Anti-Blackness and the Model Minority Myth

October is Filipino-American Heritage Month and this year the Filipino American National Historical Society is celebrating the Filipino-American’s spirit of activism and resistance. Very fitting for 2020! I’m celebrating that spirit by writing on an issue that has long been on my mind: anti-blackness in Asian communities with the entangled issue of the “model minority.” I addressed it a bit in a previous post here, but I want to further expand on how jarring it was to learn that an  Asian/Hmong-American aided and abetted in George Floyd’s murder. I had been working on this since NBC News released this article where experts agreed that “this is a pivotal moment for Asian Americans to tackle the subject of anti-blackness in a productive way, beginning with unpacking the biases in their own communities by first confronting the historical context behind it.”

Poster design by Kala Mendoza

I grew up always wondering how I fit into this fight for equality because it was often spoken of as an issue between Black people and white people. I was experiencing racism, but my white peers were treating me far better than they were treating their Black peers. My sister’s experience from when she was in middle school illustrates this:

I’ve experienced racism and discrimination many times in my life while I have also had white people see me as “more white, than black” from the very moment that was said to me as a young girl, I recognized that I was being placed on a scale of acceptance to my white peers. What did that say about me? What did that say about my black peers? Why were my white peers categorizing me in proximity to whiteness? 

The categorization in proximity to whiteness that my sister speaks of is felt when white people feel comfortable to complain about black people to me and when they are surprised that I don’t agree with their complaints. Earlier this year, a friend said to me that he knew Asians and Black people both experience racism, but “Black people are loud about it and Asians just put their heads down and get to work.” Then three weeks later, at Alt Summit someone said to me that Monique Melton’s keynote speech was hostile. The fact that she was taken aback when I defended Monique told me that she felt comfortable telling me her views because I wasn’t Black and because she wasn’t expecting an Asian woman to be “so vocal.”

Although white people’s acceptance of me indicated that I was better than black people, they often didn’t hesitate to remind me that I was not equal to whites. As just one example among several, I was in middle school and had my friend Vanessa Martinez go on a reconnaissance mission to find out whether a white boy I had a crush on was interested.  He told her straight up, “she’s pretty, but I can’t date her because she’s colored.”

This struggle is further compounded by anti-blackness in Filipino-American communities. I would hear family members say things like, “Why should I care about them? They don’t care about me!”  Anytime my sister or cousin brought their Black boyfriend home he was ignored. My white boyfriends were always welcomed with handshakes and the offering of food. Any efforts to speak up about this in my family were met with annoyance or being told that I was disrespectful to speak to my elders in this manner. In contrast, my sisters, cousins, and I all got in trouble by all the parents when our white uncle falsely claimed that we had not spoken to him at our Lolo’s (grandfather) funeral. The effort our parents made to make sure our white uncle’s feelings and allegations were redressed was shocking and disturbing when contrasted with their own prior coldness and indifference to Black visitors. 

In addition to the ongoing experience of anti-blackness among whites and Filipinos, the specific ways in which white people treat Asians as Other creates another barrier to speaking up about Black Lives.  When people like my friend express their belief that Asians turn the other cheek on racism while black people complain, we Asians are simultaneously taught anti-blackness and placed in a box of our own conditional worth.  These comments place us on a precipice, and the only way we prevent falling off into complete white disapproval, where Blacks are placed, is by remaining silent.

But there is more to this silence than meets the eye.  Ultimately, the silence of Asians, which my friend assumed is closely connected to the “model-minority” stereotype. Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of the national bestselling book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? says that this stereotype comes from the idea that Asian Pacific Americans are content with the status quo. 

Tatum quotes Mitsuye Yamada, a Japanese-American essayist, who when teaching the Asian section of ethnic American literature, discovered that her students were offended by the angry tone of the Asian American writers. These students were not offended by the Black, Chicanx, or Native American writings because they understood and empathized with their stories, but the anger of the Asian Americans took them by surprise. 

One student said, “It made me angry. Their anger made me angry, because I didn’t even know the Asian Americans felt oppressed. I didn’t expect their anger.”

Tatum continues with this story of one of her Korean American students who wrote about this silence:

“When racial comments are said around me I would somehow ignore it and pretend that nothing was said. By ignoring comments such as these, I was protecting myself. It became sort of a defense mechanism.” 

Tatum ends the section on Asian Americans finding their voice with this personal and painful truth:

While denial is a common coping strategy for dealing with racism, when the experiences are too numerous or too painful to be ignored, the silence is broken. Unfortunately, the voices of Asian Pacific American students often fall on deaf ears.

All of these accounts shed light on why people--even friends--act so surprised when I speak out to the point where friends tell me, “This doesn’t seem like you?!”  It violates their comfortable presumption that Asians are silent because we are content, not that we are silent because of pain, anger, or fear.

I was eleven years old when I first stood up to hate. My peers had left the phrase “that’s so gay!” back in elementary school and now that we were in middle school, they were saying, “that’s so Jewish!”. I called my friend out for saying that in front of our friend whose dad is Jewish. This friend retaliated, “Do you want me to say, ‘That’s so Mormon!’ instead?!” Her hatred silenced me. As did every other white person who fought me when I stood up for myself or for any marginalized persons. It took me weeks to write this and then over four months to publish this. Anti-racism is difficult topic. For those of you who are new to his fight, you’re just now experiencing this difficulty. But the difficulty for me, along with other marginalized folks, is that it is also mingled with fear because as I’ve shared with you a glimpse of the racism I’ve experienced, people's hatred silenced my courage to do what was right.

Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon said in 2017 after Charlottesville:

“We urge all Americans to study our history well, so that we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past, and to find inspiration in the courage of all who, over the centuries, have fought so bravely against hate for the rights we enjoy today in our nation. Because of the courage of activists and our elders and ancestors, we live in a society in which hate and inequality have no place, and we honor their sacrifices when we take up their struggle.”

So I am taking up that struggle by learning to be brave again and speaking up because enough is enough.

It’s time that Filipino and Asian voices be heard in this fight.

In the fight for representation, it is said that we can not be what we cannot see.

When you study our history, you will see us there! See that long before this contemporary anti-racism fight, Filipinos like Salvador Roldan fought miscegenation laws in the 1930s. See your people reject the false sense of belonging that white supremacy uses to pit us against our Black brothers and sisters! When we speak up, we confront anti-blackness in the Asian community as well as confront the white supremacy that has long kept Asians and Black people at odds.

Filipino protesters in. Anita took a knee during their protest against the Anti-Terrorist Bill to show support for Black Lives Matter. Photo originally posted on CBSNews by JES AZNAR/GETTY.

See your people raise their fist. 

See your people take a knee.

See your people speak up.

My name is Victoria- Riza. I’m a Filipina-American. I’m an immigrant. I stand, and kneel, for Black Lives. 

Learn more about the history of Black and Filipino Americans at Filipino American National Historical Society.

For more discussions on Anti-Blackness in Asian communities, here is an Op-Ed from The Washington Post by American fashion designer, Prabal Gurung.

To better understand the complexities of America’s racial history like that of Asian American and Black relations, read A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki