[Music begins and fades under narration, “Dusting”]
Sarah Mizes-Tan, Host: When the attacks on Asian Americans started happening at the beginning of the pandemic, I began following a journalist who started making it her mission to chronicle each and every hate incident that happened in San Francisco.
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Sarah: Her name is Dion Lim.
Dion Lim: And it really wasn't until the pandemic I made that the focus of my reporting, because prior to that, I was all about going to the Oscars and covering the Golden State Warriors and anything that was fun and happy I gravitated toward. So this is a complete 180.
Sarah: Before the attacks, Dion had never really thought very much about her own Asian American identity. But that all changed after she saw one particular video that really shook her.
Dion Lim: When someone sent me an Instagram video of an old man. He was clad in a blue bomber jacket and a cap, and he looked eerily like my dad. And in the video, he was being attacked. He was being assaulted physically and then verbally with slurs and being humiliated and reduced to tears because he was collecting cans in a neighborhood trying to make ends meet for his family. So that was one very pivotal case where I said, ‘Oh my God,’ I have an opportunity to use my voice and to elevate this story because something's not right.
Sarah: She thinks Asian Americans started getting attacked in part because of what we call the Model Minority myth — this idea that all Asian people are submissive, hard working, and relatively well-off economically. And let’s be honest — this myth wasn’t something that Asian Americans made for themselves, it’s a stereotype put on us by white people, and it places Asian Americans as white-adjacent.
Dion Lim: The model minority myth: So the problem is, is that even though it's not overtly necessarily a hate crime, we know that a lot of these Asian-Americans are being targeted because of that stereotype.
Sarah: Asian Americans also started to be targeted because of rhetoric by our former president, specifically calling out China for spreading the coronavirus. But Dion says the model minority myth has been so internalized by many Asians who live in America that it can often keep many of us from speaking up.
Dion Lim: My very own mother: my very own mother sent me an email early on in the pandemic, and I haven't had the heart to read it again. So this may not be verbatim, but she told me flat out, stop doing what you do. Stop reporting on these issues. It's making Asian-Americans look bad, and it goes back to that shame that deep rooted cultural thing that you don't want to bring negativity to yourself. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. You've heard the saying.
[Theme music begins and fades under narration, “Can’t Hold Us Back”]
Sarah: How can Asian Americans explore our identity when we can’t speak up about it? And how can we talk about cross racial solidarity, and the connective tissue that brings all of us together as different races, if we don’t even talk about race.
The attacks in the Bay Area, the killings in Atlanta: These aren't the first times in recent history that violence against us has raised questions about Asian American identity. So let’s look back at some of these events. Let’s talk about how race — and our relationships with people of other racial backgrounds — inform our feelings of being in-between and in the middle.
I’m Sarah Mizes-Tan, and this is “Mid Pacific” — a podcast exploring Asian-American identity. Stay with us, we’ll be right back.
[Theme music up and out, “Can’t Hold Us Back”]
Sarah: Another interesting thing I’ve noticed about Dion’s chronicling of anti-Asian attacks: her instagram. It shows dozens of attacks on Asian Americans caught on cell phones or security footage. In the comment section, I started to notice Asian Americans getting angry, and more specifically, some of them getting angry and blaming Black people. Dion says she saw this too, and it disturbed her.
Dion Lim: Until the pandemic started: and I still feel this way, I felt we were all in this together. Or I mean, look at the struggles of different minority groups, not just blacks and Asians, but those in the Latino community. Not. Not feeling welcome in America, feeling cast aside and not seen and not heard. So this was exceptionally hurtful for me.
Sarah: She says it wasn’t her intention to raise anti-Black sentiment in chronicling anti-Asian hate, and she doesn’t feel that highlighting the struggles of one racialized group needs to create hatred toward another.
In fact, it’s important to note here that multiple studies looking at the perpetrators in anti-Asian attacks have found that 75 percent of the people committing these attacks are white — and that viral videos of anti Asian attacks often vastly overrepresent Black people as the perpetrators.
We’re back to the model minority stereotype again, as it holds Asian Americans up, it pushes Black people down. And this stereotype impacts how these attacks have been covered. Dion says she’s been trying to change the way she writes about them, so as not to perpetuate this further.
Dion Lim: Is that pertinent to the story? Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not. We have had to have discussions over mug shots. We have had to have discussions over the coverage and broadening the coverage as well because you want to be accurate in depicting what is truly going on. But then, on the other hand, not forgetting that there are other groups that are involved and they have sensitivities.
Sarah: Dion’s work was in many ways a proclamation of Asian-American identity, and maybe some pride too — we won’t stand for this violence. But some people had also taken that message in a worrying direction — that Asians were suffering at the hands of Black people.
[Transition music begins and fades under narration, “Dusting”]
Sarah: It’s this historic tension that persists today, and it’s complicated. We may not have any solutions, but I think to talk about this tension that always seems to come up in one way or another, we need to go back to a seminal moment in the Asian American and the Black experience, the police beating of Rodney King and the LA riots in 1992. That’s a moment where a lot of feelings of anti-Blackness became imprinted on Asian American identity.
