Monthly Archives: February 2021

Hello, Media? Asian. American. Lives. Matter. Wake UP!

General, Media, Social Justice, ,

On the same day that I signed a petition created by Asian American Collective that asks mainstream media to get up and cover the issues of the Asian American community, mainstream and cable media (except Fox News) finally brought to America’s attention the recent spate of murder and multiple assualts against Asian Americans.

Hey! Public pressure can work!

Early last week, I signed this petition:

Get Mainstream News Coverage Of National Elderly Asian American Assaults

It reads in part:

Over the course of the past year, the unfortunate inflation of racist rhetoric associated with the origin and spread of the Coronavirus has resulted in an uptick of deadly hate crimes against Asian Americans.

In the past week we’ve seen murders and hateful assaults skyrocket across America but have noticeably felt ZERO pressure to cover from America’s mainstream news sources. Why is it that in the eyes of American media, Asian lives do not matter?

President Biden very recently signed an Executive Order to help combat hate crimes toward the Asian American community. He even outlined his agenda on the campaign trail for the AAPI Community.

Because Asian Americans still have not been given a voice in mainstream America and it’s time they covered OUR struggles, fights and needs. We are Americans and deserve to live without constant fear, or the fear of our elders being senselessly murdered. 

Why does it take public pressure to compel the media to inform Americans about their fellow human beings becoming targets of racial hostility? And in particular, elderly Asian Americans?

Is it just convenient to pretend we’re invisible? Especially elderly people?

Asian Americans have been in the Americas for a long time. According to Wikpedia’s page on Asian immigration:

the first Asian-origin people known to arrive in North America after the beginning of the European colonization were a group of Filipinos known as “Luzonians” or Luzon Indians. These Luzonians were part of the crew and landing party of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza.

The ship set sail from Manila and landed in Morro Bay in what is now the California Coast on October 17, 1587 as part of the Galleon Trade between the Spanish East Indies (the colonial name for what would become the Philippines) and New Spain (Spain’s colonies in North America).

And according to a historical pamphlet, Timeline: 400 Years of Chinese in The Americas produced by The Museum of Chinese in the Americas (MoCA) in New York City, the Spanish documented Chinese settlements in Acapulco “as early as 1600s and later in Mexico City by 1635”.

Filipino sailors were the first to settle in the U.S. around 1750 in what would later be Louisiana.

And the arrival of three Chinese seamen in Baltimore in 1785 marks the first record of Chinese in the United States.

We’ve been here a while, people!

After all these centuries, are Asian Americans still reduced to only cultural things from which non-Asians enjoy and benefit?

Things like martial arts: kung-fu, karate, and jujitsu? Foods, including sushi, No. 1 Chinese take-out that, in my opinion, no-self-respecting Chinese person would consume, and bobo drinks? Movies that portray women as either submissive and docile or conniving “dragon” women – and men often portrayed as emasculated nerd scientists or good guy-bad guy martial artists? Or somewhere in between but invisible – an extra in a movie – an office worker or random person walking in the street but silent or having a bit speaking part of no signficance?

Asian Americans have built America’s railroads, have turned California’s swamplands into farmlands to feed America, have fought patriotically in its wars (like my father and uncles), have taken care of our fellow citizens when they become ill via countless medical personnel, fought for rights and better living conditions in Congress, have worked tirelessly as scientists among their colleagues to find cures for diseases, and so much more.

And what thanks have we gotten? I’ll give you a sampling:

• The Nazi-like 1882 Chinese Exlusion Act – renewed repeatedly until the 1940s;

• Lynchings, physical violence, pillaging, and other untold crimes during the 19th century;

• Chinese detained at Angel Island (the Ellis Island of the West) to answer asinine questions from authorities to determine the authenticity of their identities;

• Japanese internment camps across the country during WWII;

• Racial hostility that continues to this day – magnified in the past year thanks to our now-former U.S. president who cruelly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus” and “kung flu” and who inspired some of his most rabid followers to spew the same racist rhetoric to complete strangers of Asian heritage – sometimes accompanied by spitting or violent physical assault.

• Invisibility from the media, unless it suits them somehow.

I guess a spate of assaults against elderly Asian Americans isn’t sexy, titillating news.

Allow me to indulge you with naming some of the people who were attacked.

Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84 – knocked to the ground while on his morning walk January 28, 2021, by a teenager. Mr. Ratanapakdee’s fall resulted in his head hitting the pavement and him sliding into a garage door. Ratanapakdee died two days later as a result of his injuries after being taken to a hospital. He was originally from Thailand. (Bay Area, CA)

Yik Oi Huang, 88 – beaten by a teenager with her own cane before stealing her keys and leaving her to die in the sandbox of a playground across from her home on Jan. 9, 2019. Huang suffered a skull fracture, brain bleeding, numerous facial fractures, and injury to her spine, hands and ribs,. She was bleeding heavily from her head, face and nose. She died January 3, 2020, nearly a year after her injuries. (Bay Area CA)

Noel Quintana, 61 – was on his way to work on the L subway train when he got into a dispute with another man and was slashed across the face on Wednesday morning, February 5, 2021. Mr. Quintana claimed the man was kicking his backpack during the commute, according to ABC7. When Quintana asked him to stop, the suspect slashed the 61 year-old man on the right cheek with a box cutter causing physical injuries and ran away when the train made another stop. Mr. Quintana told ABC News he feared for his life since nobody was helping him. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment. (New York City, NY)

Mauricio Gesmundo, Sr., 83 – was getting ready for dinner when he heard loud sounds from inside his house on December 31, 2020 (New Year’s Eve). His son recalled, “All he remembers is whoever it was covered his face and then beat him.” His family found him bound and duct-taped. He died from his injuries on January 18, 2021.(Philadelphia, PA)

There are so many more Asian Americans who’ve been attacked as well. A New York NBC station reports that while the pandemic’s long-lasting impact has affected public health and the economy, the Asian-American community has also experienced the fallout of COVID-19 – being unfairly blamed for the pandemic and becoming the target of discrimination and violence.

According to the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY) report “A Rising Tide of Hate and Violence against Asian Americans in New York During COVID-19: Impact, Causes, Solutions,” they found:

Anti-Asian hate incidents increased dramatically in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and then surged after the election of Donald J. Trump. South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Middle Eastern communities all faced recurring cycles of harassment and violence. Since the onset of the pandemic, however, anti-Asian hate incidents now primarily directed at East Asians have skyrocketed according to both official and unofficial reports.

Across the country, there were more than 2,500 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents related to COVID-19 between March and September 2020. And this number understates the actual number of anti-Asian hate incidents because most incidents are not reported.

The report goes on to say that, as of Dec. 31, 2020,

there were 259 anti-Asian incidents in New York reported to “Stop AAPI Hate,” a report center sponsored by the Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and San Francisco State University’s Asian-American Studies Department. Although the majority of the incidents reported involve verbal harassment, shunning, physical assault, as well as being coughed and spat on are being reported at an alarming rate, according to the published study.

I’m not going to insult the people I mentioned who were attacked by discussing their attackers. They don’t deserve my time and space. Last I checked, two perpetrators have been arrested and at least two are still on the loose.

Mr. Ratanapakdee, Ms. Huang, Mr. Quintana, and Mr. Gesmundo. These individuals all had families. They were someone’s father, great-grandmother, mother, grandfather, auntie, and uncle.

Many of us have grandparents, parents, aunties, uncles we love – or loved and remembered, if they no longer are with us. The individuals I mentioned could have been one of our own parents, grandparents, relatives, or loved ones. The violence of their attacks numbs my mind and turns my stomach, and I can’t fathom the searing pain their families have endured. What a horrible way to have left this world.

With thousands of anti-Asian hate incidents related to the COVID-19 reported – and likely many unreported according to multiple news sources, why is America seemingly unaware of this? One night of mention on the news will not make an impression in our attention-deficit world. I thought multiple attacks against vulnerable people would garner worthy news attention.

But maybe not if they’re Asian American and apparently deemed invisible by mainstsream and cable news? Is omission of Asian American elder attacks what corporate media desires – to convey to the American public that we really don’t matter?

If so, that’s pretty downright sick.

Asian Americans…they exist?

Damn right we exist!

I’m grateful for activist organizations like Asian American Collective to bring to my attention the injustice of the violent attacks against elderly Asians and to bring national attention to the plight of our fellow human beings.

So hello, American media – yes, that includes you, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, WaPo, LA Times, NY Times, and even those who mentioned the rise in Asian American hate crimes:

ASIAN. AMERICAN. LIVES. MATTER.

We exist. A one-time mention isn’t sufficient.

With more than a couple thousand recorded complaints of anti-Asian hate crimes and counting, throughout the pandemic, you’ve no excuse not to follow-up on this. Tell us about those who’ve been attacked, about their lives, who they are or who they were, how their families are coping, how their respective communities have responded.

