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Race Relations
An Asian response to Black American Criticism and Prejudices about Asian Americans
When it comes to combating the Model Minority Myth, being seen and heard is one of the biggest challenges for Asian Americans
I once wrote a piece to my community about how systemic racism has shaped the Hmong/Asian American landscape and the similarities therein between African Americans and us. Though there were a lot of nods of agreement, the flip side of that was that Asians still felt largely invisible and abused by the African American community — in particular, the later settled Asians like the Hmong, the Karen, and other Southeast Asians whose migration stories didn’t begin until the 1970s. The overwhelming sentiment was that though they felt for the struggles of African Americans, and they were also outraged and angry about the injustices for George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile and all the others, it was difficult to balance it with their long history of being silenced and abused by many in the African American community.
And I can’t say that I disagree with them. Even as I advocated for Black Lives Matter and the Black community, I also couldn’t ignore what I’d grown up around, what I’d been told by Black folks even as I marched…
