1

welcome everyone i appreciate the chance

2

to join you today

3

although i'm sorry that we're coming

4

together in such an awful heartbreaking

5

moment

6

at times like this your words do

7

literally ease the pain

8

but as ucla's chancellor and simply as

9

an individual

10

i want to say to all of our asian asian

11

american and pacific islander bruins

12

and we care deeply about your safety

13

your well-being

14

and we recognize the grief anger and

15

exasperation you're feeling

16

this week's terrible attacks which led

17

to the deaths of seven women and one man

18

six of whom were women of asian descent

19

took place amidst

20

rising xenophobia fueled by unjust

21

resentment and scapegoating

22

related to the covet 19. we also know

23

that this goes back much further

24

to the murder of vincent chen to the

25

internment

26

camps japan during the japanese

27

americans during world war ii

28

to the laws against asian immigration to

29

a history of casting asians and pacific

30

islanders as the perpetual other

31

instead of recognizing their

32

individuality dignity and humanity

33

and of each person and respecting that

34

person's heritage

35

at times this history can feel

36

overwhelming but we must hold on to the

37

hope that what we do at ucla matters

38

we endeavor to build a community with

39

shared commitment to equity diversity

40

and inclusion

41

we bring people all backgrounds together

42

to learn and collaborate with one

43

another we study

44

vexing social issues and we work towards

45

solutions

46

most critically we show compassion for

47

one another in times of distress

48

all of these are statements about a

49

better world we want to create

50

and about our commitment to creating it

51

in my message about anti-asian hate last

52

month

53

i quoted the late chinese-american civil

54

rights activist grace lee boggs

55

who once said that the only way to

56

survive is by taking care of one another

57

she was exactly right

58

and we need to hear her in this moment

59

take care of one another is the only way

60

going forward

61

it's the only way that will progress as

62

a community and we must all remember

63

that

64

on this sad day and what i hope are

65

better days to come

66

thank you

67

good evening everyone i want to join

68

chancellor block in thanking you all for

69

gathering tonight

70

we gather to decry this horrific

71

violence and the hatred and racism

72

taking place right now targeting people

73

for being asian asian american and

74

pacific islander

75

and in many cases for being women for

76

everyone here

77

especially students i want to

78

acknowledge the pain and the hate that

79

this hatred causes

80

the fear it creates about what might be

81

next

82

and the toll it takes during an already

83

exhausting time

84

the entire equity diversity and

85

inclusion team and i are here to support

86

we have resources available on our

87

website and we'll be hosting an event to

88

hold space in early april

89

we know that in times like these we need

90

to come together as a community

91

and i am very grateful to be here with

92

you this evening

93

94

thank you so much chancellor block and

95

vice chancellor bradley we really

96

appreciate your presence and your

97

support and

98

before i bring up our main speakers

99

we are university and at the core of the

100

university is our student population and

101

i

102

wanted to highlight the voices of two of

103

our undergraduate students

104

and we welcome them to join us to share

105

their reflections and

106

how they're coping and handling and what

107

wisdom they have for us and i hope we

108

can learn from them as much as

109

uh we're really looking forward to them

110

sharing their experience and so without

111

further ado i want to bring to the stage

112

tiffany

113

doe tiffany is a sociology major

114

a member of the class of 2021

115

and she has been quite active in various

116

programs on campus

117

to advocate for vietnamese american

118

students and

119

i'm just very happy tiffany is here to

120

join us tiffany would you mind sharing a

121

few words

122

yes thank you for having me um professor

123

michael berry

124

thank you for everyone that has

125

organized this event and

126

for everyone here to who are joining us

127

in this very important um discussion

128

that we're having

129

i wanted to share my perspective as a

130

student

131

and how i support my community as an

132

individual and also

133

a person that is involved with various

134

southeast asian

135

organization spaces and

136

i think for me um the main

137

thing that i am very proud of

138

is the power of students coming together

139

to uplift our communities and some of

140

the things that i've been involved with

141

this past year is i was a

142

staff member for the southeast asian

143

students for organizing conference which

144

is the second

145

this year was our second conference that

146

we held and that was all

147

led by students and the amazing thing

148

this year is that

149

it was a variety of students coming

150

together from

151

all over the country not just at ucla

152

and not just southeast asian students

153

and it was the power of

154

the students coming together to really

155

create a space

156

to talk about how we can really support

157

our communities and also

158

have cross community solidarity

159

um not just with the southeast asian

160

community but also with

161

the black community um indigenous

162

community and latinx community

163

um so that has been very um uplifting

164

for me personally being a part of that

165

and another

166

big part of my student experience has

167

been being

168

a c clear staff member seclair being

169

the southeast asian retention project

170

which is a student-led

171

project at ucla that has been

172

a really big source of my community and

173

also a way that i

174

have been supporting students throughout

175

this pandemic but especially during this

176

time with all of the

177

um rise with the asian hate crimes and

178

all the things that we're dealing with

179

as students

180

so for me i don't really see myself as

181

being just a student like that at this

182

time really

183

is not the most important thing and i

184

think it's more important for me to

185

be together with other students and

186

up continue to uplift our communities in

187

different ways that we can

188

whether that's holding events for one

189

another um having conversations with one

190

another

191

with our peers um with our

192

like professors like i had the

193

opportunity of talking to two hung

194

and also with other scholars as well

195

that has been very helpful for me and

196

i think my goal with all of that has

197

just been to create a safe space

198

to process our emotions to brainstorm

199

actions to support one another in our

200

communities

201

and also just provide a connection with

202

another human being

203

whether we have similar experiences and

204

perspectives or not i think it's really

205

important especially during this time

206

to connect with one another and um

207

just continue to talk about how we can

208

continue to

209

just fight the oppression that we face

210

and i think

211

the main takeaways that um i wanted to

212

leave with y'all is that for me it's

213

very comforting to know

214

that there are many others who seek the

215

same

216

goals of liberation and have had

217

the experiences in the history of

218

planting the seed

219

before me and also there are people who

220

are continuing to fight for our

221

communities now

222

and there will be people who continue to

223

fight for us

224

following my generation i also wanted to

225

acknowledge that

226

violence doesn't just come in the form

227

of personal violence such as hate crimes

228

but it's embedded in our culture and our

229

structure

230

through microaggressions systemic racism

231

deportation mass incarceration

232

war on our communities both in the

233

states and overseas

234

and just overall barriers to resources

235

so while we focus on the hate crimes

236

that have been arising we also

237

need to acknowledge the history of

238

violence

239

that continues to oppress our

240

241

as we continue to have these

242

conversations and continue to fight

243

against that

244

and another conversation that i recently

245

had

246

with um that i wanted to

247

say is that what is very motivational

248

for me

249

is just focusing on building

250

relationships to support one another

251

because that's what i think has been

252

helping me and what

253

can help everyone else especially our

254

community as a whole

255

and overall every single day

256

what i'm trying to do is just be open to

257

change and open to growth

258

knowing that this isn't an issue that i

259

can simply

260

resolve on my own but this is something

261

i have to work towards throughout the

262

rest of my life

263

and as intimating as that sounds it's

264

also very comforting to know

265

that um this is something that

266

um i'm not just doing alone and that i

267

have the rest of my community to

268

back up um me so thank you for the space

269

for sharing

270

my thoughts and i wish the best to all

271

of you

272

thank you tiffany our next speaker is

273

274

ucla undergraduate mariana schroeder who

275

is a sociology major

276

class of 2021 she is also the managing

277

editor of the journal of world affairs

278

and her work is exhibits her passion for

279

such topics as race gender mental health

280

and homelessness

281

as well as the intersection of those

282

areas so mariana

283

yeah i have a little bit of background

284

noise it just started but i'll try to

285

speak loudly but i wanted to start off

286

just by thanking

287

um you professor barry for allowing me

288

to be a part of this event

289

and for taking in that feedback from a

290

student and organizing this to happen

291

and for um professor winfo2 for inviting

292

me to come and speak and be a part of

293

this

294

very important conversation and i'm also

295

really happy to meet some of you too

296

with

297

fellow members of the asian american

298

community and dedicated scholars and

299

activists

300

and thank you so much to i'm chancellor

301

walken vice chancellor bradley for being

302

here too and taking the time to listen

303

um i also want to preface my comments

304

just by saying that i'll be relying

305

a lot more on my notes and i'd like to

306

just because it's the last

307

not just this most recent um hate crime

308

but just

309

this past over a month in general has

310

just been very emotionally

311

difficult for me and traumatic to get

312

through so i'm gonna

313

be relying on my notes just so i can say

314

everything i want to get um

315

said so um just a little bit on my

316

background perspective so

317

i i think i can offer a little bit of a

318

unique perspective being half white and

319

happy to me

320

so my grandpa um my mom's family was

321

from south vietnam

322

and my grandpa my mom's dad was working

323

with the cia from there and facing death

324

threats so they had to come here during

325

the first wave of vietnamese refugees in

326

1975

327

so and then my dad was born here in

328

orange california where i live

329

in orange county so kind of having that

330

unique perspective

331

of a hybrid identity and not really

332

being completely white or completely

333

asian has kind of

334

given me an opportunity to navigate

335

different binary spaces and kind of

336

operate between them too

337

and kind of from being from that

338

background of being white and asian i've

339

340

people mock my vietnamese middle name

341

hunt which i rarely say because

342

i get so traumatized over the comments

343

i've endured from both other students

344

and staff

345

over my vietnamese name and just

346

comments too from even teachers and

347

friends about

348

having almond shaped eyes or having

349

narrow features which

350

i am lucky as a white person and having

351

a white name

352

that i don't have to worry as much about

353

being subject to a

354

verbal or physical attack as maybe other

355

members of my community that have more

356

asian predominant features

357

but then it also is a double-edged sword

358

because it comes with a lot of racist

359

and harmful comments that i've had to

360

endure

361

in both my k through 12 and post

362

secondary experience because of how

363

people will feel comfortable saying

364

things that they wouldn't say if they

365

knew there was an asian in the room and

366

i feel like it's kind of

367

allowed me to operate undercover in a

368

way that i hear a lot of comments that

369

i maybe otherwise wouldn't hear if i

370

weren't white or at least racially

371

ambiguous passing

372

so some of these are just fetishizing

373

asian women and desexualizing asian men

374

um showing how deeply ingrained these

375

asian stereotypes are in us society and

376

in casual conversation

377

um one of the most disturbing ones to me

378

happened in orange county when i was

379

meeting

380

a friend of a friend and they had this

381

was a white family and they had

382

um chinese neighbors that lived next

383

door and they just casually made a

384

joking comment that their

385

neighbors have dogs for dinner every

386

night and it wasn't until

387

one of my friends said for me that i was

388

vietnamese that they apologize for what

389

they said because i was just

390

at such a loss for words at how it just

391

revealed how

392

people can really say insidious harmful

393

things when they don't know

394

who they're actually talking to um so

395

this rubber may seem trivial or harmless

396

like about eating dogs or about

397

sexualizing women but

398

it has really real physical consequences

399

i think we've all seen

400

um and when you other people project

401

these over generalizations onto them it

402

makes it also easier

403

to dehumanize them and to turn them into

404

an archetype

405

and to see them as a foreign abstract

406

idea so that when they do face this

407

violence racism and discrimination

408

it's easy to turn a blind eye or to say

409

well

410

i don't get it i thought all asians do

411

well and all asians are successful so i

412

feel like these

413

stereotypes kind of allow this to happen

414

um also these um hate crimes including

415

the most recent one where we saw the

416

tragic

417

killing of six asian women highlighted

418

to the intersection between racial and

419

gender violence and how these complex

420

issues

421

intersect with one another and including

422

in this specific case the

423

hypersexualization of asian women by

424

white men

425

and while these the recent spotlight on

426

this issue might make them seem novel or

427

shocking

428

anti-asian violence kind of like tiffany

429

was saying um it goes really far back

430

and it's not as recent as just a few

431

weeks ago or this past week with the

432

shooting

433

and just a few of many examples of that

434

that i've myself been able to educate

435

myself on

436

in the last month were the chinese

437

massacre of 1871 in la which is actually

438

described by multiple sources

439

as the largest last mention lynching in

440

american history despite the fact that

441

i hadn't even heard of this event until

442

five weeks ago

443

let alone knowing it was the largest

444

mass lynching right here in l.a

445

um also the chinese exclusion act and

446

japanese internment which are

447

the two examples that i hear kind of get

448

cited is when there are two of very many

449

the rock springs massacre tacoma riot

450

sexual instance and of asian women and

451

girls which is not historical continues

452

to happen

453

hell's canyon massacre of 1887 and court

454

cases with

455

institutional racism including us versus

456

wong kim ark

457

lum vs rice wow versus nichols and the

458

recent deportation just this past week

459

of 33 vietnamese families who were

460

separated

461

by an administration that ran on the

462

platform that they were looking out for

463

the asian community and people of color

464

but separated 33 families during a

465

pandemic

466

and many of them had been here since

467

before the 1980s they weren't new they

468

were american

469

um so i'm going to modestly

470

offer just some of my ideas for some

471

steps to take forward and moving up

472

and i think some of that is advocacy and

473

community engagement through the forms

474

of

475

just critically evaluating the way that

476

communities including the asian american

477

community are depicted in national

478

discourse and in the media

479

being both issues like scapegoating and

480

entire race for a pandemic

481

or even just the way that asians are

482

depicted in film or tv and

483

kind of something that you wouldn't

484

think to critically analyze i think it's

485

important

486

to look very critically and see what

487

kind of stereotypes those

488

representations perpetuate

489

rather than being dynamic or complex

490

characters

491

i also think discussing these issues in

492

various circles and communities

493

consistently and ongoing with a plan of

494

action rather than letting this be

495

brief moment of outrage or social media

496

moment is a really good way to start to

497

keep the momentum going

498

um i think this can also be done through

499

multiple formats not necessarily just

500

speeches of social media

501

but also um film and music artistic

502

formats poetry which we actually got to

503

do in

504

professor win beau's class for the

505

vietnamese american experience

506

and my group got to magazine about

507

anti-asian hate crimes and asian

508

american news

509

and i think a lot of besides the fact

510

that that project was shareable which i

511

really appreciate and i was able to

512

share it with some of my friends and

513

have

514

conversations outside of the classroom

515

on it i think it was also important that

516

it didn't

517

just paint asian people as victims or

518

pity asian americans

519

but also uplift them in a way that

520

genuinely shows the community rather

521

than just pointing to them as an example

522

of somebody who made it

523

um i also think for students

524

specifically for ucla students i would

525

highly recommend taking courses in the

526

asian american department and other

527

ethnic studies departments especially um

528

just from my experience and the cultural

529

classes i've taken including the

530

vietnamese american experience it just

531

really gave me a sense of pride to be a

532

vietnamese american and and american and

533

it was

534

i said the first day of that class that

535

was the first time that i had more than

536

one or two asian classmates or

537

vietnamese classmates specifically in a

538

class

539

which was just a really big wake-up call

540

for me so i think that's

541

a really um good way to start as a

542

student specifically

543

and i think um also like tiffany said

544

just showing solidarity with the asian

545

american community but also

546

with other communities color within that

547

so i'm really looking forward to hearing

548

everyone's insights on this topic and

549

learning from you too

550

thank you so much mariana and tiffany uh

551

especially i'm

552

grateful for all of the insights and

553

kind of proactive

554

information that you put out there for

555

us and and i just like i said

556

part of what we're doing here today is

557

to listen and i think it's so important

558

for all of us to listen to what our

559

current students are experiencing

560

and how they're navigating this current

561

crisis

562

we're now going to move to our featured

563

speakers

564

and my apologies that because of time

565

limitations i'm going to give very

566

cursory

567

introductions to everyone but i

568

encourage you to look at our event

569

website for more detailed bios and the

570

websites of the various speakers

571

to learn more our first speaker is

572

professor

573

tu hong vo who is my beloved colleague

574

in the department of asian languages and

575

culture she also holds an appointment

576

in asian american studies she is the

577

author of such books as the ironies of

578

freedom

579

sex culture and neo-liberal governance

580

in vietnam

581

and khmer viet relations and the third

582

indochina conflict

583

and i also want to thank tu hong because

584

she is

585

my colleague who brought our two student

586

speakers to the table i reached out to

587

her

588

and she very graciously recommended

589

mariana and tiffany

590

so tuhum would you mind taking the stage

591

yeah thank you so much michael for

592

organizing this event

593

as you said you know the need to

594

organize this event

595

is something that is cause for

596

consternation and lament and it is

597

unfortunate that we have to come

598

together to talk about this but

599

i really appreciate that we have this

600

space so that i can

601

learn from um other uh not just

602

colleagues but

603

students as well like perspectives from

604

the younger generation

605

which i think is so important and so

606

insightful so thank you so much tiffany

607

and marianna for enlightening us

608

in terms of what your generation is

609

doing how

610

you know you see the connections um you

611

know between

612

uh formations that lead us to this point

613

um and of course you know um uh thanks

614

to

615

everybody who is here today um

616

and i look forward to having a

617

conversation later on

618

i'm gonna keep my remarks um brief

619

a lot of the grounds have been covered

620

by tiffany

621

and mariana already so um you know i'm

622

gonna

623

try to give as much time as possible for

624

us to talk about this

625

um in the you know larger uh group

626

later on so i guess you know needless to

627

say

628

i was angry and sad and just could not

629

sleep when the news came out about this

630

because from the descriptions that later

631

came out the descriptions of the women

632

who were killed didn't come out into

633

much later

634

but once i read them these women sound

635

like

636

the many women that i know from my

637

community

638

who try to make a living in jobs that

639

leave

640

them vulnerable some of these jobs are

641

the result of capitalism and how it

642

extracts

643

profit out of the differences that it

644

amplifies between

645

kinds of people whether you're asian

646

or black queer or straight men or women

647

or whether you know you um

648

call yourself a certain thing or present

649

yourself in certain way

650

it can shape whether you can access

651

capital or not be protected

652

or not um but i wanna like i was

653

i guess my anger also stemmed from the

654

kind of narratives that we kept hearing

655

in the media you know coming from the

656

police the cherokee county police

657

or the political um leaders

658

that got into the conversation um i felt

659

like they weren't really

660

addressing um the sort of like

661

fundamental or

662

or um underlying issues like you know

663

this long history for example of

664

um constructing asians as the outsider

665

and being the outsider also means that

666

you can end up in a space of

667

incarceration like japanese americans

668

right so there's

669

those two sort of like go hand in hand

670

um so

671

people are not really talking about that

672

or we're not talking about that

673

they were basically you know talking

674

about uh you know this

675

uh process of investigation and all that

676

but i'll address it in a minute

677

but i just wanna i was like so angry i

678

feel like saying that

679

you know make no mistake like if you are

680

a white man making asian women

681

into sex objects then kill them as the

682

sources of your temptation

683

that's racist and misogynistic yet the

684

legal procedural

685

narrative allows the police and the

686

political leaders to defer to processes

687

that try to either separate racism from

688

misogyny

689

and recuperate the humanity of

690

the white man over that of the

691

asian women that he killed so

692

i was thinking that you know seeking

693

legal redress through

694

demands for police protection or

695

legislation

696

may help but it would also reproduce the

697

very same structure

698

that separates the good from the bad

699

people within

700

racialized communities and can amplify

701

the familiar police brutality against

702

one

703

or all of these groups or communities

704

um so instead i was thinking that we may

705

need to

706

sort of imagine together forms of

707

restorative justice that address the

708

inequality

709

and vulnerability of folks in our

710

communities in the first place

711

so we need more means to protect the

712

most vulnerable

713

within each community and create points

714

of connection

715

across racialized communities making use

716

of skill sets

717

that have developed historically in each

718

community to fight

719

white supremacist narratives and

720

institutions we have a long way to go to

721

dismantle some of these

722

racist misogynist queer transphobic

723

cultural formations

724

if we still hope for a better place in

725

which to live

726

i know that some of the forms that we

727

engage in have been

728

performative and

729

i think the performative is useful

730

a point but if the performative replaces

731

um you know whatever we can imagine that

732

we do to address the more structural

733

problems you know the economic

734

735

you know all of the the racist um

736

institutions and

737

you know this long history um that is at

738

the heart of this

739

um core sickness of america um you know

740

as some

741

someone had uh phrased it racism in this

742

way um so yeah this is

743

performative is useful but it should not

744

replace

745

how we might imagine addressing some of

746

these structural issues

747

and i know that the talk today um you

748

know it's organized by

749

the center for chinese studies and i

750

thank you for that

751

um would sort of like also um highlights

752

um the role or the discourse surrounding

753

the rise of china

754

right there's work to be done not only

755

in relation to

756

the racist rhetoric from white

757

supremacist quarters in this country

758

but also from within asian communities

759

as well

760

like in the past year i saw a kind of

761

heightening of a realignment of groups

762

transnationally like the new sources and

763

platforms supported by the

764

falun gong um group for example um

765

they have become like these um

766

uh foci of the dissemination of news

767

across uh asian communities here in this

768

country but also

769

in asia as well particularly like you

770

know what i am familiar with is in

771

vietnam which um created a kind of

772

realignment

773

of politics where the critique of

774

authoritarian

775

in china which might be very legitimate

776

all of a sudden becomes

777

a kind of you know aligned with white

778

supremacy

779

um in the u.s which makes the work

780

within communities difficult in terms of

781

you know coordinating or disseminating

782

ways of um analyzing or ways of seeing

783

where we would fit um in this country

784

and you know this has to do with this

785

um realignment of competing nationalism

786

right and geopolitics um

787

in the region in asia so while we're

788

talking about

789

you know this um this sickness that is

790

racism in america we also need to pay

791

attention to

792

how it connects to a very long history

793

that was

794

um global and

795

you know transnational in these ways as

796

well um particularly at this

797

this contemporary moment where we sort

798

of like see

799

um this process playing out in the

800

pacific and

801

um in the united states um in these

802

connecting ways

803

and i am just so heartened um that um

804

you know we are able to come together um

805

today and i look forward to

806

listening to the rest of the panelists

807

but also

808

to the participants today as well i know

809

that you have

810

a lot more perspectives to offer um so

811

i thank you for that thank you to hong i

812

appreciate your words

813

our next speaker is professor claire

814

jean kim from uc

815

irvine where she is a professor of

816

america asian american studies and

817

political science

818

she is also the author of bitter fruit

819

the politics of black korean conflict in

820

new york city

821

and dangerous crossings race species and

822

nature in a multicultural age

823

both of which have been awarded numerous

824

book awards professor kim

825

okay thank you so much uh professor

826

barry for organizing this event and

827

giving us

828

all a chance to come together and think

829

together about recent events um

830

professor nuenvo i just wanted to thank

831

you for your points about capitalism

832

um reinforcing carceral logics and

833

restorative justice i hope we can come

834

back and talk more about those because i

835

think those are incredibly

836

important points and an important part

837

of the story

838

so asian american communities are

839

frightened angry and distressed and

840

there has never been a more important

841

time for us to try to understand

842

anti-asian violence and we can do this

843

by talking and learning from each other

844

and putting trying to put the pieces

845

together

846

so what is causing harassment and

847

violence against asian americans and

848

what will it take to stop it

849

i'm finishing a book right now that i

850

spent many years researching

851

entitled asian americans in an

852

anti-black world

853

and i want to bring this research to

854

bear in addressing these questions

855

asian americans have always been seen as

856

not white as not

857

american and perpetually foreign this

858

has remained true

859

even as many asian americans assimilate

860

into white society and attain

861

economic educational and occupational

862

mobility

863

when a crisis occurs especially one that

864

involves an asian nation

865

so this could involve economic

866

contraction a trade war a war or a

867

868

a wave of exclusionary actions arises

869

and we asian americans are reminded that

870

we were only ever

871

conditional citizens so the aggression

872

and distrust against asian americans are

873

below the surface there

874

waiting to be triggered by external

875

events although thankfully this has

876

happened less frequently since the world

877

war ii

878

era the insurrection at the capitol

879

on january 6 reminds us that in the u.s

880

white nationalism is not a thing of the

881

past or a fringe phenomenon

882

but white nationalism or the elevation

883

of whiteness is only part of the picture

884

there is also anti-blackness the

885

systemic abjection of black people since

886

slavery

887

as exemplified by the murder of george

888

floyd last may

889

the black lives matter movement has

890

spoken about the specificity

891

of the status of black people for almost

892

a decade now

893

and i think it's critically important

894

that we think about

895

what anti-asian violence means in the

896

age of black lives matter

897

that is in the context of the anti-black

898

violence that has been continuous

899

and unremitting indeed structural and

900

incomparably severe for hundreds of

901

years

902

by this i do not mean how do we

903

analogize or compare or describe as

904

parallel what's happening with asian

905

americans rather

906

how do we think what is happening with

907

asian americans in relation to

908

what happens with black people and this

909

requires that we think about the

910

positioning of different groups how

911

asian americans have always been not

912

white but also

913

not black as they argue in my book and

914

how not blackness has been

915

a structural advantage that has

916

permitted a kind of mobility to some

917

asian americans

918

that is denied to many black people so i

919

want to note i am not talking about a

920

discursive story or

921

myth being told about a model minority

922

i am talking about differential

923

structural treatment

924

black feminists have been telling us for

925

generations when black people are free

926

all people will be free it is only when

927

those held at the bottom of society are

928

free

929

that all can be said to be liberated

930

this message has never been more

931

relevant

932

because it's not necessarily true that

933

when asian americans are free

934

all people will be free so this is the

935

choice i think we face

936

at this historic moment at this turning

937

point in u.s history

938

where we are in the aftermath of the

939

largest black-led racial justice

940

movement

941

this nation has ever seen as a group

942

advantaged by not blackness even as we

943

are disadvantaged by not whiteness

944

we can seek protection for ourselves

945

alone as asian americans within an

946

anti-black system

947

or we can seek protection for everyone

948

including the worst off

949

by pursuing a structural transformation

950

of society

951

we can focus on the hate that rises up

952

against asian americans alone

953

or we can relate it to the hate that

954

targets black people

955

relentlessly and brutally not just on

956

the street and in public places but in

957

the cloistered space of the icu

958

where black people are dying from coven

959

19 at

960

staggering rates so we have as asian

961

americans i think a historic role

962

to play and an opportunity to play it

963

after the murder of george floyd i gave

964

a lot of talks and interviews and asian

965

americans would come up to me

966

uh well they weren't physical talk so

967

they would approach me by zoom

968

and say ask me how can we be good allies

969

to black lives matter

970

so my answer is that it's now at moments

971

like this

972

when we feel pain from our own losses

973

now is the most important time to try to

974

be good allies

975

so my questions are can we keep black

976

pain

977

centered in our vision as black lives

978

matter

979

asks us to do can we locate ourselves in

980

relation to anti-blackness and the black

981

freedom struggle

982

can we resist the temptation to circle

983

the wagons and take up the banner

984

of asian nationalisms and instead face

985

outward

986

with open minds and hearts can we change

987

the slogan from

988

stop asian hate to transform this racist

989

anti-black society thank you

990

thank you professor kim our next speaker

991

is kaiser guo and kaiser is the host and

992

co-founder of the seineca podcast which

993

is the most popular english language

994

podcast on current

995

affairs dealing with china in a

996

alternate life he was the

997

communications uh international

998

communications director for baidu

999

a chinese internet company and yet

1000

another previous life he was a heavy

1001

metal guitar player

1002

in tong dynasty and spring and autumn

1003

two popular

1004

rock bands in china and i invited kaiser

1005

because a few days ago on clubhouse he

1006

hosted

1007

a room about this topic and had some

1008

really

1009

wonderful insights and i was hoping he

1010

might share some of those with us today

1011

kaiser thank you so much michael for uh

1012

i am unmuted yes uh for organizing this

1013

excellent event i want to talk about a

1014

dimension to these vicious hate crimes

1015

in atlanta and to the

1016

whole year-long surge in anti-asian

1017

violence that i think

1018

gets lost too often in the pain

1019

conversation

1020

and that is the international dimension

1021

to this this didn't

1022

happen only because of the ugly name

1023

calling by trump though that undoubtedly

1024

had a very big

1025

part of it it's not just another

1026

unspeakably awful year in

1027

a long grim history of awful years

1028

of violence against asian americans this

1029

is different it has obvious parallels to

1030

you know the cruel

1031

and unjust internment of japanese

1032

americans after pearl harbor

1033

uh but we are not at war with

1034

china it has parallels to the murder of

1035

instant chin

1036

but the anti-japanese animus of the

1037

1980s

1038

pales as horrible as it was by

1039

comparison to what we're seeing now

1040

with china china's rapid rise has been

1041

perceived by a substantial portion of

1042

the american population

1043

as a threat the u.s has in china really

1044

the first

1045

multi-dimensional peer competitor that

1046

it's had since

1047

american hegemony was established at the

1048

end of the second world war

1049

many americans have responded to china's

1050

rise to its

1051

sudden sort of surge into our

1052

consciousness

1053

very disorienting uh in much the same

1054

way i think

1055

as many white americans responded to the

1056

blm protests or

1057

before that to the civil rights movement

