Letter to Our AAPI Community
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I have been remiss in sending out an email to this community since before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For that I apologize. So much of our world changed and so many aspects of our daily lives shifted on a dime. All the plans we had for ourselves and our organizations had to be rewritten in the context of a new reality. While it is not easy to find optimism at this time, I point to the opportunity we all have to redesign our own niches to be more equitable spaces. If the previous normal advantaged the privileged few, then maybe we don’t want to get back to normalcy anytime soon.
This past month, we have all celebrated Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in our own ways and while this month is quickly coming to an end, I have enjoyed learning from the PBS Show Asian Americans. Given everything that is going on in our nation right now, watching this series reinforces the message of essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana’s quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” At the end of episode 1, watching the scene of Japanese Americans who were once interned during WW2 protesting our country’s current incarceration of immigrants was heart wrenching.
APA Heritage Month has uplifted an even greater sense of urgency in the midst of this global pandemic. From issues of xenophobia to unemployment, the Asian American community is facing significant challenges and in a time when we should all be working together to solve problems, the worst of America is showing up. For our community, today’s emergence of racist sentiments is not a new phenomenon. It is a reminder that the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first immigration law that excluded an entire ethnic group. It is a reminder that the murderers of Vincent Chin received no jail time, after assailing him and blaming him for their losing their jobs at a Detroit-area automobile plant in the early 1980’s.
Furthermore, this pandemic is affecting all communities of color more adversely due to underlying health, social, and economic disparities- issues that speak to inequities that are built into our social and political systems, as underscored in this opinion piece on Scientific American from earlier this month. That is why it is so necessary to forge alliances with other communities of color, one of the agenda items of forming this group.
It is in this spirit that I have added a number of resources to our COVID-19 playlist about building solidarity and collaboration among communities of color. (Thank you to all those that have sent suggestions.) One such resource is the video from a virtual event hosted by Define American that include influential Black and Asian pioneers and thinkers- Jon Chu, Franklin Leonard, Prabal Gurung & Nikole Hannah-Jones. They “explored how Black and Asian communities can foster solidarity and combat anti-blackness and anti-Asian racism beyond the pandemic.”
Especially powerful was the conversation about Asian American’s sense of belonging feeling conditional. (Begins around the 23:20 mark.) In the exchange, Nikole Hannah-Jones comments about the phenomenon of immigrants “putting [their heads] down” and trying to figure out the system and that recent Asian American immigrants fail to realize that “anti-Blackness is part of your Americanization process.” So, while aligning with “those on the top” may feel like the right thing to do, Hannah-Jones reminds us that “It is always temporary. It is always conditional.”
As Asian American leaders, we may intuitively understand the importance of showing up for and standing in solidarity with other communities of color, but may not always know how to do so. I have watched Asian American educators struggle to lean into leadership opportunities out of guilt, out of fear of being inauthentic, out of just not knowing how to show up. I have observed this of others and experienced this type of uncertainty myself. Even Jon Chu, in the previously noted virtual event, spoke about “not knowing how to speak about these things… [and being] scared to say the wrong thing.
If you have felt this way, and/or continue to feel this way, I offer up this thought from my own personal experience. As leaders, we feel pressured to say the right things at all times and as a result, do nothing. Instead, it’s ok to embrace your ignorance by first asking questions. Anthony Bourdain (RIP) would often allude to “being the dumbest, least informed guy in the room, surrounded by things that I’m intensely curious about, but don’t understand yet.” So, accept that fear is natural and lean into your ignorance. Just don’t pull away, don’t stand idly, don’t quit.
In solidarity,
Tommy Chang
