Statement on Atlanta

The following are portions and updates of the statement I wrote for the program in which I am a faculty member. I pasted it here for folx who might want resources, learn more, need a base for how you might write something, or because maybe you own institution didn't write one and this can be affirmation. The one I sent to my students was a bit longer, including some brilliance that was generously shared from Dr. Dian Squire, whose own example was instrument in how I crafted mine. 

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Hi everyone,
 
Some of you might be following closely to the news, while others of you will be learning about this for the first time. Last night (March 16), a white, 21-year-old shot and killed 8 individuals in Atlanta, Georgia— six of whom were Asian and Asian American and seven of whom were women. In the reports detailed by Korean newspaper, Chosun, some of these individuals include elders and grandmothers. 
 
A year ago, many of you received an email from me regarding anti-Asian rhetoric and hate regarding the discourse around Covid-19. In that email, I described how the reporting and rise of Anti-Asian (and especially anti-Chinese) violence was both related to the now-former president's harmful rhetoric but also related to a much longer history of stereotyping and associating disease with Asians as well as the construction and history of Yellow Peril. Since then, the organization Stop AAPI Hate has documented over 3,795 incidences from March 19, 2020 to February 28,2021 and includes the following disturbing and concerning conclusions [read full report here]: 

• 68% of the incidents are verbal harassment (68.1%) and 11.1% are physical assault 
• Women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men
• Youths (0 to 17 years old) report 12.6% of incidents and seniors (60 years old and older) report 6.2% of the total incidents.
• Chinese are the largest ethnic group (42.2%) that report experiencing hate, followed by Koreans (14.8%), Vietnamese (8.5%), and Filipinos (7.9%). 
  
  

I provide these statistics and reports to you all because as we think about the anti-Asian killings in Atlanta, we must take an intersectional lens and think about hate and racism with their intersectional relationships to gender, social class, immigration, stigma of sex work, and policing. Additionally, these conversations have to be situated in the longer history between the U.S., Asians, and Asian Americans. We can trace these things back to the Page Act of 1875 specifically prohibiting the immigration of Chinee women, which led to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 banning all Chinese people; the horrors of Japanese Internment; the murder of Vincent Chin; and many more attrocities (see Dr. Erika Lee's The Making of Asian America).
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Even further, we can take another step back to think about how Asians came to the U.S. and the larger global economies of imperialism and war (see Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy's Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History) which even then trickles down into how we are socialized to think about food (see Dr. Mark Padoongpatt's Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America). This same week, the U.S. deported 33 Vietnamese refugees; all of this is deeply intertwined. To learn more, in addition to the books and articles I've recommended, consider watching PBS's "Asian Americans" series, reading and looking at organizations like AAPI Women Lead and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. 
 
What this means for us, especially as student affairs professionals and faculty, are three things:

1. The first is how we better protect and advocate and support international students, especially the international Asian population. Again, the attack must be viewed intersectionally and the relationship between racism and immigration can't be ignored. Are your international students actually experiencing less violence and hate, or are they scared to report it in fear of losing visas?
   
   
2. The second is thinking about the age of the shooter: 21— "college-age." We cannot take social justice for granted: we cannot mitigate, dilute, or wave-away harmful actions. We've seen with the #MeToo Movement: how "boys will be boys" creates a culture of fear and misogyny. Consider how you challenge racism, genderism, homophobia, ableism, classism, xenophobia, and intersecting forms of oppression. AND, in doing so, do so in community; do so recognizing how you can wield your privilege to be what Dr. Bettina L. Love describes as "co-conspirators" for justice; and do so knowing that we, myself included, can make missteps and need to continuously grow ourselves. 
   
   
3. Third, in the intersectional lens, don't get distracted. Don't pit groups against each other, fighting for crumbs, while missing the larger cookie of white supremacy. As Mari Matsuda, J.D., who is part of the foundation group who developed Critical Race Theory (CRT), brilliantly writes CRT is not anti-Asian. We can be both against anti-Asian hate and against anti-Blackness. And, in supporting the Asian American community, we can do so without being anti-Black and/or co-opting the #BlackLivesMatter movement (e.g., don't use #AsianLivesMatter— instead use #StopAAPIHate; don't post yellow squares). As Lilla Watson says, “Our liberty [liberation] is bound together.” 

 
Writing this statement is especially difficult for me as an Asian American woman, and frankly, felt almost impossible for me to write as I am still processing and still grieving. Your Asian and Asian American friends, classmates, and colleagues may be feeling similar, and additionally feeling invisible considering the (general) lack of news coverage about Asians and Asian Americans and the geopolitical history of invisibilizing Asians in the midwest (see Dr. Jason Chan's dissertation). Consider reaching out to them and check-in. And as this statement might have shared new information to you, consider reading and learning more of the history that was not taught to us— read about Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) people; learn their histories; and hear their stories. And in doing so, consider how we might be more intersectional in our analyses and the ways we are challenging for student affairs, higher education, both as a field and in our respective positions, to do and be better. 
 
In community,
​Dr. Katherine S. Cho

[A/N: March 18, 2021]
In a previous version of this statement, I did not include the Page Act of 1875, which is earlier than the more well-known Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In including it, I have been reflecting on how for the little I learned about Asian American history, I was only taught the latter and not the former, which (again) reifies the relatioship between race, gender, and immigration.



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