The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
Wednesday, April 7, 2021 — 5
U-M professors, Michigan public officials discuss roots of anti-Asian
racism, but suggestions for what to do in the face of hate fall short
Disclaimer: The author and Michigan in
Color as a whole do not condone involvement
of the carceral state or any perpetuation of
criminalization. The solutions covered in this
event are not solutions the author is advocating
for, but rather solutions offered at the event that
Michigan in Color remain in search of alternatives
to. Please see resources the author has provided
related to bystander intervention training at the
end of this article for more possibilities.
The Michigan Asian Pacific American
Affairs Commission held a compelling town
hall over Zoom Friday to combat the rise
in anti-Asian hate and teach viewers how
they can be allies to the Asian American
community. The goal of the event was to take a
look at the racism Asian Americans have faced
in the past, policies created to discriminate
against Asian Americans and the rise in race-
motivated violence against Asian Americans
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, when it came to offering Asian
Americans resources to turn to, public
officials only presented options involving
law enforcement — which is a harmful
perpetuation of oppressive systems.
The list of speakers included Roland
Hwang,
lecturer
in
the
Asian/Pacific
Islander American Studies Department at
the University of Michigan; Melissa May
Borja, assistant professor at the University’s
Department of American Culture; Sunita
Doddamani, Michigan assistant attorney
general and head of the hate crimes unit;
Attorney General Dana Nessel and Anthony
Lewis, director of the Michigan Department
of Civil Rights.
The event started with a few words from
Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She offered
her condolences to the Asian community and
condemned the recent acts of violence against
them, particularly the mass shootings at
several Asian-owned spas in Atlanta.
“I want to make our values very clear, hate
has no home in Michigan,” Whitmer said.
Then, Borja presented a powerful slideshow
containing information on how racism against
Asian Americans began in America and how
this violence has spread due to the COVID-19
pandemic.
“This idea, this fear of Asian people, is
known as the yellow peril,” Borja said.
She then recalled historical events like the
Chinese Exclusion Act and conveyed how
Chinese, Korean and Japanese individuals
were discriminated against at the American
border in the late 19th century and throughout
the 20th century.
Seeing Borja acknowledge America’s racist
past was impressive because she reminded
attendees of the discrimination Asians have
always faced in America. When society does
not acknowledge these past hardships, it
perpetuates the model minority myth. The
model minority myth is the stereotype that all
Asian Americans are academically successful
and come from prestigious families. Failure
to reflect on America’s racist history excludes
Asian Americans of lower socioeconomic
statuses, along with those victim to unequal
policy and those seeking refuge from America-
initiated wars. Throughout American history,
Asians have had to leave their country in order
to come to America because of American
military influence in their country. It does not
bring awareness to the fact that the majority of
Asians were blamed for bringing illnesses and
diseases to America in the late 1800s when the
transcontinental railroad was built. The model
minority myth diminishes and invalidates
the increase in violence rooted in racism that
Asian Americans have been experiencing
in America ever since the beginning of the
COVID-19 pandemic. It enforces the idea that
Asian Americans do not struggle.
Borja also discussed how increasing anti-
Asian violence can be tied to political rhetoric
surrounding the pandemic, most notably by
former President Donald Trump.
“Researchers based at Berkeley did a study
and they found that in the 10 years leading
up to 2020, there was actually a downward
decline or downward trend in anti-Asian
bias,” Borja said. “But that downward trend
was reversed the first week of March when
politicians and conservative media began to
use terms like ‘China virus.’”
According to Stop AAPI Hate, there have
been a total of 3,792 reports of anti-Asian hate
incidents from March 2020 to March 2021.
Incident reports have come from all over the
country, ranging from verbal harassment
to physical assault directed towards Asian
Americans in public, Borja said.
Additionally, Borja attacked some myths
that have been spreading on social media
during her presentation. According to Borja,
there is a common belief that the hate Asian
Americans are experiencing is only targeted
towards the elderly population. However, Borja
stated that there has also been an increase in
bullying reported by Asian American children.
Children are more likely to experience verbal
harassment, but elders are more likely to
experience physical harassment, Borja said.
In addition, she noted 68% of attacks have
been against women, showing that they are
specifically targeted because of America’s
violent history against Asian women.
I can list numerous examples from my own
self-education: for example, a notable policy
that discriminates against Asian women is the
The Page Act of 1875. It was enacted because
Chinese women were hypersexualized and
feared to be engaging in prostitution in the
United States. This notion is not true, as
many women traveled to America to prosper
economically and to be reunited with their
spouses. During World War II, the Korean
War and in Vietnam, there was an increase
in demand for Asian sex workers because
of America’s military influence. In today’s
world Asian women recall street harassment,
unsolicited sexual comments from coworkers
and have been subjected to men projecting
their fetishes onto them. With the recent
shootings in Atlanta it is evident how men
have gone to the extreme to project their
sexual fantasies on Asian women when the
suspect claims he had a “sexual addiction”
and saw the spa as “a temptation he needed to
eliminate.” Asian women have never been safe
as a result of over 100 years of being subjected
to sexual objectification.
