I have friends with Chinese heritage who say they are trapped between two nationalisms. They will get a flood of hate online from white nationalists on some posts, and a flood of attacks of being a "traitor" from online pro-CCP voices on others, even if they have never been to China, and just see themselves (and really just want to be seen as) Americans.
Chinese language Twitter is its own strange place. Pro Beijing nationalists and CCP critics meet there to battle it out every day, and often drag in anyone posting on nonpolitical topics. I don't know how to measure it, but it is so fiercely polarized, it makes our politics look downright chummy.
Sometimes posters there are attacked from every side, called "wumao" and "traitor to Beijing" in response to the same posts.
And social media has an amplifying effect. So it doesn't take many angry, hyperactive posters for those with Chinese heritage to see a flood of attacks, to feel threatened whichever way they turn.
The rhetoric you lay out sounds like a good start, and it's also worth hammering home that this conflict is about essentialism. What makes a valid country? America is constantly reasserting that countries can be formed under a union of ideals, not just ethnicity. And that union by core ideals holds even while we disagree fiercely on particular implementations. So for those Americans who happen to have Asian heritage, we need to make room for them to be proud of their unique identity, but also validate that they are fully "Americans," with no modifier needed, when they want that.
The dark side of using WW2-era examples is of course that while the US may have been promoting the Chinese and Chinese-Americans it was virulently demonizing the Japanese and the diaspora in ways that are shockingly nasty to read about today.
You mentioned Asians under threat, but I will also point out that China often targets the Chinese diaspora more voraciously (and to the point of having documented cases of overseas university students being told that they're being watched by their classmates—I can't find the article talking about it right this second, but I've heard privately from folks who this has actually happened to in large US universities).
As such, there is actually an interesting phenomenon of the most personal/direct folks under threat from China is the US... also tend to be Chinese-American (and hence, Asian-American from that). This is either from insinuated threats to friends/family abroad or just more concentrated attacks.
This is a random enough corner of the internet (and comments section) for me to be willing to make the point, but I have a lot of the same views as you, have shared a lot of comments/info privately on China... but would never actually step out into the public to do so. It's just not worth the harassment and potential serious risk to friends within Chinese territory. And my parents are from Taiwan!
- Appreciate you grappling with this openly; not a lot of people are doing this.
- Criticism of China (while worthy) gets us where as a country? Are they the cause of our high cost of health care, student debt crises, poor infrastructure, high levels of income inequality, etc.? Feel like the proportion of discourse devoted to the issue is a distraction.
- I have hard time believing this is all America doing good. Surely it's some of it, but it feels ahistorical: 1) Taiwan was still a dictatorship when we changed relations under Nixon; 2) While we talk about human rights and democracy, we neglect calling out Saudi Arabia about Yemen and Israel about Palestine. I know many will claim whataboutism, but I think lack of consistency here elucidates a larger American psychology.
If signals from elites are key, why not resolve to do away entirely with the use of “China” to refer to the mainland Chinese government? Indeed, the use of any country name in such phrases as “France wants X”, “Russia says Y”, “Yemen is unwilling to Z”? The state, the civilization, the current government, and the average of the citizens’ preferences are all quite different things for any country, even if it’s an old custom to refer to them all by the same name, and it might be easier for listeners to intuitively see the difference if speakers are careful to enunciate it. Why not just be precise and always say “the Chinese government” when that’s what you’re referring to?
> But in fact, the peak of Islamophobic violence in America was not in 2001, but in 2016
I don't think that's true. Islamophobic assaults went up ~13% from 2001 to 2016. But so did the US population. Also, a big fraction of Islamophobic hate crimes in 2001 occured starting in September while as I understand it, islamophobic crimes are not concentrated in just a few months...
There is one flaw with Noah's logic. The two parties are asymmetrical, and the Republicans contain the vast majority of racists and xenophobes. If a Republican president (like Bush) tells the xenophobes to stand down, they may well stand down. If a Democratic president tells the xenophobes to stand down, nothing will happen. The Republicans are now the party of Trump, and will not tolerate any Bush-like behavior.
Personally, I like to highlight two things when this topic comes up:
1. The CCP is a monolith or at least poses as one; China is many ethnicities and languages.
2. People and institutions in Asia are really racist to begin with. Koreans in Japan, Japanese in China, Indians in Singapore, Chinese in Vietnam, Philipinos just about anyplace in Asia -- both explicit racism and subtle structural racism are very strong in Asia.
Americans have the unique advantage of being able to talk about both these points openly and honestly.
To me, #StopAsianHate means standing up for the human rights of Asians everywhere - including Asians victimized by racism in the US and Asians oppressed by the CCP. So thank you once again for being an ally to the Asian community. ❤️🧋
Looks like I'm stuck critiquing your charts these days! ;-)
If we assume that most of the above-pre-9/11-baseline attacks against American Muslims happened post-9/11 in 2001, then just eyeballing it, about 9 of the 93 attacks would have occurred before 9/11, under 2000's rate of 1/month. That leaves the other 84 happening over the remaining ~3.63 months of 2001, for a rate of just over 23 attacks/month.