1058

have responded in a a way that is

1059

uh rooted in fear that uh

1060

it's rooted in a fear of loss of primacy

1061

of privilege

1062

uh both responses uh

1063

i think involve a fear that many

1064

americans don't even know that they have

1065

but it's one

1066

that certain demagogue political leaders

1067

have been able to channel very

1068

effectively

1069

uh and to amplify and to harness uh just

1070

as trump's presidency

1071

and the white ethnonationalism that it

1072

empowered

1073

uh represented a kind of irrational

1074

still representing an irrational

1075

responsible

1076

loss of white privilege in an

1077

increasingly diverse and multi-cultural

1078

united states

1079

so too does trump's foreign policy

1080

especially his policy toward china

1081

represent an irrational response to

1082

a similar loss of american privilege in

1083

an increasingly multi-polar

1084

world and this is especially true of

1085

course

1086

with regard to china zoom out i think

1087

from the national

1088

to the global and the twilight of white

1089

privilege in america looks a lot like

1090

the twilight of american hegemony in the

1091

world the armed white nationalists who

1092

have grown more vocal

1093

and visible in the years since ferguson

1094

find i think

1095

their analogy in the china hawks who are

1096

urging us now into a new cold war

1097

with with with china white fragility

1098

is american fragility in microcosm

1099

the more that our political leaders our

1100

media elites our public intellectuals

1101

and educators

1102

buy into the idea that the chinese are

1103

our enemy if not now then surely you

1104

know an enemy in the making

1105

the more violence against our

1106

communities we're going to continue to

1107

see seeing people in the media

1108

and in public life who have fanned the

1109

flames of cynophobia

1110

by enabling the authors of this

1111

radicalized discourse of great power

1112

competition spreading the poison as they

1113

have in

1114

chinese as vectors of disease the

1115

chinese state is ultimately culpable

1116

for the the tragic losses during the

1117

pandemic every chinese person wearing a

1118

lab coat

1119

is obviously a spy anyone working in an

1120

engineering department is committing

1121

industrial espionage um every chinese

1122

language instructor is an agent of

1123

influence

1124

seeing these people now acting like

1125

they're horrified and shocked by this

1126

rising hate crime

1127

culminating in these cold-blooded

1128

murders by this repellent piece of

1129

excrement

1130

i am genuinely disgusted and i have to

1131

ask them

1132

what the hell did you think was going to

1133

happen

1134

uh it is not the chinese people

1135

for that you know of course they're

1136

going to say it's the chinese communist

1137

party that

1138

they don't like it's not these other

1139

chinese southeast asian people that are

1140

it's the chinese communist party now i

1141

hope by now you have realized that i

1142

hate the

1143

chinese communist party but i love the

1144

chinese people

1145

is a fig leaf it's a mere fig leaf so i

1146

think

1147

especially for the people who chant it

1148

as a mantra there might be some who say

1149

it in good faith just as there might be

1150

some who say oh i have lots of black

1151

friends in good faith

1152

but we know what's up i mean we're not

1153

we're not stupid

1154

the more they repeat it the more we know

1155

it really lies behind it

1156

people who tell me and others who have

1157

drawn attention to this

1158

uh to the international mention uh to

1159

tell us that we mustn't

1160

point to linkage between cynophobia and

1161

hate crime against asian americans

1162

because

1163

that's a talking point to the chinese

1164

communist party uh and that you know by

1165

pointing out this

1166

what to me is an obvious truth i'm

1167

actually carrying water

1168

for the chinese communist party those

1169

people are demonstrating exactly the

1170

kind of cyanophobia

1171

that i am talking about because to see

1172

the us as locked in a zero-sum contest

1173

with an enemy that's so menacing

1174

a threat that's so existential that it

1175

takes precedence over

1176

everything in america our values the

1177

welfare of my community

1178

the over the deep-rooted racist

1179

pathologies of this country

1180

over the truth well that is the very

1181

definition of cynophobia

1182

does this mean that any full-throated

1183

criticism

1184

of china is simply unacceptable

1185

absolutely not criticized away on any

1186

number of issues

1187

god knows that beijing richly deserves

1188

it in many cases but i would submit

1189

that none of the crimes that have been

1190

committed against asian americans

1191

were done out of anger at the treatment

1192

of uyghurs

1193

in concentration camps in xinjiang none

1194

of them

1195

were i mean nobody is being killed or or

1196

beaten or insulted

1197

because in the name of hong kong

1198

democracy or in the name of of taiwan's

1199

security

1200

no this is happening because people in

1201

this country have stoked

1202

the fires of cynophobia these are often

1203

people who really opt to know better

1204

who know this country's history and what

1205

people do

1206

when their resentments and their fears

1207

are directed at the other

1208

they are complicit and they should

1209

squarely face the

1210

consequences of their complicity in this

1211

this is happening because elites in this

1212

country have failed

1213

to light uh to really to fight the

1214

dangerous slide that's led to so

1215

many people seeing this relationship now

1216

through the singular lens of national

1217

1218

this is happening because too many

1219

americans have unthinkingly

1220

accepted a view of china as some kind of

1221

existential

1222

threat this is happening because of the

1223

neo-mccarthyism

1224

of the china initiative launched by the

1225

doj

1226

in 2018 and which this summer uh who

1227

was seeing a case open against a person

1228

of chinese descent every

1229

10 hours this is happening because

1230

of the spread of conspiracy theories

1231

about the pandemic's origins

1232

that are by design easily conflated with

1233

even darker theory or

1234

theories that impute intentionality to

1235

china

1236

or are easily conflated with bioweapons

1237

theories

1238

i think that uh we need to to

1239

understand that cynophobia lies the part

1240

of it but this gives me hope because

1241

this means that if we change our

1242

attitude

1243

all we need uh we a lot can change we

1244

can we can do a lot

1245

to to pull the fuel out from the fire

1246

of cyanophobia that is fat that is

1247

creating

1248

this this massive horrifying uptick

1249

in anti-asian violence thanks very much

1250

thank you kaiser for sharing your

1251

powerful words

1252

uh next speaker is alex wong

1253

alex is a professor at the ucla school

1254

of law he is a leading expert on

1255

environmental law

1256

and the law and politics in china he's

1257

worked on issues such as air pollution

1258

climate change and other

1259

environmental issues alex great thanks

1260

so much michael uh thanks for organizing

1261

this event and thanks

1262

to all of you for coming together

1263

tonight i've really

1264

enjoyed the comments from all the

1265

speakers and also to see the comments

1266

from uh the audience

1267

um uh i've found many of them very

1268

moving and um

1269

and important uh fundamentally i i want

1270

to emphasize the

1271

the overarching message that we're

1272

talking about tonight which is

1273

the right of people of asian descent in

1274

america to be recognized

1275

not as them but as us right not as

1276

them but as us uh the vice president

1277

earlier used that formulation

1278

i thought it was a powerful formulation

1279

and i wanted to to raise it here

1280

uh i teach about chinese law and

1281

politics at the law school here at ucla

1282

and i wanted to

1283

follow up on the the angle that kaiser

1284

was taking but from a slightly different

1285

dynamic

1286

to highlight the way that an aspect of

1287

us domestic political debates about

1288

china have

1289

contributed to this framing of all

1290

asians as

1291

them rather than us and contributed to

1292

anti-asian

1293

violence so uh donald trump's insistence

1294

on using terms like

1295

kung flu and china virus and wuhan flu

1296

is well known and

1297

the use of that language and other

1298

racist language

1299

has caused an uh surge in anti-asian

1300

violence and harassment right we know

1301

the statistics we saw

1302

hate crimes in major cities going up by

1303

150 percent last year stop aapi

1304

uh hate recorded 3 800 anti-asian

1305

incidents of harassment in the last

1306

year and it's worth noting how

1307

uh this sort of incendiary language and

1308

also the political attacks on anyone who

1309

would criticize

1310

the use of that language is the express

1311

is an express part of a particular

1312

republican political playbook on china

1313

and the kovid

1314

crisis i wanted to remind us of

1315

a republican political strategy memo

1316

that was leaked

1317

last april in 2020 a so-called

1318

corona big book was it was a compendium

1319

of political

1320

talking points on kovid and it had a few

1321

notable features worth

1322

reminding ourselves of one it

1323

recommended as a response to questions

1324

to to politicians of whether

1325

covet and covet shutdowns were trump's

1326

fault the memo said

1327

quote don't defend trump attack china

1328

and other key recommendations of the

1329

memos memo

1330

were to blame democrats for being soft

1331

on china and to deem as political

1332

correctness

1333

any criticisms of the use of terms like

1334

china virus or wu

1335

wuhan flew um and and to

1336

essentially legitimate uh those

1337

criticisms as political

1338

correctness and so at best it seemed

1339

like the strategy

1340

saw anti-asian harassment and violence

1341

that was sure to come as collateral

1342

damage in the effort to use china

1343

for political advantage at worst

1344

anti-asian harassment and violent

1345

violence were actually an express part

1346

of the strategy

1347

uh the strategy which would go as sort

1348

of political dog whistles and overtly

1349

racist language would trigger anti-asian

1350

harassment

1351

and violence this in turn would trigger

1352

people to

1353

push back against the use of that

1354

language uh and

1355

and other racist statements and this

1356

would allow then

1357

uh the politicians to to call the debt

1358

the democrats politically correct

1359

soft on china or to invoke cancel

1360

culture to

1361

the legitimate criticisms and in fact

1362

i was watching um yesterday's house

1363

judiciary committee hearing on

1364

anti-asian violence yesterday in

1365

in the wake of the atlanta shootings and

1366

one of the

1367

uh opening statements from congressman

1368

chip roy

1369

uh seemed to actually be explicitly

1370

implementing the strategy i just

1371

mentioned he

1372

in the midst of a hearing that was meant

1373

to uh talk about

1374

anti-asian violence he uh suggested that

1375

hearings of that sort

1376

were in fact a threat to his free speech

1377

and his ability to call

1378

china the quote unquote bad guy or deem

1379

them the enemy

1380

and in other words he was implying that

1381

democrats were being politically correct

1382

and stopped on uh china but of course

1383

it's important to separate the

1384

the political issue as a foreign affairs

1385

matter as an international matter

1386

of china and the communist party from

1387

the issue of inclusion of people of

1388

asian descent on u.s

1389

soil we know well the tendency toward

1390

xenophobia

1391

against asians during times of

1392

international conflict

1393

we've seen it against japanese americans

1394

chinese americans and other americans

1395

of asian asian descent and the risk is

1396

growing now as tensions with china

1397

increase as a few of our speakers have

1398

already mentioned and

1399

i believe it's possible to deal with

1400

these foreign affairs matters to protect

1401

international human rights

1402

to deal with trade conflicts and the

1403

like without stoking racist harassment

1404

or violence on u.s soil americans need

1405

to be better about this and they need to

1406

find a way to confidently deal with

1407

these

1408

uh real international conflicts without

1409

harming our own

1410

uh people and this american

1411

uh racist harassment has actually begun

1412

to play

1413

into these international debates to the

1414

extent that there's criticisms of china

1415

the chinese state media has already been

1416

using the atlanta shootings and

1417

anti-asian hate in america as part of

1418

its propaganda yesterday the global

1419

times

1420

a chinese state media organ and an

1421

article

1422

highlighting trump's criticism of china

1423

and citing it as a source of rising

1424

1425

harassment suggesting it was evidence of

1426

american decline

1427

and a reason that americans american

1428

legitimacy was uh declining

1429

so just to conclude i i just want to

1430

emphasize again this theme

1431

that what we're talking about today is

1432

the right of americans or people of

1433

asian descent

1434

in america to have the right to be

1435

recognized not as them

1436

but as us you know i don't i don't have

1437

an easy

1438

uh uplifting idea for how to solve this

1439

but that concept

1440

uh is the theme that draws together a

1441

lot of the concepts that

1442

uh many people don't buy into that very

1443

basic idea

1444

and uh i i'm glad that we're having this

1445

conversation and thinking of ways to

1446

uh push uh this country more towards

1447

this idea

1448

of asian communities being

1449

part of us and not them thank you

1450

thank you so much alex we are going to

1451

remain in the world of the ucla

1452

la law school for a moment and introduce

1453

professor karenwa

1454

who is executive director of the epstein

1455

program and professor

1456

from practice at the ucla law school

1457

prior to joining ucla professor wong

1458

advocated for civil rights and immigrant

1459

rights for more than 20 years

1460

she is the longtime vice president of

1461

programs and communications at asian

1462

americans advancing justice los angeles

1463

and former director of advancing justice

1464

la immigrants rights project

1465

she is the deputy regional manager or

1466

was the deputy regional manager for the

1467

civil rights office of the u.s

1468

department of health

1469

and human services launching its los

1470

angeles office

1471

and enforcing federal civil rights

1472

across the southwestern u.s so i'm sure

1473

professor wong has a lot to share with

1474

us

1475

thank you so much michael for having me

1476

tonight and thank you to the center for

1477

chinese studies for organizing this it's

1478

an honor to share space with

1479

the other thoughtful speakers um

1480

but one of the challenges of going

1481

towards the end of the long list is you

1482

um i i'm probably going to say ditto

1483

reference what a lot of

1484

prior folks said but hopefully my

1485

comments um

1486

serve to will serve to reinforce i think

1487

some of the key points that have already

1488

been raised

1489

so i wanted to start by saying the

1490

atlanta shootings were really

1491

they were just a gut punch for me this

1492

week um and this was a gut punch

1493

that finally really knocked me out i've

1494

been really emotional this week in a way

1495

i didn't expect

1496

um and this is after going almost numb

1497

from months and months of just you know

1498

these endless reports of harassment and

1499

violence showing up in my social media

1500

feed and seeing it in the news every

1501

time i

1502

click on the l.a times or just any

1503

publication

1504

um this violence directed at asians and

1505

asian americans and

1506

you know part of the reason it's so

1507

emotional for me was is that it was

1508

another brutal racially motivated

1509

killing of an asian american

1510

chancellor block actually mentioned

1511

already at the very beginning vincent

1512

chin in 1982

1513

it was that specific case that's for me

1514

to go to law school as a young college

1515

1516

in that case that young man's death is

1517

why i spent more than 20 years working

1518

in civil rights advocacy and enforcement

1519

including some of my work dealt with

1520

hate crimes cases and

1521

other forms of anti-asian harassment and

1522

it's actually nice to see

1523

one of my former colleagues yunji here

1524

who's speaking later

1525

from advancing justice i guess in terms

1526

of what i

1527

had thought to say tonight i have a lot

1528

of thoughts and emotions um but i tried

1529

to group some of the things that i've

1530

been feeling into two kind of groups of

1531

thoughts that are related

1532

um that i've really kind of risen to the

1533

forefront um

1534

so first and i think professor nuenvo

1535

actually talked about some of

1536

my first point um it's really about

1537

you know particularly with atlanta um

1538

the fact that our legal system is

1539

unable um or um just flat out refuses to

1540

understand

1541

uh violence when it is intersectional um

1542

so

1543

as somebody who worked uh for a long

1544

time kind of tracking hate crimes data

1545

this is actually what i did as a law

1546

clerk

1547

um and early in my career was looking at

1548

hate crimes

1549

against asian americans the notable hate

1550

crimes cases that have been championed

1551

by the asian american community

1552

have centered male victims uh where

1553

gender and sexual orientation have not

1554

been

1555

you know quote unquote complicating

1556

factors and so you know the more notable

1557

ones like vincent chin that we already

1558

mentioned

1559

if you don't know he was a chinese

1560

american beaten to death

1561

during the rise of the japanese auto

1562

industry being to death in detroit which

1563

is obviously relevant in 1982

1564

but a couple of other ones that i think

1565

are also known for folks who have

1566

followed asian american hate crimes

1567

joseph aletto who was killed here in our

1568

own backyard in san fernando valley

1569

filipino-american postal worker

1570

shot while he was delivering mail this

1571

is 1999.