Towards the end of her presentation, Borja
discussed ways non-Asian individuals can be
allies to the Asian community at this time.
The methods she discussed are summarized
below: 1) Reach out to your Asian American
friends. However, do not reach out to your
Asian friends just because they are Asian.
Reach out to them because you see their
hurt, not to relieve your guilt. 2) Discuss
microaggressions and what they may look
like in public, so you know when to intervene.
3) Refrain from using harmful expressions
when talking about the COVID-19 pandemic.
4) Encourage victims to report hatred to
organizations like Stop AAPI Hate. 5) Take
part in a Hollaback bystander intervention
training to learn how to intervene when you
see violence rooted in racism.
Finally, Borja addressed the narrative
of the divide between the Black and Asian
communities. She said the increased levels
of harassment experienced by the Asian
community is rooted in white supremacy.
ANCHAL MALH
MiC Columnist
Sinophobia as an immigrant
My phone alerted me that I had a new
message request on Instagram. Upon opening
the message, I froze. “You’re way too ugly for
that Chinese virus.”
I had received that message on Instagram
exactly a year ago, at the beginning of
the pandemic. It was a reply to one of my
Instagram story highlights, a basic selfie of me
posing and smiling in front of the backdrop of
a wall. The account was anonymous, of course
— I suspect that the user did not want to suffer
the consequences of spewing racist hatred
if they were to be exposed. Though I was
stunned at the pure bigotry in the sentence,
that message was far from the only time I have
experienced anti-Asian racism.
I am Chinese, both ethnically and nationally.
I was born in Shanghai and raised in Beijing.
I had an unassuming childhood until one
Friday night when I was 13. With my hair still
wet after having gone to the community pool,
my parents sat me down on the couch. Our
conversation that night was exhilarating: They
told me that we were emigrating to the United
States of America. I leaped from the couch up
and down in elation. America was sugar, spice
and everything nice to naïve, 13-year-old me.
I took pride in excelling in my English classes,
which were taught by American teachers who
wore trendy clothes and perfume, unlike their
Chinese counterparts. My favorite movie,
“The Avengers,” which had just came out in
2013, had a predominantly white cast: I envied
the characters’ beauty, especially their pale
skin, and admired the luxurious and futuristic
lifestyle they led.
The following year was almost unbearable
as I counted the days until we would actually
move overseas. During the final months, I even
made my own grid paper with dates to help me
count down the days. I kept it in my pencil case
so that I could color it in like a scantron with
eagerness and excitement every morning in
my homeroom. I did so very obnoxiously so
that my classmates around me would notice.
I wanted them to be jealous of me because,
just as I did, the other students understood the
perks of being American. Little did I know that
being an immigrant in America came with
many burdens.
The whirlwind change in my life came at a
price: I had a hard time fitting in at my new high
school. I did not speak English fluently like my
peers. While my entire high school was ecstatic
about the whip and nae nae dance, I responded
to my dancing classmates with awkward
laughter, as I didn’t know the routine nor where
it originated from. Fitting in was a particularly
impossible feat for me, considering I was an
awkward foreign girl who was new to the town
and the school system. I was being tutored on
grammar every study block when I had English
class, much to my embarrassment. I sat with
my English teacher at her desk breaking down
grammar structures while my peers snacked,
laughed and chatted in their seats. It was
difficult making friends and my loneliness took
a toll on me.
Being an immigrant was uncomfortable
beyond a personal level as well. I soon began
to realize that China, my home country, had
nowhere near a positive image here in the
United States, even pre-COVID-19. Sinophobia
was all over the news and the media. I became
hyper-aware of it. Everywhere I looked, my
home country was being overwhelmingly
portrayed as filthy, corrupt and authoritarian,
without a single mention of our traditions,
humility or culture. It was unsettling that
the latter had always been my focus when
perceiving my home country, but to some,
the Chinese Communist Party’s perceived
wrongdoings are all they knew about the
nation. Anytime I saw China on the news, it
was an alarming report on either pollution,
CCP censorship and mass surveillance or its
propaganda. Does China have its own issues?
Yes, but often it feels like these issues are only
reported by western media to demonize China
as a whole and not out of genuine concern for
its citizens. The news reports are not a call
for change nor action — they are sweeping
generalizations that can lead to real-world
consequences.
Sinophobia was embedded in entertainment
as well in the form of stereotypes. While white
characters with, for example, European or
Australian accents are portrayed as mysterious
and attractive, Chinese accents are foreign and
the butt of the joke in many Hollywood movies.
I started becoming ashamed of my roots and
began to downplay my identity — as much as I
hate to admit it, I didn’t want to be associated
with neither the “corrupt” Chinese government
nor the offensive stereotypes. When I first
moved as a child, I often announced with pride
to the class that I was from Beijing whenever my
teacher asked if there was a new kid present. As
time went on, I no longer mentioned my home
country and adjusted my accent to be more
palatable and assimilate with my peers. The
internal struggle was constant, though. While I
considered myself American, I was still enraged
any time anybody insulted my home country
and my people. Once, one of my first American
friends had pulled on the ends of her eyes as a
joke. Though I laughed along and put on a front
out of cowardice, I was fuming internally.
Fast forward a few years, you could not tell
me apart from an Asian American who was
born and raised here in the U.S. Over time, I
had gradually lost my accent and even started
to forget my mother tongue. This did not
bother me as much, since fitting in and not
being viewed as an anomaly meant everything
to me then. I learned to forget and ignore the
culture that raised me for fourteen years, but
my experiences with racism in the COVID-19
era, such as the aforementioned direct message,
ushered in new painful realizations for me
regarding my identity as a Chinese American.
A year ago, the internet watched and
sneered at the clips of Wuhan, China, where
residents were dragged out of their homes into
quarantine facilities during their city-wide
shutdown. On the other side of the world,
we enjoyed our temporary “freedom” and
“normalcy.” It was an “aha” moment for a lot of
Americans who have bought into sinophobia in
the media — a moment where this sinophobia
was justified in their minds. This is what some
western media outlets do to its audiences:
They have and continue to successfully equate
the Chinese people to its government. On the
other hand, Chinese people’s real suffering
does not receive the much deserved attention
due to mainstream media’s hyperfocus on
the Chinese government’s corruption. As I
expected, practically nobody extended their
sympathy towards the people of Wuhan;
instead social media watched these videos of
the city amused, as if they were some sort of
dystopian trauma porn. Help was never the
topic of discussion.
On top of that, former President Donald
Trump quickly assigned blame for COVID-
19, which emboldened individuals to commit
vengeful acts of hatred, racism and violence
towards Asian Americans. After the “kung
flu” rhetoric, the “Chinese virus” controversy
and the countless Asian hate crimes, I am truly
exhausted as a young, Chinese immigrant
woman living in the United States of America.
ZOE ZHANG
MiC Columnist
Design by Zoe Zhang
Winter wonderland
As
I
traveled
from
the
Detroit
Metropolitan Airport back to campus in
January, I peered out the window of my cab
with utter amazement. The sapphire sky and
soft glow of the afternoon sun looked exactly
as I had remembered it, but this time, the
world was coated with snow. I come from a
tropical climate, so the idea of a cold winter
was totally foreign to me. The world cloaked
in white looked so beautiful, just as I had
imagined it in my head. I had spent years
fantasizing about building a snowman and
getting into snowball fights, so the brightness
of the snow as it fell from the sky made me
look forward to those new experiences that
lay before me. This winter semester would
finally allow me the opportunity to see and
touch real snow for the very first time. Even
though all of my classes were online and
many of my friends had moved back home, I
was determined to remain optimistic about
this coming semester. After all, it’s college.
I had spent years imagining late night
adventures, striking up conversations with
complete strangers and shouting the lyrics
to trashy pop songs into the void of the night.
Here, I could do anything I ever wanted,
right? Snow gently wafted in the calm breeze
sweeping through campus when I stepped
out of my cab in front of East Quad Residence
Hall building. I reached my hands out to
catch the delicately hovering snowflakes, but
their frigid tendrils stung my hands.
Over the next several weeks, the sky lost its
vibrance. The uniformly gray clouds filled the
sky with their emptiness. The days blended
together as the winter nights devoured the
afternoon sun. The dreariness of winter
seeped through my window. My empty cans
of energy drinks, all neatly stacked like legos
in my overflowing recycling bin, were the
most vibrant decor I owned. Even when I
consumed 600mg of caffeine a day (halfway
to risking seizures according to the Food and
Drug Administration), I still couldn’t bring
myself to make the arduous trek down the hall
to the trash closet. The mess in my room held
little importance since I was my only company
anyway. I barely had the energy to walk
downstairs to the dining hall, never mind my
dreams of exploring the city around me.
On a particularly gloomy morning,
desperate to rediscover the warmth I felt
when I saw snow outside of my cab window
for the first time, I ventured out into the
cold. I circled the campus aimlessly as if I
was waiting for some divine inspiration
to strike me. I stared up into the colorless
sky, waiting for fresh snow to fall and
posing for what I imagined to be a beautiful
cinematic shot in the imaginary movie of
my life. Meanwhile, my feet trudged along
the earth. The grime of the sidewalk fused
with the slush of the trodden snow left
behind a brown, misshapen depression
in the wake of each step. It felt as though
I was sinking into the ground itself. With
each step my feet felt heavier and heavier.