Comparatively, 2016's rate was only 10.58 attacks/month.
So yes, it's true that more attacks happened in 2016, but the frequency of attacks in 2001 genuinely was more dire.
> But it must be done. Netflix and Amazon shows, Hollywood movies, awards ceremonies, and every aspect of mass culture should depict Asian Americans in a positive light, as crucial members of the American polity. Asian American directors, writers, and other creators need to be given money and creative control to tell their own stories. Schools should teach lessons about the history of Asian Americans. Documentaries, newspaper features, and TV news features should bring consciousness of Asian Americans to the masses. And so on.
And after we get done doing that, we should think about doing the same for African Americans. As a group, they are (very roughly) twice as large as Asians but suffer ten times as many hate crimes. And let's not forget Native Americans who are (even more roughly) one tenth the size but suffer two thirds the number of the hate crimes as Asian. Once we start depicting those groups in a positive light, their experience in the country cannot help but improve.
Also, at the risk of sounding crass and callous, just how big a problem are we talking about here? Perhaps 215 Asian victims of hate crime out of a population of 18.5 million? If I have my numbers right, the US has 1.2 million violent crimes per year. Your Asian friend felt comfortable with that but rushed to buy a gun because of 70 extra crimes with faces he could better relate to?
The US has long been a violent, racist country, and the internet is not helping matters. But the US has also long been a country whose dominant emotion is fear, and, again, the internet is not helping.
"How not to address every China issue with the default mindset that "it's China, ergo it needs to be criticised.""
I mean, seriously, you claim China is "beating the war drums", and your reference is a *New York Post* article, of all things? Where exactly does China "threaten nuclear war"?
there's this weird no man's land now that "if a policy results in even one death" it's somehow "equal to murder" when so many of these things are law of small numbers randomness.
South Africans would be another good example, I'm sure many supported sanctions because you know maybe focus on preventing apartheid/genocide first?
I have friends with Chinese heritage who say they are trapped between two nationalisms. They will get a flood of hate online from white nationalists on some posts, and a flood of attacks of being a "traitor" from online pro-CCP voices on others, even if they have never been to China, and just see themselves (and really just want to be seen as) Americans.
Chinese language Twitter is its own strange place. Pro Beijing nationalists and CCP critics meet there to battle it out every day, and often drag in anyone posting on nonpolitical topics. I don't know how to measure it, but it is so fiercely polarized, it makes our politics look downright chummy.
Sometimes posters there are attacked from every side, called "wumao" and "traitor to Beijing" in response to the same posts.
And social media has an amplifying effect. So it doesn't take many angry, hyperactive posters for those with Chinese heritage to see a flood of attacks, to feel threatened whichever way they turn.
The rhetoric you lay out sounds like a good start, and it's also worth hammering home that this conflict is about essentialism. What makes a valid country? America is constantly reasserting that countries can be formed under a union of ideals, not just ethnicity. And that union by core ideals holds even while we disagree fiercely on particular implementations. So for those Americans who happen to have Asian heritage, we need to make room for them to be proud of their unique identity, but also validate that they are fully "Americans," with no modifier needed, when they want that.
The dark side of using WW2-era examples is of course that while the US may have been promoting the Chinese and Chinese-Americans it was virulently demonizing the Japanese and the diaspora in ways that are shockingly nasty to read about today.
You mentioned Asians under threat, but I will also point out that China often targets the Chinese diaspora more voraciously (and to the point of having documented cases of overseas university students being told that they're being watched by their classmates—I can't find the article talking about it right this second, but I've heard privately from folks who this has actually happened to in large US universities).
As such, there is actually an interesting phenomenon of the most personal/direct folks under threat from China is the US... also tend to be Chinese-American (and hence, Asian-American from that). This is either from insinuated threats to friends/family abroad or just more concentrated attacks.
This is a random enough corner of the internet (and comments section) for me to be willing to make the point, but I have a lot of the same views as you, have shared a lot of comments/info privately on China... but would never actually step out into the public to do so. It's just not worth the harassment and potential serious risk to friends within Chinese territory. And my parents are from Taiwan!
A few things:
- Appreciate you grappling with this openly; not a lot of people are doing this.
- Criticism of China (while worthy) gets us where as a country? Are they the cause of our high cost of health care, student debt crises, poor infrastructure, high levels of income inequality, etc.? Feel like the proportion of discourse devoted to the issue is a distraction.
