On Sunday night, right in the heart of downtown Oakland, Jinghong Kang was shot and killed for $17. He was in the Bay Area for an interview at Google the next day.
Some people might shrug and say, "Another day, another killing in Oakland." After all, the death caps off a particularly brutal weekend where a man in body armor engaged in a shoot-off with cops on 580, and a sniper fired on police from a West Oakland building.
But this particular murder upsets me because it appears to be another death in a trend of violence targeted towards Asian Americans in the Bay Area.
Earlier this year, in an intro talk at he Taiwanese American Lunar New Year event in Fremont, I tried to link Chimamanda Adichie's concept of "the danger of the single story" (as talked about in her brilliant TED talk) and the perception of Asian Americans. The basic gist is the limiting effects of stereotypes for both those who use them as a shorthand for understanding individuals and for the ones being stereotyped.
We have all heard ad infinitum about how the objectification of women in films and TV has been linked to the status and treatment of women in the real world, or how lack of positive images of people of color leads to feelings of disempowerment and invisibility among people of color--or, as in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the desire to live up to some sort of racialized ideal.
Those media images not only affect how we see ourselves but also, obviously, how we see others. In Taiwan, I often heard comments about how "dangerous" or "scary" African Americans are. I'd get mad, but I also understood that the entire idea, absent of any actual interaction with African Americans, came from the deluge of Hollywood movies.
So it makes sense that Asian Americans are seen as an "easy target." We know from movies that unless he looks like Bruce Lee, that As-Am guy you see is likely to be a glasses-wearing, engineering-studying, weak-muscled geek. Right? Who better to mug? And while I understand that it's hard to pinpoint one's motives for committing a crime, I also can't believe that the stereotype of a weak Asian male isn't part of the matrix.
And while I thought that stupid stereotype had gone out with the 80s, it seems we just can't shake it.
It's enough to want to get rid of it because we know stereotypes are dumb, but this is actually a matter of life and death.
And the "model minority" stereotype isn't much better. As sociologist Frank Wu explains:
"It would be bad enough if the model minority myth were true. Everyone else would resent Asian Americans for what Asian Americans possess. It is worse that the model minority myth is false. Everyone else resents Asian Americans for what they believe Asian Americans possess.”
As an article, published in the 1960s, in the US News and World Report claimed, "At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent to uplift Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese Americans are moving ahead on their own, with no help from anyone else." It's been 50 years, and times have changed, but the rhetoric hasn't.
The Model Minority stereotype may be good for the self-esteem of Asian Americans, but by portraying us as essentially sell-outs to the American Dream, the stereotype is doing more harm than good.
Essentially, we have to step up and realize we are all in the same boat and the same community. Asian American groups should step forward and support the community efforts of Latino, African American, etc groups, and vice versa.
Because that's kind of the idea of "community."
Addendum:
Tellingly, the first comment for the story of the Oakland killing on NBCWashington's site reads: "One fewer nerd."
links:
"Model Minority" blog, with links to recent articles about hate crimes against Asian Americans.
UC Irvine- Kathy Rim's article "Model, Victim or Problem Minority? Examining the Socially Constructed Identities of Asian Origin Ethnic Groups in California's Media"
The story of Tian Sheng Yu, murdered in Oakland in April
The story of Jinghong Kang, murdered on Sunday.
Crime map of Oakland.
3 comments:
Great post! I had a conversation pertaining to this when I went out to eat with my mother one week. I think it was after the verdict for the Bart shooting. She also said people are not united enough to prevent this, and that some African Americans deliberately create poor reputations for their counterparts. But I think this holds true for any race.
I can't agree more when you say this has to do with the media. I believe it really does, too. And it's even more horrible when what is seen as unreal on tv becomes real in reality. But I also believe there are other societal factors that influence individuals to become detrimental. Hence, this is also the reason why society should assume, if not full, partial responsibility for what individuals become of themselves, now and in the future. And in order to do this, our society, as a whole, must unite to form an unanimous voice to support one another because one person can only hope, but not cope.
Yet, still, there are never enough people who are willing to stand up for justice....how must we recuit?
Thanks for your comment, Greta.
I also think we need to raise our voices against these stereotypes. Be aware of them, educate our friends, protest them in films and on tv. I cant help but think stereotyping was also a contributor to Oscar Grant's death.
I'm not sure what your mom meant about deliberately creating poor reputations. My idea is more that Hollywood is careless, looking for a quick laugh or an easy shorthand, but these ideas infiltrate our worldview. I couldn't find the citation so I didn't include it, but in Peter X Feng's book IDENTITIES IN MOTION, he mentions a study of attitudes towards Asian Americans and listed like the top five stereotypes which included things like "victim," "weak," "unlikely to resist a crime," which then sadly lead to more victimization. That's what I'm talking about.
-syr
I think she meant something like these kind of hate crimes been happening so often lately, and often involving the same groups of people. I guess I used the wrong example by mentioning Bart. We probably jumped to another topic. So, sorry if I'm causing confusion.
Anyhow, that's not important. But I do know what you mean when you talk about Hollywood and stereotypes. It's actually kind of shocking to know that these stereotypes still exists. Hollywood uses them as "quick laughs" only because there are still people out there who agree that these should be the selling points of films. Annoying, but still true after so many years!
And, that book, I'll be getting it! Thanks!
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