By Yann Luk
In light of recent events over in Atlanta, Georgia that involved the brutal murder of 8 women, 6 of whom were Asian American with locations specifically being Asian owned spas. Social media has been flooded with posts condemning the racist hate crime (the police department won’t admit it’s a racially motivated crime so they can go fuck themselves) and calling for the stop on Asian hate (not to mention the other conversation on sexism).
So I’m a first generation British Chinese born to two immigrant parents – my father’s born in Hong Kong but moved to the UK when he was young to be a chef’s apprentice and my mother was born in South Vietnam but moved to France in the 70s to avoid the Communist North. Neither of my parents are very politically involved – the only thought when you’re moving to a foreign country is to survive. And that’s what they did. They essentially avoided all contact with politics, never really speaking about it to my sister or I and scarcely mentioned racism other than the times I asked about it.
When I was in reception, I vividly remember my classmates coming up to me and asking, “why are your eyes so small” and proceeded to pull their own eyes back to imitate me. Now, 4 year old me didn’t know that this was a racist micro-aggression and I shrugged it off and even played along with it. Moving onto secondary school people started saying “Oh Yann do you eat dog” because apparently all Chinese people eat dogs. Obviously. People on the street randomly came up to my sister and I and told us to “Go back to your own country cunt.” I’ve been called commie, chink, ling ling, you fucking name it and I rarely reacted to this because I’d rather ignore it than cause a hassle and argue. Besides, I would have been told I was “too sensitive” and a “snowflake” because god forbid, I have feelings and don’t want to feel dehumanised.
This pretty much takes us up to the start of 2020, where the news of the COVID-19 pandemic was getting around to the Western world. The epicentre of the virus’s outbreak was in Wuhan, China – with rumours saying that someone contracted the virus by eating a bat. I was immediately asked “did you have the bat soup”, “wow you have coronavirus don’t you” proceeded by people deliberately sitting away from me on the public bus, as if I was this walking mass of COVID-19 strains. Mind you I could have been any other Asian ethnicity and they still would have asked the same thing because we’re all the same to them.
As the virus ravaged through Europe and spread across the Atlantic to America, the former President of the US started throwing out terms such as Kung Flu and China Virus and the White House even defending his use of them citing “it is an indictment of China for letting this virus get here.” It’s one thing to criticise the Chinese government’s dreadful attempt at containing the virus but look at the numbers of hate crimes against ESEAs (East and South East Asians) since the US government started saying those things. In US cities alone, anti-Asian hate crimes spiked by 150%, the majority of these being pushed along by the White House’s repeated use of those terms, with a specific target on ESEA elderly. This also includes the British parliament where 2 MPs referred to the Chinese as “evil bastards” and “oh you know how they look.” In addition when referencing British Asian students there tends to be an underlying racial undertone and consistently receives negative coverage. These extremely harmful remarks just once again paint Asia as this foreign ‘exotic’ place that is trying to invade and take over the world, when we all know exactly which countries have actually colonised the entire world to look for spices but still don’t season their own food.
Now a big problem with Asian racism in the UK is that it is so normalised within our society. Thanks to people in power exploiting fears of the virus to scapegoat the Chinese community and by extension the wider Asian community, it has led to an astronomical increase in violence towards them. 1 in 7 people in the UK would avoid people of Chinese origin or passing. Hate-crimes towards Asians increased by 300% in the first quarter of 2020 according to the London Met; from verbal abuse, restaurants smashed, physically abused to being spat on. This poses a huge problem as the UK ESEA community is the fastest growing ethnic group in the UK.
The “model minority” myth is where, supposedly, Asians are all academically successful and because the Asians can do it so can other ethnic minorities. This stereotype that we are “passive, quiet, obedient, hard-working” has tricked so many into thinking we don’t receive racism. The manipulation with stats to seed Asians as the highest income per household by ethnicity causes people to think that ESEAs aren’t discriminated in the workplace from pay to representation. This myth is bullshit. The entire idea behind this was to further divide ethnic minorities up (specifically the Black community) and deflect the attention away from the wider issue of racism and ignore the discussion of white supremacy and racism in the UK.
The UK has had an influx of immigrants for ages, yet the school curriculum hasn’t been adapted in response to the increase in ethnic diversity of the country. The history curriculum basically blocks out Asian and African history unless it has to something do with conflicts with Western nations. No one really knows the true impact that colonialism had on countries and the reason why there is such an ethnically and culturally diverse country.
In the references, that are hyperlinked throughout, are a bunch of articles so do take a look at some of them, there is far too much information and statistics to include in a piece like this. A great video on YouTube by Eugene Lee Yang highlights several great points on anti-Asian crime and goes into great depth about these issues and struggles.
I am sick and tired of ethnic minorities being treated like utter shit and it’s well overdue for it to stop. Stop treating us like second class citizens. Stop giving us shit for our skin colour, eye shape whatever it may be. I am fucking proud to be Chinese and nothing will change that.
Thanks so much to Yann for this powerful and timely piece! If you are interested in writing something for UndefinedUK and having your voice heard, then get in touch.
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