Microaggressions and Being Asian During COVID

I have been thinking about, considering, writing, and rewriting this post in my head for awhile now, but it’s past midnight and sleeplessness breeds a restless mind.

I recently started running again. I noticed earlier this week that every time I go running, I wear my EMS shirt from Villanova, my Akron shirt that says I’m from Ohio, or one of my fiance’s many Cleveland shirts. I hadn’t even noticed I was doing this until I couldn’t find a single shirt I wanted to wear running despite a drawer full of t-shirts. Because my EMS shirt and my Akron shirt were in the hamper, and so were Mark’s Cleveland shirts. So I rather than take a new shirt out, one that doesn’t immediately let others know that I am just like them, that I am from here, I have similar interests, I dug my EMS shirt out from the hamper, gave it a good whiff to see if it was stinky, decided it wasn’t TOO stinky that I couldn’t wear it, and went for my run.

Because somehow, subconsciously, and now consciously, I have internalized the message around me, the message that I am to blame for the pandemic, as if somehow that were true. I am scared every time that I leave my house.

This is how a lot of the AAPI community have been living for the past year in America and in terms of the assimilating part, it’s how we’ve always lived. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, the tragedy that happened in Atlanta this past Tuesday, the tragedies that have been happening for the past year, they are the result of the build up of the tensions from this year. They have been building since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, They have been building since Japanese internment camps in 1942, They have been building since Vincent Chin was murdered in 1982, They have been building since the pandemic was called the Kung Flu and the China virus since the pandemic of 2020.

The systemic and politically based microaggressions have led to environmental microaggressions, which creates interpersonal microaggressions from stereotypes and sentiments about Asians. Because it doesn’t matter what type of Asian you are, it doesn’t matter that Taiwan isn’t the same as Thailand, that Japan isn’t the same as Korea, or Vietnam, in the eyes of our oppressors, in the eyes of the White majority, it’s all the same, we’re all the same. And so with that comes the day to day microaggressions that we so vehemently despise getting, like where are you really from because you’re obviously not from here, it’s people having ‘yellow fever’ and sexualizing and fetishizing our race, it’s seeing in movies, TV shows, and books that Asians are the nerds, the kid getting beat up in school, the kid answering all the math questions, that Asian women are sexy, but Asian men are unwanted.

We are not the model minority. We are not an amalgamation of whatever ‘Asians’ are lumped together to be. We are our own cultures, rich in history, that has been erased from the school history classes, erased from teachings. I am a child who has long been taught by the society around me to assimilate to the dominant culture, to shed my Taiwanese heritage like the shoes I take off when I get home and put back on when I leave my house.

I, like so many of my peers, have been laughed at and ridiculed for having slanty eyes, for having weird lunches, and having ching chong shouted at me. These microaggressions, these stereotypes, these beliefs in the model minority myth, perpetuates a culture of misinformation, a culture of racism, a culture of oppression. These violent attacks come from a culture that is sustained by stereotypes, sustained by being the perpetual foreigner, sustained by the quiet and submission nature, sustained by the sexualization and fetishization of Asian women, sustained by the beliefs that all Asians are the same and look the same.

My heart aches.

For my AAPI brothers and sisters, I ask that you take some time to process, sit with, and breath through the events, the emotions, and the ache that you may be feeling. It is not time to be complacent or silent anymore.

For those who are looking to support the Asian community, there are a lot of great organizations that you can donate to if that’s what you choose to do. But at an individual level, I ask you to sit with your own stereotypes and misgivings. I urge you to read about our history, read about the systemic problems that have been taking place for years now, and learn. Be an ally.