The rising of racism against Asian American

Not only has it not been fixed but is increasing due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus cases and the former president calling it “Kung Flu” and “Chinese virus”.

Racism against Asian in America has been present in the United States for hundreds of years, it has not been in the forefront enough due to the normalization in hate crime Asian American.

Not a lot of people realize that “chink” or “ching chong” is just as bad of a term in stabbing Asians as the n-word is for Black Americans. Except for one thing, over the years, Black Americans has slowly taken back that word, reversing it from its negative nature to a more positive to use and call from the racist and using it as a sarcastic term to call friends or acquaintances. Where for Asian American, none of us call each other those terms as it makes fun of our language and culture. Ching chong or chink are meaningless words that refers to the foreigner interpretations of Chinese or other Asian languages as that is all they can make of it. Not only it shows ignorant but their lack of knowledge in other cultures and the will to understand or appreciate other’s.

Personally, I have seen people, even my closest friends to try and pull their eyes back , mouthing “ching chong” at me because I possess physical feature of a typical Asian. Being Asian is not a choice, I was born like this and having someone making fun of something I cannot change really plunge me into the depth of insecurities. So, for the next two years, I tried to act as “American” as possible, to avoid the assumptions that I relate to anything Asian due to the fear of being treated differently. The op-doc on New York Times, “A Conversation With Asian-Americans on Race”, interviewed a group of Asian Americans about their take on stereotypes and racism. We can hear them speaks about racism that happens on many different levels, whether its physical, mental, passive, or active. Hasan, one of the interviewees recalled experiencing racism at six years old by another classmate calling him the “color of poop”. Chira was beat up and called the N-word in second grade by a ten-year-old white boy. These two examples show how Americans are raising their future generation, to be hateful and ignorant because after all, they are children, they can only mimics what the adults are doing around them.

Tracing back to 1882, we can already see how Ameri treated its eastern oriented citizens through the Chinese Exclusion Act all the way until 1943, sixty years of denying the immigration of Chinese and terrorizing their Chinese American. Asian American during this time period were extremely hated for white American believing that they are taking all the jobs and cannot become American. The Act triggered the period called “Driving Out” where Asian American experienced an excessive force of violent leading to a great number leaving the United States. Additionally, world war II, cold war and Vietnam war further create the negative impression of Asian in American’s view.

Then come the presidency of Donald Trump that only creates more tension between the white populations and the minority groups. For the past 3 years, 867% increased in reported hate crimes against Asians in New York City alone, the playground of immigrants, where you would think people would be more understanding as everyone can relate to issue with race to some extent. Now apply that ratio to conservative states where racism is more prominent and easier to spot, the number can be terrifying and hurtful. When the pandemic starts, not only did our president not protecting the country’s Asian Americans, he instead adds more fuel to the flame by calling it the “Chinese Virus” or “Kung Flu” during a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. However he also contradict himself by trying to protect the Asian American despite all the hateful things he said about them.

A study was published by the “International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health” regarding the trends on twitters, collected 3,377,295 United States tweets and analyze them through machine. We can see that there is a 68.4% increase in negative tweets against Asian. There is an increase of 68.7% in negative tweets against Asian. Showing how the media perceive the whole situation as Asian-related. We can also peak into the racism against population as they were the majorities of hate tweets, and we can see that America always have the trend of blaming a certain minority groups when crisis came forth. Blacks finally have basic rights? Black people already have enough why do they want more. 9/11 happens because of a terrorist group? All Muslims are the same and should be ban from this country. Coronavirus happens just because it started in China? The Chinese are at fault, no matter where you are from.

My family came to America in hope for new opportunities, new jobs, and a brighter future for the next generations. Instead, they came here facing xenophobia, racism and exclusivity of minorities that would otherwise not happen in my country. Perhaps it is due to the long history of racist practice of the white majority. Afterall, segregation against black population only ended less than a century ago. But the world is changing every day, New York is slowly but steadily kicking out its white citizens and replace them with new commers. One day, we can all stand together, not as majority vs. minorities anymore, but as of equal.

Reflection

I picked the New York Times as my publisher for my op-ed because I feels my piece qualifies for it the most. New York Times is a democratic based news paper where race and equality is one of its main focus. NYT articles also utilize a lot of hyperlinks that contain extra information or data analysis, which I applied to my piece. Many articles I read also elaborate on the history of the problem, how it evolves overtime and lead to the current state. They combine all three rhetorical strategies of logos, pathos and ethos.

For my piece specifically, the rhetorical situation that I am addressing it the racism against Asian American and how it is only on the rise due to the coronavirus and America’s tradition of blaming minorities that has no correlation to the issue except their race, believes or gender. I focus specifically on the impact of corona virus on Asian American in this article, but we should understand that it is a universal experience for many minorities, not just Asians.

My intended audience would be individuals who are curious as why racism is increasing for Asian American or just the general public who wants to education themselves on the issue. As for the tone of my article, I went with a more urgent atmosphere and angry towards the American system. A more professional written piece with statistics and history is what I was aiming while creating the article. The medium is obviously the NYT newspaper. However, the genre is not a news but rather an op-ed since the information I gave would count as an opinion over giving the latest news. I used a combination of all the strategies of ethos, pathos and logos in my piece by using credible sources(journals), using emotional situation to gain sympathy and give a reasonable argument with historical analysis.

Sources cited:

Nguyen, Thu T, et al. Exploring U.S. Shifts in Anti-Asian Sentiment with the Emergence of COVID-19. 1 Oct. 2020, go-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T002&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&hitCount=96&searchType=BasicSearchForm¤tPosition=8&docId=GALE%7CA642265725&docType=Report&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZONE-MOD1&prodId=AONE&pageNum=1&contentSet=GALE%7CA642265725&searchId=R1&userGroupName=cuny_ccny&inPS=true.

Noah, Trevor. Hate Crimes Against Asian Americans Continue to Rise | The Daily Social Distancing Show, 16 Feb. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9hJed6P4Hk.

Gandbhir, Geeta, and Michèle Stephenson. “’A Conversation With Asian-Americans on Race’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/opinion/a-conversation-with-asians-on-race.html.

Hillesheim, Jacob. “How the Chinese Exclusion Act Still Impacts the U.S. Today.” Rewire, Rewire, 4 June 2018, www.rewire.org/chinese-exclusion-act/.