- I have hard time believing this is all America doing good. Surely it's some of it, but it feels ahistorical: 1) Taiwan was still a dictatorship when we changed relations under Nixon; 2) While we talk about human rights and democracy, we neglect calling out Saudi Arabia about Yemen and Israel about Palestine. I know many will claim whataboutism, but I think lack of consistency here elucidates a larger American psychology.
- The propaganda (not in the pejorative sense) your proposing is a promising idea. Not exactly the same thing, but I think you'd enjoy PBS' Asian Americans and/or Donut king: https://www.pbs.org/show/asian-americans/ and https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/the-donut-king/
If signals from elites are key, why not resolve to do away entirely with the use of “China” to refer to the mainland Chinese government? Indeed, the use of any country name in such phrases as “France wants X”, “Russia says Y”, “Yemen is unwilling to Z”? The state, the civilization, the current government, and the average of the citizens’ preferences are all quite different things for any country, even if it’s an old custom to refer to them all by the same name, and it might be easier for listeners to intuitively see the difference if speakers are careful to enunciate it. Why not just be precise and always say “the Chinese government” when that’s what you’re referring to?
> But in fact, the peak of Islamophobic violence in America was not in 2001, but in 2016
I don't think that's true. Islamophobic assaults went up ~13% from 2001 to 2016. But so did the US population. Also, a big fraction of Islamophobic hate crimes in 2001 occured starting in September while as I understand it, islamophobic crimes are not concentrated in just a few months...
There is one flaw with Noah's logic. The two parties are asymmetrical, and the Republicans contain the vast majority of racists and xenophobes. If a Republican president (like Bush) tells the xenophobes to stand down, they may well stand down. If a Democratic president tells the xenophobes to stand down, nothing will happen. The Republicans are now the party of Trump, and will not tolerate any Bush-like behavior.
Personally, I like to highlight two things when this topic comes up:
1. The CCP is a monolith or at least poses as one; China is many ethnicities and languages.
2. People and institutions in Asia are really racist to begin with. Koreans in Japan, Japanese in China, Indians in Singapore, Chinese in Vietnam, Philipinos just about anyplace in Asia -- both explicit racism and subtle structural racism are very strong in Asia.
Americans have the unique advantage of being able to talk about both these points openly and honestly.
To me, #StopAsianHate means standing up for the human rights of Asians everywhere - including Asians victimized by racism in the US and Asians oppressed by the CCP. So thank you once again for being an ally to the Asian community. ❤️🧋
Looks like I'm stuck critiquing your charts these days! ;-)
If we assume that most of the above-pre-9/11-baseline attacks against American Muslims happened post-9/11 in 2001, then just eyeballing it, about 9 of the 93 attacks would have occurred before 9/11, under 2000's rate of 1/month. That leaves the other 84 happening over the remaining ~3.63 months of 2001, for a rate of just over 23 attacks/month.
Comparatively, 2016's rate was only 10.58 attacks/month.
So yes, it's true that more attacks happened in 2016, but the frequency of attacks in 2001 genuinely was more dire.
> But it must be done. Netflix and Amazon shows, Hollywood movies, awards ceremonies, and every aspect of mass culture should depict Asian Americans in a positive light, as crucial members of the American polity. Asian American directors, writers, and other creators need to be given money and creative control to tell their own stories. Schools should teach lessons about the history of Asian Americans. Documentaries, newspaper features, and TV news features should bring consciousness of Asian Americans to the masses. And so on.
And after we get done doing that, we should think about doing the same for African Americans. As a group, they are (very roughly) twice as large as Asians but suffer ten times as many hate crimes. And let's not forget Native Americans who are (even more roughly) one tenth the size but suffer two thirds the number of the hate crimes as Asian. Once we start depicting those groups in a positive light, their experience in the country cannot help but improve.
Also, at the risk of sounding crass and callous, just how big a problem are we talking about here? Perhaps 215 Asian victims of hate crime out of a population of 18.5 million? If I have my numbers right, the US has 1.2 million violent crimes per year. Your Asian friend felt comfortable with that but rushed to buy a gun because of 70 extra crimes with faces he could better relate to?
The US has long been a violent, racist country, and the internet is not helping matters. But the US has also long been a country whose dominant emotion is fear, and, again, the internet is not helping.
Suggestion: what about penning a counterpoint?
"How not to address every China issue with the default mindset that "it's China, ergo it needs to be criticised.""
I mean, seriously, you claim China is "beating the war drums", and your reference is a *New York Post* article, of all things? Where exactly does China "threaten nuclear war"?
It all amounts to a seriously bad faith approach.
there's this weird no man's land now that "if a policy results in even one death" it's somehow "equal to murder" when so many of these things are law of small numbers randomness.
South Africans would be another good example, I'm sure many supported sanctions because you know maybe focus on preventing apartheid/genocide first?
while your chance of being assaulted as an asian is likely 1/500000, racial quota against asians will affect every asian american person
first, american universities can stop setting quota on asian americans
Still waiting...