In this moment, the prevailing narrative was that Korean Americans remember their businesses being looted, mostly by Black people who were upset about the police beatings — and Black people remember Korean Americans as intruders in their communities who were just trying to make money off of them. This isn’t necessarily factual, but this is how many Black and Asian people involved saw these events.
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Sarah: Hyepin Im is president of Faith and Community Empowerment. It’s a faith-based nonprofit focused on building cross-racial solidarity between Asian Americans and other races.
Hyepin Im: I focus on the L.A. Riots because I truly believe that the current anti-Asian violence and the optics of Black-on-Asian crime and violence really comes from the tension that was amplified and reinforced over and over again. And the remnant of that narrative still carries on.
Sarah: She was a student when police officers beat Rodney King. Shortly after the riots, she was hired to work for First African Methodist Episcopal, as an accountant. And it was her experience there that made her want to help build relationships between the Black and Korean community. She says many of her mentors in this space have been African American faith leaders. But she says it didn’t come easy.
Hyepin Im: And so the part that has made me really sad and is a burden that I've carried for so many years, is the fact that in spite of this great blessing that I have received from the Black community, the one area that I held close to my heart because it didn't feel safe to bring it up was the relationship between the Korean store owners, now Asian business owners, and the Black customer relationship.
Sarah: It was a burden that people are still grappling with today. How do these two communities get along, while also acknowledging the pain on both sides? Hyepin’s mentor is Reverend Mark Whitlock. He worked with First African Methodist Episcopal Church during the riots, and served as the pastor for many years.
Rev. Mark Whitlock: I was actually in a corporate boardroom in downtown Los Angeles: working for Chicago two. And we were closing a huge multimillion dollar deal. And the verdicts were read, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty or not guilty. We thought at least one would be convicted, but now nothing. And the city broke out in a nightmare.
Sarah: Rev. Mark shared Hyepin’s struggles — seeing African Americans and Asian Americans as enemies to each other.
He felt he could best serve his community through religion and his church during this time. And it was through his work there, not long after the riots, that he met Hyepin.
Rev. Mark Whitlock: Not just because of my ethnicity, because of my mindset and because of how I relate to the social challenges and the injustice that African-Americans have faced in the community where we live, work and work, having been mistreated by police, having gone into some stores owned by Asian store owners and mistreated, certainly not understood. And then having lived through the Soon Ja Du nightmare…I had a bias towards my Asian brothers and sisters.
Sarah: But he overcame this. He chose Hyepin as the finance manager for his church … he says not because she was Korean, or Asian, but because she was good at her job and because their personalities clicked … and the two became fast friends.
Rev. Mark Whitlock: My mind was transformed — It was transformed certainly by God first and then by Hyepin Im, I think she literally adopted me as a big brother, or certainly almost like a father figure.
Hyepin Im: I really want all of us:to awaken that we are not each other's enemies, that we are all in the same economic wheelchairs. And the quicker that we can recognize that, we are all responding to human conditions in human ways, to challenges that have been created by human beings, that includes all of us. Well, then we have a better chance of solving those challenges.
Sarah: Okay, but where do we even start? How do we even begin to get these two enormous racial groups to get to this point of understanding, like Mark and Hyepin?
Rev. Najuma Smith-Pollard: I think there are definitely spaces where, as shop owners that have taken a different approach and, you know, Black folks in the community understand that.
Sarah: That’s Reverend Najuma Smith-Pollard, a professor with the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. She says finding this understanding between groups is hard, but she’s noticed both sides are making an effort.
Rev. Najuma Smith-Pollard: You know if you're going to be a gang in a certain neighborhood, you got to protect your shop owner. We have gangs that protect shop owners, even if they are Korean. If you go to the swap meet a lot of other shop owners and Korean owners are hiring these young African-American kids. Why? Because they learn that having them working in minimizes theft does mean it goes away because you also have stealing. But it minimizes theft because someone speaks the language of their customers and looks like their customer is serving them. So I think, you know, that is yes, we're seeing it on things like that.
Sarah: But she’s still not seeing it to the extent she’d like to — and that the groups still keep their distance. In some ways, it’s harder to build solidarity now because Korean Americans and Black Americans don’t live in the same communities in the way they did during the LA Riots.
Rev. Najuma Smith-Pollard: Because there's a lot of tension. And the tension was left to just be. That gap just got wider and wider.
[Transition music begins and fades under narration, “Crisper”]
Sarah: The lessons that both Hyepin Im and many other Korean Americans took away during the LA Riots was that it was impossible to be Asian American in a void. You can’t be Asian American without understanding the community around you. You couldn’t be Korean American without also exploring what that meant in the context of other races in America. (66) (70)
The riots were a big moment where, despite the model minority myth, many Koreans realized they were still treated as the other. That maybe we were more Asian than American … or somewhere in that middle.
[Transition music comes up and fades out, “Crisper”]
Sarah: And that was a tough awakening, since we as Asian Americans don’t always want to admit that race is something that impacts us. We’ll explore this idea more when we come back.
