Can a task force dismantle hate?
Tags: In The Know, Masks, Covid 19, Asian American, Xenophobia

What happens when one race becomes the face of a global health crisis?

Spit on. Yelled at. Attacked. Horrifying accounts of racial discrimination against Chinese-Americans are on the rise since the pandemic began. Even worse, east Asians from Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines have also become the target of hate crimes, revealing harmful racial biases at play not unlike what Muslim-Americans experienced post-9/11.

Anti-Asian sentiment in the age of COVID-19 should come as no surprise when the sitting President openly refers to it as “the Chinese virus” in White House press briefings, blaming the Chinese government for unleashing it on the world. Linking a disaster to its origins fuels fear of the foreign, making an innocent group the scapegoat for everyone’s suffering.

The plain fact is, language matters. Government agencies have the power of visual and verbal cues to shape public perception of the pandemic. How information about the virus is worded, visualized and exchanged — in the parlance of ThoughtMatter’s world, how it’s branded — has direct consequences for social and political ties around the world.

With much fanfare, last month the New York Police Department rolled out the Asian Hate Crime Task Force — a new team made up of 25 detectives of Asian descent — to investigate local coronavirus-related hate crimes directed at Asian people.

At a time when it feels scary to be Asian in this country, here members of our staff weigh in on the role of a task force — and other modes of collective action — in fighting hate. It’s more important than ever to challenge harmful stereotypes and create “fellow-feeling,” as Queen Elizabeth II puts it. It’s not just our lives at risk. It’s how we relate to one another.

Community healing

Hua Chen, Designer

Whenever there is a new public initiative dedicated towards anti-discrimination, I find a few questions always pop into my mind regarding motivation and outcome.

Dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Asian-Americans were among the first ethnicities to face immigration bans in the US. Indeed, limits on Asian immigration — to do with everything from education to the workplace — have existed in the West for centuries. In no way does it compare to the subjugation and enslavement of Black, Latinx or Indigenous Americans, but it does relate to how we talk about anti-racism. We must be especially careful as to how national dialogue can impact all of our communities.

When Asian-Americans again were allowed to immigrate to the US in the 20th century, they, along with many other immigrants, were heavily screened and selected for admission. Their subsequent treatment in society has created the myth of a “model minority;” a portrait of a foreign population that “deserves” the American Dream more than other minorities. The dialogue is spun so that anti-discriminatory measures like Affirmative Action are framed as anti-Asian, or anti-Good Immigrant. This, despite the fact that narrative undermines opportunities available to other people of color systemically excluded from wealth, resources and more. These contextual problems are incredibly important to keep in mind when planning programs or “task forces” to target individual manifestations of racism.

When we talk about broad policing movements in the US (and NYC), we think of the War on Drugs and Stop and Frisk, both programs designed to reduce crime in certain sectors and promote public safety. Trouble is, they scapegoated and targeted Black and Brown Americans and the poor. When the NYPD starts an anti-racist task force targeting anti-Asian racism, those programs spring to mind. It isn’t such a leap for such measures to become ways for the police to harass already heavily-policed neighborhoods, harming people who instead would benefit more from better healthcare, schools, mutual aid or de-escalation.

Policing in minority communities has long been motivated not by the goal of growing those neighborhoods but by a twisted, punitively-oriented concept of discipline. That slash-and-burn technique only serves to reinforce racist stereotypes and institutions and stigmatize different populations, most often poor Black and Brown people. Challenging and improving how we perceive and treat POC is not just a targeted to-do list of task forces and disciplinary measures. To end anti-Asian aggressions, we have to think about racism holistically, create healing-oriented programs and organize around communities. Spot-treating violence of any kind with more violence is merely cosmetic and begets more cyclical violence. Instead of instituting more hypocritical save-face programs, let’s articulate and be specific about how racism manifests itself. When you say safety, what do you mean? Who is it for? When people say they are “advocating” for specific groups, who could be negatively impacted? And if you want to advocate for people of color, how can you truly do that if you do not address the wildly different experiences and separately interwoven traumas of ALL people of color?

People in positions of privilege and power speaking “for” POC communities isn’t as effective a form of activism as simply raising up the many incredibly qualified POC activists and organizers who have already been working towards community healing for decades. Rather than creating new ways to police, we should direct our attention to uplifting local grassroots movements and parties.

W.O.W. Project

Art Against Displacement

Mask culture

Tommy Park, Design Intern

The idea behind mask-wearing here in the United States, or in Western culture in general, is completely different to that in most Asian countries. In America, wearing a mask has culturally been linked to signs of fear, weakness or being the enemy. As a Korean-American, I remember early on in the pandemic, when there was little information about the virus and people were scared, my mom often told me to wear a mask when going into New York City to attend class. What she didn’t know about was my hesitation to wear one at the time. To many, what I thought was a kind gesture — keeping myself and those around me safe — instead signaled fear. I’d already heard stories about my international friends being bullied or harassed on the subway just for wearing masks. The result is, I find myself questioning how and why masks got political, especially when I look at my home country South Korea, where there are vending machines for them. One thing I know for certain is how difference in culture and mentality plays a huge role. Growing up in America, I have noticed that the mentality here is centered around the self. “How can I do things to benefit myself?” or “If something is obstructing me, I don’t want to deal with it.” In Asian culture, on the other hand, the mentality is often about “we” — about how my actions are affecting other people around me. Hence why mask culture is so ingrained in places like South Korea, China and Japan. Part of me thinks one good thing to come out of Western countries experiencing this pandemic is that they finally incorporate mask-wearing into their culture.

An inclusive perspective

Jason Chen, Experiential Designer

Having lived in New York for almost 3 years now, I’ve experienced numerous race-based incidents, and sometimes accidents. One of the more serious ones was when a glass bottle was thrown at my apartment after I ignored someone’s request for money. Among the less significant were when few people on the subway want to sit next to me, or when I’m the next customer in line at a bakery and the staff’s attitude towards me shifts dramatically. More recently during the pandemic, neighbors in my building have closed the elevator door behind them a little too quickly, without giving notice. Although I’ve been experiencing micro-aggressions of this sort, I still don’t believe there is a need for the Asian Hate Crime Task Force. We don’t need to be put on a pedestal. It’s better to treat the root problem rather than the symptom. Some people show bigotry and bias towards others who don’t look the same due to a narrow point of view or a lack of proper education. The real question is, how do we raise awareness, cultivate a holistic, inclusive perspective, and learn how to empathize?