after all, violence has been occurring against members of the Asian community for hundreds of years. It’s not new.

But two incidents stand out to me

All I know is that they are all of a piece

A swirling maelstrom of Sinophobia translating to anti-Asian hate, the Model Minority myth pitting us against Black and Brown communities, and climate change and the systemic failure of the Texas power grid disproportionately affecting low-income and non-white communities — they are all connected.

These acts of violence are linked to the Sinophobia of the Yellow Peril in the 1870s, when America imported cheap Chinese labor to avoid paying wages to newly emancipated Black people. It is all interwoven in the evil of white supremacy — one of the founding tenets of the United States.

I want my kids to know this Asian American history — and how our history in our country and our countries of origin tie in with Black history and American history. I want my kids to see and fight the injustice under which we are all oppressed — to ally with Black and Brown and other marginalized communities — and rip that obscenity out by its roots. I aim to remake the world into one where all BIPOC — and thus, my children — feel safe and celebrated.