An Honest Letter to the Asian Community: Your Pain is Valid
“We just want a seat at the table”, my friend said over the phone. Two nights ago, I was on the phone with a dear friend of mine where she was discussing with me the anger and the pain that she felt regarding the murder of the Asian women in Georgia Tuesday evening. She let her boss know that she wasn’t able to work that day and she had been weeping right before speaking to me.
My friend and I have been talking about Asian hate for approximately a year now due to the increase in hate crimes and racist rhetoric about Asians during the COVID pandemic. She was already scared about what would happen to her family members when they left the house.
So, unfortunately, our conversation wasn’t new and the pain that I heard from her voice was not new either. As we got off the phone, I told her this important phrase — “Your pain and your anger is valid”.
If you are Asian, I want you to know the same thing-Your grief, your frustrations, your sadness is 100% valid. For too long the Asian experience has been ignored and belittled. In our society the pain of the Asian community is sometimes considered invalid or unimportant because other minorities’ struggles are compared to those in the Black community.
To be 100% honest, as a Black female, I have to admit that I used to believe this in the past, especially in high school. I always felt like I was having to prove myself as the smart person in class and I couldn’t see how being considered smart was struggle. I didn’t fully understand the battles and the stereotypes that Asians had to wrestle with their whole lives. I was fully unaware that the model minority was created to put minorities against each other. For most of my life, I had felt like my struggles were worse than other minority groups, but throughout college, my perspective gradually changed and in this past year it has changed ever more.
I am sorry for all the times I believed that it was okay to compare my struggles as a minority with your struggles. It was unfair and insensitive. Your struggles as an Asian in the United States aren’t less real or less hurtful than the experiences I face as a Black woman in the United States. You deserve space at the table where we talk about minority experiences and your perspective matters.
In life, no one’s pain is less than another’s pain and I want you to know that your pain is no less than another minority’s pain. Pain is still pain, no matter the reason for the pain. My friend’s fear of what would happen to her Asian family members as they walk outside is still fear.
For too long, there has been this spoken, yet unspoken tension between the Black and Asian community — from Asian hate within the Black community and simultaneously Black hate in the Asian community.
However, the way that the Asian community stood up for the Black community last year after George Floyd’s death is the same way that I want to see us — the Black community — stand up for the Asian community due to the murder of these Asian women. I joined Clubhouse conversations a few days ago that reminded me of these tensions. It hurt to hear the words that I heard Black people saying about the Asian community. Although the words they said were hurtful and I would definitely not justify them, I could also see that what they were saying was based on their experiences of pain from those in the Asian community.
From the conversation, I realized that there is a belief that if we care for the Asian community, we are ignoring the pain of our own community, but that is not true. It is possible for us to care for own problems and also empathize and sit with other minorities’ struggles. After speaking with my friend a few nights ago, she made me aware that those in the Asian community are trying to have a seat at the table and if you are Asian, I want you to know that you do have a seat at the table. For so long, Asians have not been considered ‘minorities’ although they have faced hate crime and have been treated unfairly for years in America. I know that for so long it seems like you may not have a seat at the table and are not involved in these conversations regarding minority experiences and I am sorry about that. Your pain should be our pain and your grief should be our grief also.
What the media did this past week by gaslighting the situation and what the police are continually doing by negating the experience by stating “we don’t know if it is a hate crime” is unacceptable. Although the guy killed 6 Asians and viewed these parlor a s temptations, therefore insinuating the over- sexualization of Asian women, there is still this idea that “we need to see the facts”.
For those who may be reading this and are not Asian, I want you to know that right now, the Asian community needs our comfort right now. I want to put a disclaimer that I know that the Asian community is not monolithic. There are so many ethnicities and different experiences, but the first thing non-Asians can do in this time is listen and amplify Asian voices. Asians have been pushed aside for so long and they need us to sit with them. Will you join me as we give them a permanent seat at the table?