1572

and balbir singh was a sikh indian

1573

american

1574

man who was murdered i think a few days

1575

after 9 11 one of the first

1576

but one of many many victims after 9 11

1577

started

1578

sort of an anti-terrorism kind of hate

1579

campaign against

1580

people who were perceived as being

1581

so-called terrorists and so if you look

1582

at all these cases there are very few

1583

women victims who show up and hate

1584

crimes data and narratives

1585

even those collected by the asian

1586

american community over the past few

1587

decades because invariably

1588

women victims are also sexually harassed

1589

or assaulted it's very

1590

hard to untangle those two and those

1591

cases

1592

unfortunately often get treated um as

1593

sexual assaults

1594

rapes as sex crimes but not as as

1595

racially driven crimes and so there i

1596

remember when i spent like a year

1597

researching this in law school

1598

um even serial rapists who only attack

1599

asian women

1600

um sex crimes motivated by race would

1601

would

1602

fail to be categorized as any sort of

1603

racially motivated

1604

act or crime um so two things

1605

that i think are interesting about this

1606

past week um that i think give us a

1607

chance to think about how we challenge

1608

this framing

1609

as asian americans actually uh is that

1610

what is the atlanta shooting in tuesday

1611

i think

1612

some other speakers have addressed this

1613

but basically law enforcement and

1614

mainstream media

1615

you know has reacted so far in fairly

1616

predictable ways um

1617

it's their prime example actually the

1618

coverage and the responses this week of

1619

the failure to understand

1620

violence when it's at the intersection

1621

of something like race and gender so you

1622

have eight people deliberately killed

1623

uh in a series of shootings six of whom

1624

are asian women um they were also all

1625

killed at asian owned or operated

1626

businesses atlanta has a proportionately

1627

higher percentage of asians than

1628

the rest of the south i think it's

1629

around 12 percent in metro atlanta

1630

but that kind of outcome where six out

1631

of eight victims are asian that has to

1632

be deliberate that's by choice of the

1633

shooter so you can't say race

1634

is not a factor here in some way yet law

1635

enforcement has pivoted really quickly

1636

to the sex aspect of the shootings and

1637

appears to be completely discarding race

1638

i actually

1639

shortly before tonight heard that the

1640

fbi is now saying

1641

that that they don't think race was a

1642

factor this is despite

1643

um i think several speakers including i

1644

think mariana at the beginning reference

1645

the long-standing sexual

1646

uh fetishization of asian women in both

1647

white american history and its

1648

imagination

1649

so you know that's completely you know

1650

disregarding the racial aspect of what

1651

happened in atlanta

1652

completely disregards this long and

1653

complicated history that our country has

1654

with asia and asian women

1655

and the second thing i wanted to mention

1656

references the data that the

1657

other professor huang alex i mentioned

1658

earlier which is that the group um stop

1659

aapi hate

1660

just hours before the atlanta shooting

1661

earlier on tuesday actually released its

1662

latest data so what they

1663

showed and this is a group that was

1664

formed um to track

1665

specifically the rise in cobit related

1666

anti-asian attacks

1667

so they've only been tracking for the

1668

past 12 months and what they showed for

1669

the past 12 months

1670

was not only that close to 4 000 cases

1671

have been reported and again these were

1672

self-reports just to this one

1673

organization that was collecting um but

1674

what really stood out to me besides that

1675

shocking number was that close to 70

1676

i think the number 68 of the cases were

1677

reported by

1678

women um i think less than 30 percent it

1679

was 29

1680

reported by men and that means women

1681

were

1682

reported 2.3 times more cases than men

1683

um in these harassment incidents that

1684

were happening over the past year so

1685

it's not happening

1686

equally as or at least it's not being

1687

reported equally in terms of

1688

what's been happening in terms of the

1689

rise in anti-asian violence and

1690

1691

so my second point um is uh

1692

it's really about um you know as

1693

terrible as the atlanta shootings and

1694

the assaults were

1695

uh we have to stop focusing on the hate

1696

crimes aspect and overall the

1697

criminalization aspect of what is

1698

happening

1699

um and that is you know i i you know

1700

said at the beginning what happened

1701

atlanta was terrible and

1702

i still personally am reeling from it

1703

but the criminal justice system

1704

um you know as professor wenbeau

1705

mentioned um is likely to fail to

1706

recognize the complex racial context

1707

of the shootings in atlanta so to me

1708

that's one failure of focusing on the

1709

criminal

1710

justice system as a response to what's

1711

happening um

1712

you know just because the local

1713

prosecutor or even the fbi declared that

1714

it wasn't about race i think for

1715

asian american women across the country

1716

like me right now it doesn't make it any

1717

less about race just because officially

1718

you know the criminal investigators

1719

aren't going to call it that um

1720

but i also wanted to broaden out and say

1721

you know referring to the 4 000

1722

incidents what's happening is clearly

1723

more than a surge in hate crimes

1724

hate crimes someone asked i think one of

1725

the q a is like what what's a hate crime

1726

versus a hate incident

1727

hate crimes have to rise to the level of

1728

violence threat of violence or property

1729

damage

1730

so to become criminalized activity that

1731

law enforcement can pursue but if you

1732

look at what's been happening the 4 000

1733

cases that have been documented and the

1734

many more that haven't been

1735

you know there's a sustained surge in

1736

anti-aging activity overall

1737

and the crimes while they're horrific

1738

are actually small relative

1739

in number to the never ending flood of

1740

broader hate uh

1741

incidents and then i think something

1742

like 70 percent of what

1743

stopped aap i hate track is actually

1744

verbal harassment that's the most common

1745

and likely form of anti-asian violence

1746

to happen right now

1747

um so the criminal justice system the

1748

legal system have never really been able

1749

to deal with this type of non-criminal

1750

harassment and violence um and it

1751

doesn't mean

1752

that these incidents and violence are

1753

going to go away um

1754

you know we we now have data to show

1755

that it's getting worse

1756

right so i guess i raise all this

1757

because ultimately the criminal justice

1758

system and demanding more police and

1759

demanding more hate crimes prosecutions

1760

is not going to make us safer

1761

you know the reality is we have all that

1762

right now we have hate crimes laws and

1763

penalties that have been on the books

1764

for decades

1765

they are not helping they have not

1766

helped they were meant to deter

1767

people but there i don't think there's

1768

any documented case of someone

1769

who committed a hate crime or didn't

1770

commit a hate crime who could say i

1771

didn't do it

1772

because you know i was going to get 10

1773

more years because it was good i was

1774

going to get a hate crimes enhancement

1775

um and honestly calling for more police

1776

isn't even helpful

1777

to many asian americans um just within

1778

the past month there was a case of a

1779

filipino american in antioch angelo

1780

quinto quinto who was killed uh when his

1781

family called the police

1782

and instead of helping him they kneeled

1783

on him very similar to george floyd and

1784

they killed him

1785

um so i wanted to kind of close by

1786

saying you know i've seen so many asian

1787

americans calling the atlanta shooting a

1788

sort of vincent chen moment for our

1789

current times

1790

something so palpable to so many that it

1791

drives us to action

1792

um you know 40 years ago when vincent

1793

chin was killed a lot of the focus

1794

was on prosecuting the perpetrators who

1795

were two white men and that was an era

1796

and and the decades that followed that

1797

were an era of increasing

1798

criminalization the so-called

1799

broken windows policing policies for

1800

example

1801

and what hate crimes laws do essentially

1802

is basically enhance the punishment for

1803

an existing crime so you're punished for

1804

the underlying crime like an assault

1805

and then you get additional punishment

1806

because the motive um was said to be

1807

based on a protected category like race

1808

and it was considered a big win at the

1809

time for the chin case to get prosecuted

1810

as a hate crime because

1811

federal hate crimes laws were fairly new

1812

at the time vincent chin was the first

1813

asian victim

1814

to be treated as such under the federal

1815

laws

1816

but i think as professor kim said

1817

earlier you know we're in a really

1818

different

1819

place right now in terms of where the

1820

country is

1821

around criminal justice reform and

1822

around what policing and criminal

1823

justice really means for communities of

1824

color

1825

and so i mean what i am hoping you know

1826

if this is really truly a turning point

1827

for asian americans what i hope it

1828

causes us to do is to rethink the root

1829

causes of hate activity

1830

um which is really around racism and

1831

white supremacy

1832

and powers that uphold racism and white

1833

1834

and that we think also about centering

1835

the trauma and focusing on the trauma

1836

the victims um experience

1837

um some of the things i'll just mention

1838

because i um

1839

wanted to say some things that were kind

1840

of things we could do is that

1841

you know asian americans can and should

1842

be supporting uh black lives matters and

1843

really it's not even about blm it's

1844

about the fact that so many people of

1845

color now are mobilizing around a better

1846

vision of justice and fighting against

1847

you know the increasing

1848

um criminalization of almost every

1849

aspect of our

1850

our society and i think as asian

1851

americans as you know

1852

if you've learned nothing this week you

1853

know the fact that white police could

1854

stand up there and say that

1855

you know atlanta had nothing to do with

1856

race you know with that they're not on

1857

our side

1858

um you know being agreeing to be the

1859

racial wedge against other communities

1860

is not helping

1861

asian americans at all um and i

1862

encourage our community to think about

1863

the lot the non-law enforcement options

1864

i'll drop some things into the links but

1865

there are a lot of asian american

1866

leaders who've been organizing around

1867

policy recommendations on how to center

1868

victim trauma and community services

1869

um there are options now in places like

1870

la i think there's in

1871

using the 211 number which has been used

1872

for information in the past but it's

1873

also now being used

1874

um to as to ask for non-police

1875

intervention around hate

1876

uh cases um and i will end by just

1877

saying a couple of things um

1878

i do think it's absolutely important

1879

that we report hate incidents and by

1880

this i don't mean necessarily to law

1881

enforcement

1882

but you know there are multiple

1883

organizations in our community that are

1884

collecting this data this collection of

1885

data is what's helping us

1886

be able to show the scope of the problem

1887

so stop aapi hate also advancing justice

1888

has the sanigans hatred um data

1889

collection portal which actually was

1890

1891

um in response to them then candidate

1892

donald trump campaigning and starting to

1893

use anti-china language when he first

1894

started running

1895

for president in 2015. and i also say

1896

you need to help us document i mean

1897

everything should be documented because

1898

documenting you know allows us to tell

1899

the stories but it also helps to

1900

validate the experiences of victims

1901

we've had victims

1902

realize that they've been harassed by

1903

the same perpetrator because people are

1904

coming forward and telling their stories

1905

and then finally i'll just say in terms

1906

of what people can do whether you're

1907

asian or non-asian

1908

is you know one of the challenges that

1909

i've seen many asian americans express

1910

around what's happening is the the sense

1911

1912

until six women asian women were killed

1913

in atlanta

1914

you know anti-asian violence anti-asian

1915

hate has has been

1916

viewed as invisible uh relative to other

1917

types of violence in our society and so

1918

standing up for victims of hate

1919

incidents is incredibly

1920

important um that's you know centering

1921

the trauma

1922

that victims feel even if it's just

1923

verbal harassment makes the anti-asian

1924

hate visible

1925

as someone who grew up in indiana and

1926

served in i i

1927

was harassed so often i was called

1928

change in chat and told to go back to

1929

china so many times that it just sort of

1930

became like

1931

you know part of my daily life like it

1932

was it was you know and and it it

1933

it made me feel small and little and no

1934

one ever said anything um

1935

to me and i think of if someone had just

1936

said something you know how much earlier

1937

i would have been able to kind of

1938

you know reconcile and deal with that

1939

kind of microaggression and so

1940

the last thing i'll say i'll drop this

1941

into the chat again is that um there are

1942

bystander intervention trainings if you

1943

haven't heard about this it's something