Sarah: Welcome back. I wanted to speak with someone whose view of Asian American identity was really shaped by his experience growing up during the LA riots, even if his parents still struggle to come to terms with it.
Tim Choi: My name’s Tim Choi, Sacramento resident. Been here about five or six years by way of Solano County, by way of Koreatown, by way of San Fernando Valley.
Sarah: Tim grew up in Los Angeles during the riots, and has been thinking about them in the context of Asian-American identity ever since. He was about 10 when the riots happened, and his Korean immigrant parents owned a grocery store not far from the epicenter of where a lot of Korean businesses were being burned.
Tim Choi: Up to that time, I had never really seen my parents take a day off of work. and they were closing at daytime. Right. Because there was a curfew at the time, I think maybe countywide. I knew that was really unusual.
Sarah: Tim says his parents remember the riots as a traumatic moment — where they were really worried about their business, his family’s livelihood, getting destroyed.
Tim Choi: It was a lot. I mean, it was, you know, looking at the L.A. Times or Daily News and my parents had them in their store seeing kind of smoke come out of the buildings in Koreatown and just all around in central Los Angeles, south Los Angeles. It was devastating.
Sarah: Even though he was just a kid at the time, the riots were a pivotal moment for Tim in understanding his own racial identity.
Tim Choi: It really thrust Koreans in a way that I hadn't seen them before and. And you know, fast forward now and. Hmm. You know, those few days and then the days after and really the years after have always, for me, been like a reexamination. I honestly can say I think I must think about it probably every day.
Sarah: He realized getting visibility and equality for himself as an Asian American also meant standing with the Black community, and not allowing himself to be pitted against Black people.
Tim Choi: You know, I go back to this idea, you know, you know, this idea of that, like my liberation is connected with other people's liberation and this idea that, like, we can't. Like, I could, you know, like, build my nice little fence outside, like, you know, do well in my career, fill up my pension and do all that stuff. But I also feel like if there isn't that constant check on, like, who's growing and who at whose expense Like, we're, we're getting, you know, we end up we start taking a path that continues to divide.
Sarah: But he also admits that change is slow, and that for his immigrant Korean parents and people of their generation, he’s not sure they’ll ever fully see eye to eye. Because a lot of hurt and trauma has happened during the riots.
Tim Choi: My parents grew up in, like, post Korean War, like Korea. Right. And the notion that I'm at all going to be able to understand what hunger looks like, what not taking a bath looks like is. We would be foolhardy for me, right? So and even this sense of like, well, like I'll get mine, right, is something that I like. They almost didn't have, like, I guess, the luxury of even experiencing, you know, I mean, it was really for that survival. And so I guess the way I look at it is like, you know, they've they've given, you know, myself and my brother, like, an opportunity to kind of thrive here and build our own American dream, you know? And it probably looks a little bit different than theirs. And maybe the way I'm looking at this is they were planting a seed.
Sarah: Tim says for so long, being Asian American was an invisible identity. But in order to make sure we’re heard and not forgotten, we also need to embrace where we stand with other communities of color.
[Theme music begins and fades under narration, “Can’t Hold Us Back”]
Sarah: This is the moment where I’d usually have a final takeaway …
Tim Choi: In the end, we're going to have to look out for ourselves, you know, like people are Asian Americans going to show up for ourselves? Just like black folks show up for themselves, too, you know?
But I think Tim probably says this better than me …
Tim Choi: And they know that, like, in order to build real power, they have to build it with other groups, you know? But the reality is like, I think that's the thing is like we're all struggling to figure that out. And it's that struggle that I think is probably going to create something really special.
Sarah: We all want solidarity. Among ourselves, and among others. It brings us right back to the original meaning of the word Asian American — remember it was a word made to stand with others in the fight for racial justice.
This idea of looking at our identity in the context of other races isn’t new. But for many Asian Americans, the pandemic was the first time they ever thought about themselves as they relate to others. And that’s tough. This was a tough conversation, so thanks so much for listening.
I’m your host, Sarah Mizes-Tan, you’re listening to Mid Pacific.
Our next episode is a little lighter — We’re looking at Asian Americans’ connection to food, and what food tells us about our identity. We’ll be talking about all things delicious, starting with an old favorite. See you there!
[Theme music starts in full, “Can’t Hold Us Back”]
Sarah: “Mid Pacific” is a CapRadio production, reported and hosted by me, Sarah Mizes Tan.
Our producer is Jen Picard. Associate Producer is Jireh Deng. Antonio Muniz mixed the sound.
We had editing help from Nick Miller and Shayne Nuesca. Sally Schilling is our Executive Producer. Special thanks to Alyssa Jeong Perry.
Chris Bruno is in charge of marketing. Our designs were created by Marisa Espiritu. Renee Thompson is our Digital Products Manager.
Our theme song is Can’t Hold Us Back by Polartropica. You can find it on iTunes or Spotify.
To make sure you don’t miss a single episode, be sure to subscribe, follow or add us to your podcast feed.
Thanks for listening to “Mid Pacific.”
[Theme music swells for chorus and fades out, “Can’t Hold Us Back”]
