Emotions, so many to process, coming at me from every direction…
Words, cycling through my mind, wanting to convey my message in a way that I am heard and not disregarded as overly sensitive…
I am a descendant of Chinese ancestry. I have features and attributes that undoubtedly identify me as Asian. In 2021, this could put me in situations that compromise my safety; yes possibly even my life. I wouldn’t change the way I appear to people for any reason.
So, I pen a letter to my fellow Asians of all ancestries.
Dear Sisters and Brothers, I do not wish harm to any of you and wholly believe that you should be proud of who you are and how you look. I’m so sorry that so many have experienced, as I have, hate hurled in the form of nonsensical words, physical slights accompanied by evil glares and more broadly, threats to being able to live our lives without looking over our shoulders. As heart wrenching as this all is, it is an additional hit to my emotions when so many fellow Asians share about their abuse on social media and accompany their story with ,”…and I’m not even Chinese.” Whoa, I was feeling empathetic towards you and for a moment my empathy was overcome by confusion. The attack, verbally or otherwise was because you look different than your attacker and they identify you as being beneath them. That you are Chinese or not has no relevance to whether they should should victimize you. One poster commented that her family is of another Asian ethnicity but they called her daughter, “Chink”, Means Chinese. Ma’am, though I hate that your daughter was verbally attacked, the indignity of being called a chink or any other derogatory term is an affront on the victim to say that you are “lesser than”. To be Chinese is not to be lesser than.
There are those that would say that I’m playing into the “cancel culture” and being overly sensitive. If you have experienced unwarranted abuse all of your life based simply on your appearance then I invite you to contact me so we can discuss why we respectively feel the way we do and we can each learn from the other. If this is not your experience, I concede your right to your opinion but do not care to engage.
Stop Asian Hate. Spread Asian Unity and Love. Unite not Divide.