1944

i urge you to do um the advancing

1945

justice organization

1946

is partnering with a group called

1947

hollaback um and they're doing these

1948

virtual trainings

1949

um all oliver i mean they're doing them

1950

virtually now but they're organizations

1951

all over the country that are sponsoring

1952

these and basically

1953

it teaches you how to safely intervene

1954

and support victims and de-escalate

1955

conflict

1956

and i think that if nothing

1957

you know standing up and and being able

1958

to intervene in a way even just to tell

1959

someone you know

1960

what happened was terrible let me be

1961

here to support you

1962

is is a small thing that we can all do

1963

right now going forward

1964

thank you so much professor wong

1965

before i introduce our next speaker i

1966

just want to remind our participants

1967

if you have a question there is a q a

1968

box at the bottom of your screen

1969

uh you can put your questions there and

1970

when we move to the q

1971

a portion we'll get to as many of those

1972

as possible i noticed some people

1973

are posting questions in the chat forum

1974

and it's easy for us to miss those when

we go to q a so you can cut and paste

1976

your question from chat

1977

to the q a if you want them addressed

1978

and again please identify the

1979

speaker that you would like to direct

1980

your question to and also tell us if you

1981

are a student

1982

our next speaker is dr gay yuan

1983

who is the president of the board of

1984

directors at the chinese american museum

1985

she has a rich history in community

1986

activism in fact

1987

she just mentioned the other day that

1988

she has been interfacing right now with

1989

the local los angeles government and the

1990

mayor's office about the events that are

1991

unfolding she has served in the field of

1992

education for over 45

1993

years has influenced many generations of

1994

teachers principals

1995

lawmakers uh in her capacity as

1996

professor and chair at california state

1997

university

1998

los angeles and so i'd like to turn the

1999

floor over to

2000

dr yuen thank you michael and thank you

2001

everyone for

2002

uh enlightening me as i listen to your

2003

presentations

2004

i want to address tiffany and mariana

2005

first in 1960

2006

i was where you're at i was an

2007

undergraduate at ucla

2008

and because growing up as an immigrant

2009

here in the united states i had my

2010

culture and my language knocked out of

2011

me

2012

when i was swept in the face two weeks

2013

after i landed

2014

in in the united states

2015

in los angeles and had a

2016

self-hatred for years for being chinese

2017

from that

2018

point on and that's what society does to

2019

2020

and so my saving grace

2021

and what influenced me most

2022

was being at the right place at the

2023

right time and being at ucla

2024

in the late 60s and the early 70s

2025

so i majored in chinese studies and i

2026

was laughing with professor barry

2027

today because in fact he's in the

2028

department that i was studying

2029

under but in those days it was called

2030

the department of oriental

2031

studies and so that's what my

2032

my ba says that i graduated with a va in

2033

oriental studies

2034

but ucla at that time and i'm hoping

2035

it's true now was so progressive

2036

that it shaped and influenced me in

2037

terms of

2038

what i did and what i'm doing now

2039

uh i stood on top of the engineering

2040

building

2041

as we watched the national guards

2042

marched in

2043

in a in a river of hard hats

2044

to to suppress

2045

the anti-vietnam war protests

2046

that we were all involved in i took my

2047

first

2048

ethnic studies class at ucla

2049

when no one even knew what ethnic

2050

studies was

2051

and we had an asian american ethnic

2052

studies courses and programs

2053

and that was when i realized that well

2054

i'm not

2055

white after all but then what

2056

am i and that's where the questioning

2057

2058

what do you do with a ba in chinese

2059

studies

2060

you know the parents are saying go find

2061

a job right

2062

but what do you do with you know and

2063

then i heard about this thing now

2064

remember this was 1973-74

2065

lao versus nichols mariana

2066

the law that brought in bilingual

2067

education

2068

for refugee and immigrant students who

2069

couldn't speak

2070

english and that was ushered

2071

in because of lawsuits

2072

by chinese families

2073

and if you look throughout history

2074

many of the fights that the chinese

2075

immigrants fought

2076

we fought it in court because that

2077

allowed for sustainable

2078

change and we fought

2079

by learning the laws

2080

and we fought it in ways that were smart

2081

and lasting but at

2082

each stage of u.s history

2083

we were thrown hurdles the chinese

2084

exclusion act

2085

the miners tax the poll tax

2086

right and and each time

2087

we were able to use our brains

2088

to fight our fights

2089

and so when i find myself

2090

engaged with the chinese american museum

2091

of los angeles after i retired

2092

after 45 years in education

2093

i realized that

2094

these are the stories that need to be

2095

told

2096

so up until last year up until 2020

2097

fighting for the for the sustainability

2098

of the

2099

chinese museum was difficult but most of

2100

those fights had to do

2101

with financial sustainability

2102

what happened in 2020

2103

totally upset our thinking

2104

and challenge our thoughts

2105

of what is our museum all about

2106

and for those of you who don't know our

2107

museum

2108

the chinese american museum is located

2109

in el pueblo historical monument we

2110

share the space with oberus street

2111

and we're across the street from union

2112

station

2113

people ask well how come the chinese

2114

chinese-american museum is not in

2115

chinatown

2116

it is in chinatown that was the very

2117

2118

chinatown and the museum is in the

2119

building that has now been turned back

2120

to us by the city government

2121

all the chinese and this is something

2122

else you might not have known

2123

mariana all the chinese were chased

2124

out of chinatown of that chinatown

2125

in the 1930s because they wanted to

2126

build union station

2127

and so all the families all the

2128

businesses

2129

all the family associations

2130

had to be had to move they were traced

2131

out

2132

almost overnight and there are still

2133

people living today that remembers

2134

playing in the alleys there and and

2135

growing up there

2136

so so going back to the what we have to

2137

face uh in terms of the challenge

2138

the challenge wasn't covet because it

2139

did close the museum

2140

but the challenge was what is

2141

our museum in terms of our relationship

2142

not only with our chinese american

2143

people

2144

but with the greater society at large

2145

and it's pursuing thoughts

2146

of what helen zia says frequently

2147

and that is our history and the history

2148

of people of color

2149

our mih missing

2150

in history nobody talks about us nobody

2151

talks about our history

2152

and i was shocked marianna when you

2153

2154

the chinese massacre when you mentioned

2155

the chinese exclusion act

2156

right recently

2157

at least some of us have heard of

2158

vincent

2159

vincent shin who were who was murdered

2160

39 years ago

2161

and and we will be commemorating the

2162

40th anniversary

2163

next year but this year is the 150th

2164

anniversary of the chinese massacre

2165

and we're not even a blimp

2166

but these are the racist incidents that

2167

continues to happen

2168

again and again and again

2169

so as a museum who depend on the checks

2170

and the checkbooks

2171

of our donors and our supporters

2172

we took a very risky

2173

step last

2174

um last june when as a museum

2175

we released a racial justice for all

2176

americans

2177

statement calling for unity

2178

with the blm and we were worried that we

2179

would be losing some supporters

2180

but we said we can't only talk about

2181

racism in the past without connecting it

2182

to the racism

2183

that we're facing right now and that

2184

we've continued

2185

to face from 1850 until now

2186

and so we released that statement we got

2187

some pushback

2188

but mostly we were we're one of the

2189

2190

um chinese american organizations to

2191

come out with that statement

2192

and and uh got a lot of support

2193

not only from our board members but from

2194

our um

2195

our supporters and yesterday

2196

we release another statement of standing

2197

together against hate

2198

beyond statements we've been

2199

actively working together

2200

across coalitions of leaders

2201

of people of color but we've also been

2202

working

2203

with legislation we've been working with

2204

uh in fact

2205

we just met with police chief michael

2206

moore

2207

talking to him about police reform

2208

from from uh from training and hiring to

2209

promotions

2210

because those are some of the things

2211

that need to be changed

2212

and so we're working more

2213

on the grassroots level trying

2214

to raise awareness in our own community

2215

so that we're not as isolated and trying

2216

to help

2217

our community also connect

2218

with some of the the things that other

2219

people of color are facing um

2220

and i'm tired i'm sad

2221

i've also been crying

2222

but we have to do it we have to roll up

2223

our sleeves

2224

and do it so thank you

2225

thank you dr yuen for sharing this

2226

powerful experience

2227

and even more so for everything that you

2228

have done and continue to do

2229

and we really appreciate you sharing

2230

your experience

2231

our final speaker is hyunji roh who is

2232

an executive coach and former

2233

co-director of advancing justice

2234

asian law caucus she was previously a

2235

civil rights attorney

2236

and director of various nonprofit

2237

organizations

2238

from 2011 to 2014 she was executive

2239

director and co-director

2240

of asian americans advancing justice the

2241

nation's first legal aid and civil

2242

rights organization

2243

serving asian pacific american

2244

2245

she began her career as a civil rights

2246

litigator at the u.s department of

2247

justice

2248

uh civil rights division in washington

2249

dc and

2250

we're so happy you could join us don't

2251

you please

2252

thank you michael and thank you to

2253

everyone

2254

who shared and to all the uh shares in

2255

the comments i've been really moved

2256

by a lot of what i've been reading and i

2257

may be the only panelist who michael

2258

didn't actually ask

2259

to join this panel i actually asked him

2260

if i could join this panel

2261

when i heard that it was happening and

2262

the reason why is actually not because

2263

of the past civil rights work that i've

2264

done

2265

when i used to be an attorney it's

2266

actually because the work that i'm doing

2267

now

2268

which is as somebody who is holding

2269

space

2270

in particular for asian american leaders

2271

and holding space for organizations

2272

that are grappling with how do we

2273

actually

2274

do the work of creating trust and

2275

belonging on a day-to-day basis

2276

and so in the spirit of what michael

2277

shared around

2278

what are ways up i wanted to share and i

2279

don't know if

2280

my internet connection says it's

2281

unstable can you still hear me michael

2282

can you give me a thumbs up if i'm still

2283

coming through

2284

okay great thank you i wanted to share

2285

some thoughts um as i've been talking

2286

with people this week

2287

about what are things that we can do on

2288

a day-to-day basis

2289

and the first one really builds so much

2290

on what both gay

2291

and karen shared and

2292

i think of it as choosing to risk our

2293

own

2294

significance and this is this is from

2295

um one of my favorite poems and i'm

2296

actually going to type the sentence into

2297

the chat

2298

so that you all have it but this line

2299

has really just been um staying with me

2300

this week i choose

2301

to risk my significance

2302

and it speaks to what what gay shared

2303

around mih

2304

missing in history and there are the big

2305

history events of course

2306

right the the big things that are that

2307

are unspoken

2308

and there are also the moments every

2309

single day the moments of choice

2310

that we have either to speak up and to

2311

share what we're experiencing to share

2312

who we are

2313

or actually not to speak and

2314

these can just be really everyday

2315

moments like um

2316

i was in a meeting this morning and we

2317

were just doing check-ins

2318

right and everyone else's check-in you

2319

know was something like i'm you know

2320

experiencing this around my kids and

2321

experiencing that and meanwhile

2322

my heart was just hurting you know so

2323

the check-in question was what's

2324

present for you now and what was really

2325

present for me was my

2326

heart was hurting because of

2327

what we've been experiencing this week

2328

and i had this moment of hesitation

2329

do i share that because nobody else is

2330

talking about it

2331

maybe that's not the topic of this

2332

2333

i was the only asian person in this

2334

2335

and this this sentence came back to me

2336

do i choose to risk my significance

2337

do i choose to believe that my

2338

experience matters

2339

so i did make the choice and i said my

2340

heart is hurting

2341

and this is why and this is what is

2342

present for me

2343

right now and it changed

2344

it changed the course of that

2345

2346

these are the kinds of everyday choices

2347

that we can make

2348

to risk our own significance

2349

so that we're not mih in the grand

2350

scope of history and we're also not

2351

missing

2352

action in just the everyday moments of

2353

our lives

2354

[Music]