Eventually I dragged myself over the empty
Diag, dusted off a snow-covered bench and
let myself slouch over in my seat.
In high school, I used to dream of escaping
my mundane yet stressful life. I wanted to
build a snowman, get into snowball fights
and skate on the surface of a frozen lake.
Yet between the cold, my coursework and
COVID-19, I still had little control. The
fantasy world I built was toppling down
before my eyes, and I just had to accept it. The
life I had imagined was not one that I could
live. A cold anger ran through my veins. What
use are dreams if they never materialize?
Frustration mounted inside me, but I didn’t
drink enough caffeine that morning to have
the energy to be upset. My eyes drifted from
the gray sky to the uneven frost-covered
ground, while I just sat frozen in place.
Then I noticed the footprints left by each
passerby filled the whole sidewalk. Who were
they? Where were they going? Why? I could
never know the answers to these questions,
and I realized that I didn’t need to know. I
had spent so much time constructing intricate
fantasies about my future that I couldn’t be
satisfied with just not knowing something.
Every raindrop, every snowflake, every dust
particle had to be a metaphor. I had to be in
control. Each time reality didn’t serve me, it
felt as though the entire world was collapsing.
But, my lack of control was relieving. I couldn’t
control the weather or predict the future,
and I realized that I could be just fine with
that. Instead of hiding from anything that
threatened my fantasy worldview, I chose to
embrace the unpredictable and the unknown.
I pushed myself back up from the bench
and balanced on my own two feet again.
Who am I? Where was I going? Why? It
was all up for me to decide. I chose to walk
away from my past idealizations and learn
how to accept my lack of agency. I looked
neither up at the sky nor down at the
ground but forward. I set my sights on the
horizon and started walking back to my
residence hall, letting the stray snowflakes
fall on my face.
ANDY NAKAMURA
MiC Columnist
A walk around Ann Arbor
Lately, I’ve been finding it hard to identify
the line where work stops and rest begins.
Before this year, I was able to segment my days
with commutes through hallways or greetings
to new classmates, but as the COVID-19
pandemic continues to impact traditional
schooling structures, I can’t help but feel like
my days have blurred into an indiscernible
cycle where Zoom polls and Instagram stories
don’t seem much different.
Unfortunately, I can’t bring about the
conclusion of a pandemic or dispel online
classes for the rest of the semester, so on days
when another glance at my computer screen
is sure to induce extreme frustration, I take a
walk around Ann Arbor.
Sure, bustling classes have evolved into
painfully silent breakout rooms, and even the
most enthusiastic of professors have their
mood dampened when forgetting to “share
screen,” but one thing that never fails to excite
me is the diverse atmosphere of campus. Here
are three of my favorite Ann Arbor spots to
visit on my daily walk.
The Law Quadrangle: This is the perfect
place to pass through, especially as the
weather becomes warmer. Walking off State
Street and through the opening arches feels
like entering a new world (Harry Potter vibes,
anyone?), and there’s a sense of calmness
floating through the air. Bonus points if you
go later in the evening when the multitude of
street lamps shine a warm light on the intricate
architecture. Even on the busiest days, I know
that spending a couple minutes navigating the
peaceful walkways in the Law Quad is sure
to reinvigorate me with the conviction that
everything is as it’s meant to be.
Thompson Parking Structure Rooftop:
A must-visit spot for optimal sunset viewing.
Plus, there’s something about looking over
Ann Arbor from way up above that gives me
a sense of newfound perspective and power
in mydaily accomplishments. If you’re an
avid people watcher, this is the perfect spot to
observe passersby on Thompson Street, from
new couples walking tightly together to groups
of friends debating over which bubble tea store
to frequent. At around 7PM, the air gets a little
crisper, and that stinging feeling of the breeze
hitting my face coupled with an indescribable
blend of sunset colors is the perfect conclusion
to any overwhelming day.
The
Ross
(School
of
Business’s)
Courtyard: I definitely never thought I’d
say this, but somehow the words “Ross”
and “peaceful” have become correlated in
my mind. No thanks to internship culture
but all thanks to the Ross Courtyard, which
provides a moment of serenity among
the seemingly never-ending movement
of school and club work. The multitude
of glass and terracotta creates an earthy
environment, and the traffic from nearby
roads never gets the opportunity to enter
through the courtyard wind tunnel. There’s
an underground study area, lots of trees and
an overall stillness that is a rare treat for
students traveling along the busy sidewalk
of Tappan Avenue.
If you’ve been feeling like me lately,
overwhelmed and desperate to escape from
the grasp of a computer screen, talk a walk
around Ann Arbor (or wherever you may be!)
and discover the hidden locations and ideal
lookout points that can recenter your day.
MARINA SUN
MiC Columnist
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