The conversation
White supremacy is the root of all racial violence in the US
As fears of anti-Asian violence increase, police are trying to be more visible in repelling attacks. AP Photo / Kathy Willens Amid the alarming increase in attacks on Asian Americans since March 2020, there is a worrying category of these assaults: Black people are also attacking Asian Americans. White people are the main perpetrators of anti-Asian racism. But in February 2021, a black person pushed an elderly Asian man to the ground in San Francisco; the man later died of his injuries. In another video, on March 29, 2021 from New York City, a black person pushes an Asian American woman on the sidewalk in front of a doorway while the spectators observe the attack, and then locks their door on the woman without to intervene or provide assistance. As the current president of the Association for Asian American Studies and as a professor of ethnic studies and critical racial studies specializing in Asian American culture, I wanted to address the climate of anti-Asian racism I saw at the beginning of the pandemic. That’s why in April 2020, I created a PowerPoint slide deck about anti-Asian racism that turned my employer, the University of Colorado Boulder, into a website. This led to about 50 interviews, workshops, discussions and panel presentations I did on anti-Asian racism, specifically during the time of COVID-19. The point I have made through all these experiences is that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-black racism: white supremacy. So when a black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter may be fueled by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy. White supremacy does not require a white person to survive. It’s not just white people. The supremacy of the world is an ideology, a pattern of values and beliefs that is ingrained in almost every system and institution in the USA. It is a belief that being white must be human and be invested with inalienable universal rights and being non-white means that you are less than human – a disposable object that others can abuse and abuse. The dehumanization of Asian people by American society is driven by white supremacy and not by any black person who hates Asians or not. During the pandemic, ‘yellow danger’ rhetoric that China blamed COVID-19 led to a 150% increase in anti-Asian harassment incidents reported to police in 2020. In particular, East Asian Americans or anyone who was apparently of East Asian heritage. or descent have become targets for the misplaced anger of people who blame Chinese people or those who think they look Chinese, even if they are from other ethnic backgrounds, such as Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, Burmese, Thai or Filipino. A fear of the disease White supremacy as the root of racism can be seen in the Latino man in Texas who stabbed a Burmese family in March 2020 and claims he did it because they were Chinese and the coronavirus in the US brought. Although the suspect has mental health problems, his belief that this family poses a threat is driven by the white supremacist ideas of Chinese people who are to blame for COVID-19. The same rhetoric to accuse those considered Chinese of COVID-19 and attack them has been found in countless reports of harassment, including one by a Vietnamese American woman who was spit on by a white man as she tried to ‘ a grocery store in March 2021. Four days later, video footage showed a 76-year-old Chinese woman being punched in the face by a 39-year-old white man, on the same day that a white man killed eight people, including six Asian women. , in Atlanta. [Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.] Stories of individual harassment and violence perpetrated by white attackers against Asian Americans do not always receive the same attention as the viral videos of black aggression against Asians. But under all these incidents, white rule, just as white rule is responsible for the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes: White rule made Floyd a black male threat rather than ‘ a human. Understanding the depth and scope of this ideology of racism can be challenging, but in doing so, it brings each person, and the nation as a whole, closer to addressing systemic inequality. These are not black people that Asian Americans should fear. This is a white rule. This article was published from The Conversation, a non-profit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jennifer Ho, University of Colorado Boulder. Read more: Asian Americans are the best target for threats and harassment during pandemics. Racism is behind anti-Asian American violence, even if it is not a hate crime. Jennifer Ho is affiliated with the Association for Asian American Studies.