2355

we need each of your voices

2356

we need each of your stories we

2357

need to hear each of you to see each of

2358

you

2359

in just the uniqueness of who you are

2360

that's part of what's going to turn this

2361

around for each of us just in every

2362

2363

of our lives the second way up

2364

i want to offer is that

2365

this you know spoiler alert nobody has

2366

the answers

2367

these questions that we are living into

2368

right now

2369

questions around how do we care for each

2370

other

2371

what does it mean to care for each other

2372

how do we belong to each other and and

2373

beyond just being

2374

sitting at a table together right we

2375

talk about a seat at the table

2376

i'm not talking about belonging as

2377

having a seat at the

2378

table i'm talking about a deeper kind of

2379

belonging

2380

where your is mine

2381

you are frozen now

2382

we don't know how to do this everybody

2383

is living into these questions right now

2384

and so i want to say that if you you

2385

don't have the answers

2386

okay nobody hands

2387

us to actually live into the questions

2388

we are figuring this out in real time

2389

and the final thing i would offer is

2390

2391

discomfort is not a sign that something

2392

is wrong

2393

right now where we are in this country

2394

we're just in a hot mess of discomfort

2395

that's what's real right now

2396

that's what that's what being in

2397

2398

feels like right now

2399

it actually feels like sitting in the

2400

discomfort

2401

and we've got to find we've got to each

2402

of us has got to build our internal

2403

capacity to stay

2404

in the discomfort that's how we stay in

2405

2406

2407

so i want to close with

2408

i want to close with a poem and

2409

it's a poem about building bridges

2410

and i love it because it really speaks

2411

2412

the kind of work that's required of all

2413

of us right now

2414

and i'm going to put it in the chat and

2415

i'll read it here as a way to close

2416

my share and this is a poem that

2417

building bridges it's called from here

2418

to there

2419

may i build this bridge between you and

2420

2421

build it with words sincere and strong

2422

and when the words don't quite reach

2423

i'll build the bridge with silence

2424

and when silence falls short i'll build

2425

it with longing

2426

and if the longing won't span the gap

2427

i'll fill it

2428

in what's left with history with hope

2429

with facts with fantasy jazz

2430

poetry shoelaces old gum

2431

feathers toothpicks candle wax gauze of

2432

ruined dreams

2433

almost apple peels i swear i will use

2434

anything it takes to build this bridge

2435

and when it falls apart as bridges

2436

sometimes do

2437

i will build it again with

2438

my bones with my tears

2439

with my shadow with my

2440

light

2441

keep shining your light we need your

2442

2443

2444

thank you so much that was beautiful and

2445

yeah so much appreciation um for all of

2446

you for sharing

2447

so much beauty and insight and

2448

experiences on this panel

2449

we have a lot of questions uh in the q a

2450

but before i open some of those up one

2451

thing i thought was really special was

2452

when gay was speaking the interactions

2453

you had with mariana

2454

and that kind of intergenerational

2455

communication and

2456

and before we go to the q a box i'm

2457

wondering if any of our speakers

2458

uh have questions for one another but in

2459

particular the students do you guys have

2460

questions for

2461

the us old folks or do any of our

2462

speakers have questions for our students

2463

because i think it's so essential that

2464

we also really reach out to one another

2465

to understand

2466

how our undergrads are coping and

2467

navigating what's been happening

2468

and and vice versa and so i want to just

2469

create that

2470

space for a moment for the panel to

2471

interact with one another before we go

2472

to the q a

2473

i just had a quick question tiffany did

2474

you want to go first or is it good if i

2475

asked really quick

2476

oh yeah you can go okay sounds good um i

2477

was just gonna ask is

2478

do you know when the chinese american

2479

museum will be open or

2480

is covet affecting that right now or

2481

still closed

2482

uh were were part of tier

2483

three opening but because we're part of

2484

el pueblo historical monument and there

2485

are

2486

a lot of uh merchants

2487

and food places there were dependent on

2488

when el pueblo would open

2489

so we don't have a date yet and i think

2490

uh

2491

michael you and i had talked about

2492

we have resources to bring buses

2493

from schools from kinder to

2494

to university level to come visit our

2495

museum once it reopens again

2496

and so i'll be happy to provide those to

2497

anyone who's interested

2498

and i may personally dose in it

2499

thank you yeah we had had uh

2500

plan alex hyungju and i all have

2501

children in the same school and that we

2502

had a plan to visit

2503

gays museum i remember you know eve of

2504

cove at 19 and so

2505

we will keep that it'll happen we'll

2506

make it happen

2507

yes other questions for the panel

2508

if not let's start uh getting to some of

2509

our q and a's we have so many questions

2510

here

2511

and i'm going to start with this one

2512

from julie cho

2513

what is mainstream news getting right

2514

about accounting for the history and

2515

context of anti-asian racism and

2516

2517

what do they still need to learn what

2518

can non-english ethnic

2519

media sources provide and how can we

2520

elevate this community knowledge

2521

what are some of the media practices

2522

that we can use to amplify

2523

for better understanding

2524

anyone kaiser you want to take a stab at

2525

2526

i mean that's a huge question um and

2527

i think there have been a lot of

2528

critiques about what media has gotten

2529

wrong

2530

uh out the gate talking about this i

2531

think those are fairly familiar

2532

uh from my perspective i think that uh

2533

one thing that they have failed to focus

2534

enough on

2535

is again it's you know it's as i said

2536

it's how the downturn in the bilateral

2537

relationship

2538

coupled with china's meteoric rise has

2539

really changed the way

2540

that that uh chinese americans and

2541

collaterally

2542

all asian americans are viewed in this

2543

country

2544

we've this is something that we've not

2545

encountered before

2546

i think this really needs to be put into

2547

an historical context we've never seen

2548

a country rise so quickly relative to us

2549

one that is so deeply intertwined

2550

and interdependent with us where in such

2551

a short span of time

2552

they've gone from something a country

2553

that we very much looked down

2554

at as it were punched down toward

2555

that was sort of despised regarded as

2556

underdeveloped regarded as

2557

as always you know the perennial learner

2558

2559

to suddenly one that we we in many

2560

senses

2561

fear that is something that that

2562

historically we've not wrestled with

2563

before

2564

it's never happened in such a compressed

2565

period and that has i think

2566

real implications both for how china

2567

behaves and

2568

for how the united states behaves and

2569

more importantly for our discussion

2570

today

2571

how americans view

2572

uh chinese and then of course by

2573

extension or

2574

collaterally all east asians in the

2575

2576

so i think that's something that that uh

2577

the media has has missed out on

2578

i think there's there's after the first

2579

12 hours or so

2580

i saw a lot of pretty heroic efforts to

2581

really try to contextualize things

2582

a lot of people who were you know boning

2583

up as quickly as they could on their

2584

asian american studies 101

2585

a lot of people who were reaching out as

2586

quickly as they could to

2587

to find people who actually do know the

2588

history

2589

of asians in this country uh

2590

i i think that that that's that's

2591

laudable uh i think it should have been

2592

there

2593

you know before the first headlines were

2594

and then there were some really

2595

excitable headlines

2596

i'll stop there but i'm sure a lot of

2597

people have have comments as well

2598

would anyone else like to comment on

2599

that question claire

2600

and then karen

2601

you're muted claire

2602

i've done a number of uh media

2603

interviews over the last week so not

2604

just about the atlanta killings but

2605

about

2606

previous anti-asian events and

2607

i have a few observations people might

2608

find interesting

2609

most of the people who contacted me the

2610

reporters were asian-american themselves

2611

and so i thought this reflected you know

2612

this interested me because i wondered

2613

what difference is it going to make

2614

that they're asian american and how they

2615

cover the story

2616

and um one thing that disappointed me

2617

was that i found that you know i

2618

understand reporters especially for like

2619

a major

2620

um newspaper that they have a you know a

2621

deadline in 24 hours that they are

2622

don't have a lot of time to do in-depth

2623

research so

2624

they reach for whatever interpretive

2625

frames are available to us

2626

culturally and they just apply those to

2627

the facts on the ground

2628

and so for example when there was this

2629

brief

2630

sort of news frenzy about whether black

2631

people were going after

2632

asians asian americans and i remember

2633

2634

cnn producer contacted me and said can

2635

you talk to me about this story and i

2636

said

2637

well you know other than the one video

2638

that i saw um

2639

that might you know involve a black

2640

perpetrator in san francisco where

2641

are the other stories like can you tell

2642

me um what the evidence is and she said

2643

2644

i don't really know of any other so it

2645

really seemed like it was based on one

2646

or two cases

2647

and then people were saying this is a

2648

black problem and these are black people

2649

going after asians and

2650

and then all of these you know young

2651

asian american journalists wanted to use

2652

that frame

2653

and even though i was talking to them

2654

and saying you're criminalizing black

2655

people sort of before there's even been

2656

a trial

2657

in the absence of evidence so you know

2658

that concerned me because age here are

2659

asian americans talking about

2660

racism against themselves and yet they

2661

2662

reproducing right these anti-black

2663

tropes which we know

2664

lead to mass incarceration and other um

2665

nightmares that we are living through so

2666

i thought that was a very

2667

um interesting aspect of what was going

2668

on

2669

thank you karen

2670

yeah i just wanted to um there were a

2671

lot of pieces in that question

2672

um that related to media and i just

2673

wanted to make two comments

2674

or observations related to media and

2675

what's been happening what is that and

2676

2677

professor kim uh talked about this too

2678

but um i have noticed

2679

that i think unlike in the past there

2680

are just a lot more asian american

2681

journalists in mainstream spaces and and

2682

the stories that i'm seeing

2683

that are more nuanced particularly

2684

around the intersectional issues i

2685

talked about earlier between

2686

race gender and sort of the fact that

2687

you know these may or may not be sex

2688

workers um

2689

you know that kind of unpacking of all

2690

that is actually coming from asian

2691

american journalists mostly asian

2692

american women and so

2693

it's just you know that representation

2694

sometimes feels like

2695

you know it's it's like you know a

2696

low-hanging fruit but it does have

2697

this kind of payoff in terms of i think

2698

without them we would be seeing a lot

2699

more of just the you know kind of the

2700

blind parroting of you know what the

2701

sheriff said about the bad day

2702

and all the horrible kind of you know

2703

framing around the the perpetrators uh

2704

narrative

2705

um so i i wanted to lift that up um any

2706

point to that and the other piece i

2707

think there was a piece about ethic

2708

media and i don't know that my comment

2709

will address this but

2710

i also thought it was interesting

2711

following what was happening um

2712

uh in the reporting is there was a very

2713

different um set of

2714

narratives and facts coming out of

2715

korean media um

2716

and i don't read korean so this is

2717

actually coming from seeing friends that

2718

either

2719

were korean speaking or were in korean

2720

communities posting what they were

2721

seeing in the korean media in atlanta

2722

and

2723

the korean media was identifying who the

2724

four other victims were

2725

sooner they had um they had facts that

2726

have yet to come out

2727

or at least they have witnesses who have

2728

said things like there were racial

2729

uh racialized language being said um by

2730

the shooter and so there's a lot of

2731

things that ethnic media was finding

2732

because they were speaking i think to

2733

witnesses

2734

and to the victims uh family members

2735

um probably in korean a lot of their i

2736

think both korean and chinese

2737

women who were killed and so um the

2738

ethnic media has a really powerful role

2739

but they kind of exist in this totally

2740

parallel sphere um uh where

2741

you know major media doesn't pay

2742

attention to them um and a lot of us who

2743

don't speak to read the language

2744

also don't so it's just interesting to

2745

me to see

2746

how those two pieces might come together

2747

whether the ethnic media did identify

2748

facts and other issues that mainstream

2749

media hasn't gotten to yet

2750

thank you uh gay do you want to also

2751

respond to this

2752

you're you're mute

2753

i'm going to pass on this one and see

2754

whether the questions come up

2755

okay yeah actually the next i'm going to

2756

give you the next question then

2757

okay um this is from sam mahara

2758

he says i'm i'm sam o'hara a former

2759

prisoner

2760

at a world war ii camp for japanese

2761

americans i am now

2762

a national lecturer on injustice

2763

including at ucla

2764

i have taught over 60 000 people across

2765

the country

2766

and i have learned that most of the

2767

public know very little

2768

about racism hysteria and leaders allow

2769

injustice to take place

2770

my question how to best educate everyone

2771

about the lessons learned from history

2772

you know history doesn't come out and

2773

say this is racism

2774

we we we read about wars we read about

2775

events

2776

we read about um what one group did to

2777

another group

2778

but it really depends on who's telling

2779

that story

2780

because history is really storytelling

2781

especially when we talk about how

2782

history is presented

2783

in education and so

2784

that's why i think

2785

i tend to like the

2786

the presentation in a storytelling

2787

format because it puts thing in

2788

context all right um

2789

history was my worst topic growing up in

2790

the united states and

2791

even though by fourth grade i learned

2792

enough english to function in an

2793

all english environment but it was

2794

still struggling with those courses

2795

that needed a lot of deep

2796

understanding and deep understanding of

2797

nuances

2798

of what is being communicated to us

2799

in the books and also in the so-called

2800

lectures and the teachings

2801

right and so i've always thought i hated

2802

history never

2803

in my life would i have thought that i

2804

would be chairman of the board of

2805

a historical museum

2806

that was the last thing if you told me

2807

that you know 20 years ago i would have

2808

thought that's ridiculous

2809

but i finally realized the reason i

2810

hated history

2811

was because it didn't apply to me

2812

you know my folks didn't land on

2813

plymouth rock

2814

you know our westward movement

2815

was not

2816

in cover wagons right

2817

crossing the rockies if anything

2818

our second westward movement had to do

2819

with the vietnamese americans

2820

who landed here as refugees who were

2821

sponsored by people from

2822

south dakota and after the first

2823

winter heard that their relatives in

2824

california

2825

didn't have to fight through all that

2826

snow right

2827

and so so the how history

2828

is presented in my mind

2829

is more important

2830

after we address the issue

2831

of what history is presented

2832

that's a roundabout way of answering the

2833

question

2834

and i don't know whether i've answered

2835

the question

2836

but uh you know please clarify if i have

2837

not

2838

would anyone else like to take a stab at

2839

this question about education

2840

okay we will move on rachel lee

2841

hi i'm an asian american high school

2842

student from los angeles

2843

from what i've seen during this time a

2844

lot of the conversations surrounding the

2845

anti-asian sentiment

2846

and racism against asians in general has

2847

been quite insular to the

2848

aapi community many of my friends were

2849

shocked by the recent atlanta shooting

2850

and the fact that these types of events

2851

have been going on during this pandemic

2852

what steps do we need to take for

2853

widespread change to be effective

2854

far-reaching and truly noticed by the

2855

greater american public

2856

i mean this is the million-dollar

2857

question i suppose

2858

who would like to answer rachel's

2859

2860

anyone

2861

you want to take a stab at that

2862

yeah rachel i was just rereading your

2863

question and it's such a wonderful

2864

2865

i think it's it's something that my view

2866

is it has to happen

2867

on so many different levels and it

2868

requires all of us

2869

to be involved because it has to be so

2870

multifaceted

2871

so i think one really important step is

2872

2873

that each of us starts speaking out in

2874

in whatever sphere

2875

we find ourselves in right so whether

2876

it's you in your high school

2877

or me in a session that i'm facilitating

2878

you know or michael

2879

in in a class that he's teaching right

2880

so just imagine

2881

the ripple effect that each of our if

2882

each of us used our voices

2883

in that way and of course there's the

2884

level of policy

2885

right really holding our elected

2886

officials and our leaders accountable

2887

for for what we see is the right thing

2888

so just a couple of initial thoughts and

2889

i see some other folks also want to

2890

comment

2891

does anyone else want to comment tiffany

2892

yeah um i think there is definitely

2893

a lot of things that um you can do and

2894

obviously i don't have the answers to

2895

all of that

2896

but i think that um it's definitely

2897

important to

2898

like um hindu said to enact change in

2899

at different levels and at your own like

2900

capacity

2901

i think like for me what i would suggest

2902

is maybe even starting

2903

at an interpersonal level like what can

2904

you do on the daily to challenge

2905

um you know what um the violence is in

2906

the oppression that

2907

um that are occurring how can you do

2908

that in your personal life whether

2909

that's educating yourself whether that's

2910

spreading awareness

2911

on your social media platforms or

2912

talking about them with your friends

2913

your community your family all of that

2914

2915

it's i would like to say an echo what i

2916

had said

2917

in the beginning of this event that this

2918

isn't just going to be something that we

2919

can resolve

2920

after one day after one week after one

2921

year

2922

but this is an issue that has been

2923

ongoing and this is something that we

2924

have to continue

2925

to work together

2926

and really consider how we can do this

2927

over

2928

a span of our lifetime because

2929

unfortunately these things have been

2930

going on for generations

2931

and it's not going to just take one

2932

generation

2933

and one person to resolve it

2934

gay is your hand raised also for this

2935

question it's not but i do want to say

2936

something

2937

and that is even though i'm so

2938

i i was very traditionally raised and so

2939

2940

aspects of having to break out right of

2941

the

2942

the chinese culture the traditional

2943

culture

2944

sometimes values and behavior and i

2945

think so many of us still

2946

carry that asian uh cultural

2947

influence that

2948

um at this time

2949

we might have to seriously think about

2950

how we're gonna break out of it

2951

even something um

2952

like what karen ryan said about under

2953

reporting

2954

right under reporting of hate crimes and

2955

hate incidents

2956

and then how for those who report

2957

it's the the women who report and so

2958

the assumption is that more

2959

violence has been perpetrated against

2960

women

2961

than men and then karen corrected

2962

herself

2963

and said well at least not as reported

2964

right and so if you look at our culture

2965

and you think about male female

2966

relationships within

2967

the so-called confucius cultures or the

2968

asian values and

2969

asian influences that male might be

2970

less likely to report an incident

2971

than then the women might right

2972

and so so the other thing we talked

2973

2974

i belong to a very small coalition of

2975

like-minded people and we talk every

2976

every

2977

wednesday morning and finally

2978

one of the the women um

2979

said you know i think

2980

we need to go agree against our

2981

you know our grain and and not keep

2982

doing what we've been conditioned or

2983

taught to do

2984

we have to speak up we have to report

2985

we have to talk back and we need to talk

2986

back even though

2987

we're afraid of repercussions

2988

right and and i think she's right on

2989

i think the time is now this is the time

2990

for change and but this is also the time

2991

to change our behavior i have this

2992

internal struggle

2993

on one hand i really love and value

2994

traditional chinese right values and

2995

teaching

2996

but growing up as a victim

2997

of so many racial incidents

2998

i have to learn to fight back and i

2999

fight

3000

back by speaking louder by by demanding

3001

more

3002

right by my

3003

squeaking right being that squeaking

3004

wheel

3005

to position myself to be where i am

3006

3007

in terms of the type of work that i do

3008

that is important to me so that's the

3009

dilemma

3010

of pride in self and pride and

3011

background

3012

versus what we have to do to exist in a

3013

society

3014

that is racist and is always trying to

3015

knock us down

3016

and so that's the dilemma that i think

3017

we're all struggling with

3018

thank you gay you know it also in

3019

response to

3020

rachel's question i want to add don't

3021

underestimate

3022

the kind of the butterfly effect of

3023

small actions and how they can

3024

reverberate and

3025

exact change and i'm going to give a

3026

tiny example which is

3027

on wednesday night and i mentioned this

3028

the beginning of the event wednesday

3029

night wang yo

3030

our phd student sent me an email that's

3031

it

3032

and tonight there's 500 people in a room

3033

discussing these issues

3034

and who knows what something that gay

3035

said or something that tuhong said or

3036

something that hong joo said is going to

3037

resonate with one of those listeners and

3038

they're going to impact people

3039

and their lives and i think that's all

3040

we can do and

3041

and you never know where it's going to

3042

go but we we push forward

3043

and i and i mentioned wang yo because

3044

she gifted us with a question and so i'm

3045

3046

and we wouldn't be here without wong yo

3047

so i'm gonna read read juanio's question

3048

thank you so much for your insights as

3049

an international student

3050

i'd also like to hear more about your

3051

insights on how to integrate

3052

international students and other

3053

non-citizens

3054

in the conversations largely discussed

3055

in a domestic setting

3056

do you have any suggestions what should

3057

we do to have the university and the

3058

larger system

3059

care and protect about our safety and

3060

basic human rights

3061

in addition in addition to treating us

3062

as a cash cow

3063

that provides non-residential tuition

3064

facing harassment or violence

3065

we often lack the sophisticated

3066

community supportive network in our home

3067

3068

or the education or training about how

3069

to address

3070

the frustration and speak up in an alien

3071

context

3072

in the issue of prc citizens the new

3073

cold war threat and visa issues also add

3074

another level

3075

of vulnerability wondering

3076

maybe touhou or alex who would like to

3077

try to respond to

3078

yo's question um

3079

well i think you know definitely we have

3080

to talk about this transnational

3081

dimension

3082

um that he mentioned earlier and a lot

3083

of the speakers have

3084

also mentioned as well um not

3085

necessarily the international dimension

3086

but this sort of like you know the

3087

connections um that cuts across

3088

the um the different geopolitical

3089

interests

3090

and the kind of you know historically

3091

formed

3092

racial taxonomies that happens in the

3093

u.s

3094

so in those kinds of conversations i

3095

think international students will have

3096

more um contribution to make and

3097

also to you know from their insights we

3098

can make

3099

these um connections like across history

3100

as well right that there's this

3101

long history of racialization through

3102

the colonial periods or even even prior

3103

to the european colonial period there

3104

were like

3105

um different modes of racialization we

3106

can talk about that and then we can talk

3107

3108

like european modes of racialization and

3109

then the american modes of racialization

3110

after world war

3111

ii um you know uh taking advantage of

3112

the discourse of national

3113

self-determination and the promotion of

3114

like nationalism

3115

and how competing nationalisms now in

3116

asia

3117

you know have an impact on our

3118

communities today

3119

and how then within the community when

3120

we can talk about

3121

um you know incidents of white

3122

supremacist violence

3123

um and so there's like so many points of

3124

connections that

3125

international students can um enlighten

3126

us on

3127

um and you know we can forge more of

3128

those connections as far as like the

3129

institutional

3130

practices to make uh international

3131

students needs more

3132

visible i think definitely we need to

3133

to do that and until you know we do away

3134

with this idea that

3135

the us is somehow the center of the

3136

production of knowledge and other people

3137

have to come here to learn from us um

3138

rather than the other way around then

3139

you know

3140

international students will remain less

3141

than visible and then needs to remain

3142

less than visible within institutions

3143

like ucla

3144

michael i can chime in a little bit i

3145

mean i i think it's it's so important to

3146

have the international

3147

students participate actively in campus

3148

life and in these

3149

difficult discussions you know we had we

3150

had an incident last year at the law

3151

school where

3152

uh one of my colleagues tweeted that uh

3153

he thought he might have gotten covet

3154

from some of the chinese students in his

3155

3156

and it caused a whole hubbub that i i

3157

wasn't leading the response to it but i

3158

was pulled into a lot of the

3159

uh conversations and you know there's no

3160

easy

3161

answer that i i saw that littrell had uh

3162

had referenced that incident

3163

and you know i i can say that you know

3164

when that incident came out i was really

3165

happy to see that a number of the

3166

chinese

3167

international students stepped in in

3168

leader

3169

student leadership roles to participate

3170

in the discussion

3171

and to speak very eloquently about

3172

um how they responded to those comments

3173

3174

in conversa you know small group

3175

conversations directly with the

3176

3177

um and i was really proud of them of uh

3178

for speaking out and

3179

and having a voice and one of the things

3180

um

3181

the dean did was to have um you know

3182

someone spoke at the the graduation and

3183

referenced

3184

these issues um and so again you know

3185

there's no easy answer but it's part of

3186

being uh

3187

part of a community and engaging and

3188

it relates to some of the things that

3189

other people have said about just trying

3190

to fight

3191

maybe urges just to let something go or

3192

to keep something quiet or for whatever

3193

reason it is

3194

right and uh you know i

3195

at least at the law school i've seen a

3196

lot of the chinese students

3197

are quite interested in in getting into

3198

the fray you know i

3199

i have a difficult challenge in teaching

3200

my classes about chinese law and

3201

politics i'm a

3202

sort of liberal democrat and i have a

3203

lot of criticisms of what the

3204

chinese party is doing yet i also

3205

recognize the historical dynamics the

3206

colonial dynamics the

3207

way that race plays into discussions

3208

about u.s and china and

3209

hierarchies of who's better and who's

3210

worse and who's more

3211

primitive and these sorts of things and

3212

you know it's a difficult discussion i'm

3213

glad that also

3214

that a number of uh international

3215

chinese students have

3216

gotten into michael have have attended

3217

my class and engaged in those difficult

3218

discussions

3219

and that's been incredibly important for

3220

the american students

3221

uh to to learn from that and to hear

3222

different perspectives that can be

3223

very you know dramatically different

3224

from what you read in the new york times

3225

or

3226

uh western media and and i think we're

3227

all the better for

3228

uh grappling with it it's not like any

3229

easy answers emerge from these

3230

classes but i think we are uh all for

3231

all the better for understanding the

3232

complexities

3233

uh of the situation and and so

3234

uh you know i don't know if that's a

3235

satisfying answer but i think you know

3236

you yourself have shown a an initiative

3237

as mike

3238

as michael mentioned in even you know

3239

being the sort of inspiration for

3240

this event that we have today and so you

3241

know you you've played a tremendous role

3242

in

3243

in that uh dialogue so just um you know

3244

if we can all sort of learn from that

3245

and keep uh keep doing that and

3246

keep doing more of that i think that uh

3247

that's part of the answer

3248

thank you we have i'm gonna have a

3249

double header question for professor kim

3250

if that's okay

3251

um the first part

3252

while the past week month year have

3253

understandably left our community shaken

3254

and in pain

3255

based on your long time work can you

3256

remind us about the ways we might stay

3257

focused on the relational histories

3258

of minoritized groups so that we might

3259

resist the urge

3260

to singularize or de-historicize recent

3261

3262

and a second question from

3263

uh let me say i hope dr clara jean kim

3264

speaks about her upcoming book that

3265

reconsiders the way that asian american

3266

3267

has tended to focus on the white asian

3268

binary

3269

but places our experience in the context

3270

of fundamental anti-blackness

3271

could you maybe riff on those two

3272

questions

3273

so thank you for the questions um

3274

yeah the first question the temptation

3275

is always to singularize as you

3276

3277

and to sort of close ranks and circle

3278

the wagons and talk about what's

3279

specific about

3280

asian americans experiences and so

3281

that's why my comments i said it's so

3282

important for us to

3283

always be thinking relationally and

3284

asking you know how does what's

3285

happening to us in terms of violence

3286

relate to the ongoing structural

3287

violence against black people that is

3288

part of

3289

our inheritance our living inheritance

3290

of being a society that was built upon

3291

slavery so

3292

um i think that the important thing

3293

um is to think about how either

3294

a lot of the stories on asian america

3295

anti-asian violence don't mention

3296

anti-black violence at all or

3297

they quote asian american leaders and

3298

thinkers saying

3299

well we stand in solidarity with black

3300

people so

3301

i wanted to push the conversation just

3302

one step further than that and i know

3303

this is uncomfortable and it might

3304

actually make people

3305

you know a little uneasy and i

3306

understand that but i just wanted to

3307

sort of leave

3308

this with you to think about and that is

3309

the question is if it's not it's

3310

is it enough to say we stand in

3311

solidarity with black people

3312

or is there actually an ethical

3313

imperative for asian americans to talk

3314

3315

the ways in which we are structurally

3316

advantaged relative to black people i

3317

remember i just i'm finishing up

3318

like a 500 page book that looks back

3319

this is getting to the second question

3320

at asian american history

3321

through the lens of structural

3322

anti-blackness and says how can we

3323

re-read asian-american history

3324

in relation to anti-blackness and one of

3325

the things i find you know over and over

3326

again

3327

is this structural gap between asians

3328

and black people

3329

that shows up over and over again and

3330

the way that we talk about people of

3331

color the way that we talk about the

3332

third world in the 60s

3333

covers up right that gap so if we look

3334

at that gap

3335

honestly as asian americans how might

3336

that shape the way that we are

3337

responding

3338

to anti-asian violence because i think

3339

it's so important

3340

at this moment like i said when it's

3341

sort of the hardest

3342

to think about our relationship to black

3343

lives matter and beyond black lives

3344

matter to the black freedom struggle

3345

generally thank you

3346

this is a question for kaiser i

3347

concurred with kaiser guo's analysis of

3348

the psychological groundings

3349

for how americans think about china and

3350

3351

acknowledging it is the first step

3352

however we know that in dei training

3353

taking an accusatory tactic does not

3354

work

3355

how might we help move the americans on

3356

the street and in the elite circles from

3357

being fearful

3358

to being optimistic about the

3359

multi-polar world and a multicultural us

3360

3361

well i'm not i'm not sure what what uh

3362

the training he referred to

3363

uh means but i i do

3364

think that um some level of

3365

confrontation is

3366

unavoidable and necessary i think that

3367

3368

you know look people didn't

3369

uh we we didn't see attitudes

3370

shift dramatically i think this summer

3371

uh toward blm because you know

3372

people were were engaging with with

3373

their neighbors peaceably and and only

3374

just trying to solicit

3375

empathy i think that there was there was

3376

pretty radical confrontation and i think

3377

that sometimes necessary

3378

now um in in this case i really i

3379

honestly think that um

3380

it's it this isn't this this this lends

3381

itself to a pretty good solution there

3382

are people

3383

who we can identify uh who

3384

are the per the influencers when it

3385

comes to how the united states thinks

3386

about its relationship

3387

with other countries especially with

3388

china and uh

3389

i think those are the people that need

3390

simply to be worked on

3391

uh to be and then the really kind of

3392

the perpetrators the people who are

3393

carrying water for the matt pottingers

3394

3395

the mike pompeos of the world who are

3396

actually publishing books for example

3397

based on that you know to to who have

3398

actively spread uh you know columnists

3399

for for example

3400

a uh newspaper that that um

3401

whose name not rhymes with squashing fun

3402

post

3403

or something like that uh they

3404

are absolutely guilty of spreading this

3405

kind of

3406

stuff and i i think i'm not above i want

3407

to de-platform these people i want to

3408

call them out i want to make them face

3409

their complicity in in what's happened

3410

3411

i don't i don't buy the idea that

3412

confrontation

3413

uh and you know an accusatory tone

3414

doesn't work

3415

thank you i see we have actually moved

3416

past our original end time already

3417

but we still have 340 people in the room

3418

and a lot of questions

3419

if any of our speakers need to leave of

3420

course you're welcome to sneak out

3421

but if you don't mind i think we'll

3422

answer a few more questions if everyone

3423

is

3424

agreeable to that and so

3425

uh this is one for doctor yuen

3426

i'm glad you mentioned about self-hatred

3427

i think the hardest thing

3428

is to face your own prejudice from being

3429

asian i started to come

3430

to this kind of a face after a long time

3431

of avoiding it

3432

i appreciate any advice you have for me

3433

in overcoming the self-hatred

3434

and celebrating our heritage

3435

you're muted i think

3436

that's going to be the a phrase that

3437

grows out of this pandemic

3438

is you're muted

3439

you know in education we talk a lot

3440

about positive reinforcement

3441

and and how

3442

we need to look at the affect of growth

3443

in addition to cognitive growth whether

3444

it's a child

3445

or a human being of any age

3446

and when society out there continues to

3447

negatively reinforce

3448

who you are what you look like

3449

um how you speak

3450

and even what you eat right

3451

when this constant negative negativism

3452

keeps bombarding you

3453

from infancy to

3454

adulthood you can't help but hate

3455

yourself

3456

um i still remember before my

3457

awakening at ucla

3458

it's hard enough to be a teenager

3459

right with peer pressure

3460

you want to dress like everybody else

3461

look like everybody else

3462

and i'm a very frank disclosing person

3463

so i'm gonna say

3464

i went to high school in a jewish

3465

all-white area in in in las vegas

3466

i remember excuse me gentlemen i

3467

remember

3468

stuffing tissue in my bra

3469

and using cutting up tape scotch tape to

3470

put on my eyelids so i would have that

3471

double

3472

eyelid look

3473

just so i would be beautiful because

3474

beauty

3475

was defined by what i saw

3476

on tv and what i saw in magazines and

3477

what i saw

3478

in books

3479

when i became a teacher i purposefully

3480

tried to be inclusive of what my

3481

students

3482

heard and what my students saw

3483

to the very simple aspect of

3484

what we eat and what was taught to us

3485

in the fruit groups remember the fruit

3486

groups now it's a pyramid right

3487

but in my days i remember being

3488

six years old seven years old being

3489

taught food groups

3490

and it and in those days there was dairy

3491

meat

3492

vegetables and sugar right

3493

and so milk well we didn't drink milk at

3494

home

3495

and then the meat was

3496

hamburgers hot dogs and and

3497

steak the vegetables

3498

were iceberg lettuce

3499

corn and peas

3500

i didn't eat that stuff and the story i

3501

tell

3502

is i'm sure i had a wonderful teacher

3503

and in those days we didn't have

3504

styrofoam

3505

okay so for homework the teacher gave

3506

each of us a paper plate

3507

and and as a teacher i think that was a

3508

wonderful creative assignment

3509

we took our paper plate home

3510

and the assignment was to draw

3511

our dinner on the plate

3512

i went home good chinese girl i always

3513

did my homework

3514

sat down on the dinner table with

3515

grandma grandpa

3516

mom and dad i was an only child you can

3517

tell i'm an only child

3518

and i looked at my plate and i looked at

3519

our place settings

3520

how do we eat a bowl of rice in front of

3521

us with

3522

chopsticks and then

3523

the communal plates of dishes

3524

well gosh not only were we weird

3525

we don't even eat correctly

3526

so i took my my bowl of rice and i

3527

dumped it on the

3528

on a i went to the kitchen got a platter

3529

that was the biggest thing that looked

3530

like a plate i dumped it on the platter

3531

i took the broccoli and beef or whatever

3532

it was and i dumped it on my platter and

3533

3534

separated the vegetables from the meat

3535

and i never sat down at the dinner table

3536

to eat with my parents again for

3537

three years i was so

3538

ashamed that we did not eat correctly

3539

right that is heartbreaking i

3540

cry every time i tell that story but the

3541

point of the story is

3542

when i got that teaching credential from

3543

ucla

3544

and when i became a first grade teacher

3545

at the same elementary school that i got

3546

slapped in the face

3547

with okay i made sure every time i

3548

taught the food groups

3549

i included tofu i included bok choy

3550

i included tortillas because we had a

3551

mix

3552

latin uh group there

3553

we need to be included and we need

3554

to teach that we are beautiful

3555

and and that's why i believe so much in

3556

3557

because i believe and

3558

and just that little thing can make such

3559

a big difference

3560

thank you gay uh hyungju did you want to

3561

add to this two short things

3562

one is that you're already and i can't

3563

i can't find the original question what

3564

was the name of the person who asked the

3565

3566

but for the person for the person who

3567

asked the question

3568

um you're already taking the first step

3569

which is

3570

just to see the impact on on your life

3571

right and to see the pain that it's

3572

causing in your life and

3573

i mean and oh reina thank you um

3574

and i think for me when i actually

3575

saw the the impact of

3576

the just the self-hatred and the shame

3577

right there was a point at which there

3578

was something inside me that just said

3579

no i i'm not gonna look like this this

3580

isn't

3581

okay and so part of it is just

3582

connecting with that part of yourself

3583

that knows this is not okay

3584

this is not how i meant to be in the

3585

world

3586

and what i would also say is just

3587

surround yourself

3588

surround yourself with people and with

3589

resources

3590

and with anything that just that just

3591

connects you and reminds you of your own

3592

3593

and your own worth

3594

and it doesn't even just have to be from

3595

the asian american community some of the

3596

most inspiring sources

3597

for me have been from black women right

3598

i mean other

3599

other people who've gone through the

3600

same journeys that we have

3601

just surround yourself like change your

3602

sense of what reality is

3603

thank you thank you um in the room we've

3604

got quite a few lawyers or former

3605

lawyers

3606

and law school professors and we have a

3607

few questions for

3608

this group so one of them is from bai

3609

ching zhang

3610

thank you for the talks for professor

3611

karen wong and alex wong other than law

3612

enforcement and policy makers

3613

what other channels can be used to

3614

address hate crime and

3615

incidents verbal and other forms of hurt

3616

and a question from susan lee writes

3617

directed to the lawyers or anyone who

3618

can answer this is there a way to change

3619

our criminal justice system

3620

so that it will recognize violence when

3621

it is

3622

intersectional it hurts not to have this

3623

acknowledgement

3624

and not to have a criminal justice

3625

system that is fair

3626

what they say publicly in many ways

3627

perpetuates all of the problems we were

3628

talking about this evening

3629

karen do you want to start aaron you

3630

want to take

3631

all right i feel like i'm being tagged

3632

here by everyone okay

3633

so couple pieces i think the first

3634

question was around

3635

um you know how to how to

3636

uh address hate crimes and hate

3637

incidents i mean i i guess i would go

3638

back to what i said earlier which is

3639

i absolutely think that incidents that

3640

happen whether or not they're rise to

3641

the level of crime

3642

i think especially if they don't need to

3643

be reported to the community groups that

3644

are actively monitoring

3645

um it's you know it's there's not a one

3646

centralized

3647

source and i can drop it again but

3648

there's at least two groups actively

3649

collecting one is

3650

the stan against hatred website um which

3651

launched in 2017

3652

and then stopped aapi hate which

3653

launched last year

3654

um but both are collecting anecdotes

3655

they actually take reports in non-uh

3656

non-english languages so you can do it

3657

in a number of asian languages

3658

for first-generation immigrants and i

3659

think just reporting it really you know

3660

helps to validate the experience of the

3661

people who suffer the trauma

3662

that helps community advocates and

3663

activists gather the data to be able to

3664

make the case for

3665

um different types of responses um

3666

i mean i think we're still in a system

3667

where you know the what if someone is is

3668

you know harmed

3669

um or suffers significant property

3670

damage and wants to report it's a crime

3671

and that's when

3672

to report it to law enforcement it's

3673

just you know it's

3674

you know the anthony quinto case uh

3675

out of northern california where the

3676

filipino man was killed by the police

3677

who his parents called when he was

3678

having a mental health

3679

crisis i think is a cautionary tale for

3680

us i think as a community as immigrants

3681

we kind of taught not to rock the boat

3682

and trust the police and

3683

you know the police are is part of a

3684

larger institution that is not

3685

necessarily here

3686

to protect and and preserve us unless it

3687

benefits

3688

those in power uh which tend to be those

3689

who are white not not people like us

3690

um so i mean my main point is is that if

3691

something happens particularly the

3692

hate incidents that many people are

3693

experiencing on a daily basis those

3694

should be reported because until people

3695

do

3696

we're not able to speak up and demand

3697

changes

3698

um either in policing or even in media

3699

coverage right

3700

so that's one piece i think on the

3701

intersectional

3702

piece i mean honestly the issue is

3703

probably not so much with data

3704

collection i think the forms can collect

3705

data on the fact that it's a crime

3706

that's motivated by more than one thing

3707

i mean that

3708

that that's to me not the issue it's the

3709

issue that

3710

as a society other than the people who

3711

embrace things like critical race theory

3712

a lot of people just don't believe that

3713

we can exist at intersections right so

3714

if you're

3715

a woman um then you're experiencing you

3716

know gender issues but if you're an

3717

asian woman

3718

you know you're either experiencing

3719

asian or gender

3720

or sex related issues it's hard for

3721

people to grasp it could be both and

3722

this is the same for folks

3723

who identify as queer for example i

3724

think anti-gay

3725

crimes against people of color also have

3726

the same problem where they're not

3727

categorized usually correctly as both um

3728

so i think it's a larger institutional

3729

piece of training those who

3730

are responsible for collecting data for

3731

3732

you know for for for dealing with these

3733

issues as opposed to

3734

something as simple as you know how do

3735

we collect the data

3736

so these go to larger issues we've been

3737

talking about all night about education

3738

3739

changing how we think about things

3740

versus

3741

kind of simpler solutions such as can we

3742

change a form or can we mandate the

3743

police do x and y

3744

i'm not sure i have actually answered

3745

the question and i actually

3746

feel like i spoke about this in my

3747

comments so we'd welcome hearing from

3748

others

3749

on the panel

3750

alex yeah i don't know if i really have

3751

anything to add to that i mean i i'm

3752

you know not a criminal law specialist

3753

but you know

3754

even though i'm in the law school i do

3755

feel like

3756

on the criminal side you know karen's

3757

highlighted very well some of the

3758

you know the shortcomings of the

3759

criminal law system and also the

3760

shifting attitudes towards

3761

criminalization of things and so you

3762

know it makes me want to

3763

highlight the the non-legal methods of

3764

addressing this shining a light on

3765

things making sure we build community

3766

and and work to sort of

3767

fight against this in informal ways as

3768

well so

3769

thank you anyone else

3770

okay but we'll maybe we'll take another

3771

10 minutes or so and then start to wrap

3772

up does that sound like a

3773

good plan panelists so this is a

3774

question from ashley i'm a second

3775

3776

chinese canadian i graduated from ucla

3777

in 2020. my question is

3778

are there any sources that can help me

3779

understand how anti-asian racism

3780

exists at an everyday level i read kathy

3781

parkholm's minor feelings

3782

and i think was the first time i started

3783

seeing how racism doesn't have to be as

3784

explicit as a racial

3785

racial slur to be considered racism i

3786

think having more everyday examples

3787

would really help me show that my to my

3788

canadian loved ones that anti-asian

3789

racism isn't a thing of the past

3790

and it isn't just an american issue

3791

perhaps it's because my friends are

3792

middle class chinese from a country

3793

canada

3794

that explicitly promotes multicultural

3795

and or from a city like vancouver where

3796

many asians

3797

but some of my where there are many

3798

asians but some of my asian loved ones

3799

seem to question the existence

3800

of anti-asian racism today

3801

who would like to address ashley's

3802

3803

he went to home

3804

or maybe our students tiffany mariana do

3805

you have anything what would you say to

3806

ashley

3807

um i can just add really quickly kind of

3808

like what i was saying in the beginning

3809

but just about how

3810

this is more about just how commonplace

3811

it is there may be people you talk

3812

to personally but um i've studied this

3813

before in high school and other college

3814

classes but there was a really

3815

um good instagram post actually i think

3816

i'm kind of critical of social media

3817

sometimes but i think it's actually a

3818

really helpful tool when it's used

3819

correctly so i can put

3820

the username in the chat later but um

3821

this account pretty much

3822

really efficiently broke down just how

3823

harmfully hollywood specifically but

3824

other film companies too

3825

portray asian americans and asian people

3826

3827

people don't realize how deeply

3828

ingrained it is and i just walked

3829

through some of the examples pretty

3830

quickly but

3831

one of my least favorite i think one of

3832

the most harmful

3833

stereotypes ever is a full metal jacket

3834

and the whole

3835

me of you long time me so horny and that

3836

one i think is so deeply ingrained that

3837

i would say like maybe bi-weekly i see a

3838

non-asian person with good intentions i

3839

don't i don't think that all that they

3840

even knew where it came from i think

3841

it's just so deeply embedded in u.s

3842

3843

that they just say love you long time or

3844

love you long time when someone's

3845

birthday or

3846

they're shouting someone out and it the

3847

scary part is they're not

3848

saying it to be racist and they probably

3849

didn't even see the film but it's just

3850

3851

into our lexicon is the way we talk in

3852

the us

3853

that it represents just how commonplace

3854

it is and how casual it is and how

3855

flippant some of these harmful comments

3856

and stereotypes

3857

can be made that have real repercussions

3858

like look at the shooting of these asian

3859

women and how they were hypersexualized

3860

and objectified

3861

and not seen as complex human beings

3862

with their own emotions so i think

3863

it could seem trivial on surface level

3864

to look at maybe like pop culture

3865

instead of

3866

i don't know something in real life with

3867

people you talk to her personally but

3868

just examples like that i mean

3869

even going back to piccadilly with anna

3870

anime wong in in 1929

3871

this goes back almost a century in

3872

hollywood film

3873

of just not only asian women being

3874

sexualized but also seen in the same

3875

thing with mean girls too

3876

just disposable sex objects and home

3877

wreckers

3878

and causing harm and disruption to the

3879

plot rather than furthering it along

3880

or um austin powers of checking off

3881

japanese twins threesomes as just

3882

sexualizing like a bucket list

3883

um there's a lot of movies that do that

3884

one um

3885

and amy schumer too and kung fu vagina

3886

and things like that that just reduce

3887

asian women to the size of their

3888

genitalia and it's just very

3889

it's just really harmful so i think even

3890

looking places like that and a lot of

3891

those movies too i have a conflicting

3892

relationship because

3893

i like them for their cinematic aspects

3894

or for their storytelling or what it was

3895

in my childhood

3896

but i can also at the same time critique

3897

it and see what it's perpetuating

3898

and some of them it's easy to say oh

3899

that was in the 1920s that was so long

3900

ago we're more evolved now

3901

but i feel like even things like amy

3902

schumer's routine are um

3903

mean girls are so recent and so maybe

3904

under

3905

evaluated that i think that offers a

3906

really interesting place to look and

3907

it's

3908

um it means they're on the screen so i

3909

feel like that's a good place to analyze

3910

for just how commonplace it is

3911

would anyone else like to add to that

3912

if not there are a lot more questions

3913

but

3914

the questions will we'll never answer

3915

all of them right and we'll never solve

3916

this problem in one

3917

place uh this is part of an ongoing

3918

3919

and i'm so thankful that we had the

3920

3921

and we hopefully will this is just the

3922

tip of the iceberg we'll continue this

3923

i'm sure on campus there will be more

3924

events more dialogues

3925

and i'm sure all of us will keep taking

3926

actions in our everyday lives to try to

3927

change the temperature

3928

and change how things are

3929

i'd like to close by maybe going around

3930

the room

3931

and i i know i asked everybody i think

3932

some of you did that presentation

3933

you're frozen michael i don't know if

3934

3935

we we lost michael uh he had asked me to

3936

be a backup moderator

3937

in case this happened so we made it

3938

through almost the entire

3939

time without this happening so it

3940

sounded like he was going to ask us to

3941

all

3942

make a closing statement i don't know if

3943

he had anything in particular in mind

3944

3945

maybe just uh everyone give some thought

3946

for maybe a 30 seconds

3947

uh of something that you might uh say to

3948

to wrap things up uh at the end

3949

michael can you can you hear us again

3950

back so i'll just say it quickly

3951

um i was hoping to close by going around

3952

the room and having everybody

3953

share maybe a word a sentence an action

3954

but some way forward uh it was less than

3955

30 seconds i i thought you were going to

3956

say 30 seconds

3957

word or a sentence yeah but if everybody

3958

could share

3959

uh some experience or advice basically

3960

3961

i think a lot of people are hurting

3962

right now and a lot of people are in a

3963

dark place and whatever gift

3964

you can give them in words to close the

3965

evening with a little bit of light a

3966

little bit of brightness

3967

uh i think everyone will appreciate that

3968

3969

know i have i do have something bright

3970

uh there's a book i highly recommend

3971

it's written by

3972

uh the former china director at the

3973

national security council

3974

during the second obama administration

3975

he is a true match

3976

somebody who was a career foreign

3977

service officer his name is ryan hass

3978

h-a-s-s his book is called stronger

3979

uh and it it's it's about recalibrating

3980

u.s china relations in an age of

3981

competitive interdependence

3982

there it is right there i cannot

3983

recommend this book more highly

3984

it will actually give you give you hope

3985

3986

that that it is possible to navigate

3987

what looks like an impossible

3988

3989

and that will re rebound to

3990

relations in the united states between

3991

asian americans and others

3992

yeah okay

3993

i think we have to keep reminding

3994

ourselves that

3995

our stories are important

3996

and i i go back to that

3997

modesty that's ingrained in us

3998

and i actually came onto this panel with

3999

a lot of fear

4000

because i was just texting my friend i

4001

go oh my god these are all scholars and

4002

they're writers and they publish

4003

so many books and they speak so well and

4004

they're so

4005

important and they're so articulate

4006

and we need to take a big breath and say

4007

4008

my story is important too and if i don't

4009

tell it no one's gonna hear it

4010

so i'm gonna have to share it so i think

4011