Wake UP!

Your silence is deafening. If you proclaim to provide “fair and balanced” news that has an impact on American lives, then treat ALL Americans with respect and tell them when their fellow citizens are being harmed repeatedly. Name names!

Don’t dehumanize and reduce us as just a group.

SAY their names: Vicha Ratanapakdee. Yik Oi Huang. Noel Quintana. Mauricio Gesmundo.

They’re just the tip of the iceberg.

Peace.

Sources

Change.org – petition
Change.org – petition update
SF Examiner
Next Shark
CBS Philly
Newsbreak
SF Examiner
ABC7 News
AsAmNews
Next Shark
ABC7 News
The Hill
NBC4 New York
Wikipedia
Asian-Nation
Archives.gov
Times of Israel
Wikipedia
Britannica
History.com
NBC – Asian America
American History USA
Teaching for Change
Asian American Bar Association of New York

No Badge Needed

General, Media, Women,

Last Monday, February 1st, 2021, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Congresswoman from New York, shared on Instagram her harrowing experience on living through the January 6th, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol. In part, she said:

These folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the same tactics of abusers. And I’m a survivor of sexual assault.
~Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 2/1/21

Take in that last line: And I’m a survivor of sexual assault.

A number of people have taken offense to that, saying that she, as a politician, was using her experience as a sexual assault survivor as a tool to manipulate the public in some way or to make herself the center of attention.

The Spectator writer Amber Athey wrote:

This is gross manipulation, and AOC should be ashamed. Not for sharing that she was sexually assaulted — I have no way of knowing whether or not her story is true and, ultimately, it’s irrelevant to the issue of the storming of the Capitol.

The real story here is that AOC used her alleged trauma as a cudgel against her political opponents. She has weaponized her alleged experience to silence anyone who criticizes her and even went so far as to compare them to the person or people who abused her. This type of behavior cheapens sexual assault.

To which conservative media personality Rush Limbaugh added during his February 2nd radio show:

And to show you how it’s working, I have a friendly supporter who calls and says, “You better be real careful what you’re saying here. It’s obvious you’ve never been abused.” How is it obvious? Maybe I should be proud that I don’t wear that around. That’s also something generational. You just didn’t talk about things. You just lived your life. You dealt with it as it happened.

Now, you wear the badge. Generational changes, generational shifts. But Amber Athey believes that AOC “weaponized her alleged experience to silence anyone who criticizes her.” I know the left does that. They have become champions at that, in fact.

Badge?

There’s no fucking badge. Except in your head.

Generational changes, yes, Mr. Limbaugh. Generational shifts. You said it. Many people change their thinking on different matters over time, like sexual assault and rape. Thanks largely to social movements like #MeToo, survivors of sexual assault can feel safe that they are not alone – that they have the option to reveal they’ve experienced horrific violation, either publicly or privately – rather than burying their emotions.

In more survivors coming forward, they build solidarity in numbers and in shared experiences, so that society, rather than constantly blaming and dismissing them, begins to respect and believe them. And importantly, survivors expose and hold to account their perpetrators.

And maybe you are actually fine with that, I don’t know. But I’m gonna pick on you because you have a record of debasing women to your audience over many years. Notably, women who speak up for themselves: women who might talk about an intimately painful experience in their past, women with whom you disagree politically, or women whom you perceive to be an obstacle to the advancement of your favored person’s position (like a judge or a president). Does the name Sandra Fluke ring a bell? Dr. Christine Blasey Ford?

And now you cast aspersions on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

You started your broadcast on February 2nd introducing her Instagram video with “Have you seen this video, folks …If you haven’t, it’s amazing acting.”

ACTING?!

So most people besides Amber Athey aren’t gonna have the guts to properly characterize this. But you ought to see this video if you haven’t. I mean, it’s filled with acting and gyrations of the body in order to transmit the nature of the assault she feared was happening all over again. And it was a sexual assault that she was being reconnected to.

So you have no right to be critical, because this is a traumatic event, and so forth and so on.

But when did you ever hear Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez say that you can NOT criticize her for revealing she is a sexual assault survivor?

Those are YOUR words, dude.

YOUR WORDS.

Later in your broadcast, a caller implied AOC and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford were pretending (acting?) when they revealed their traumatic experiences:

CALLER: Right. So when you have Christine Blasey Ford and AOC as someone, you know, pretending — and what they did to Justice Kavanaugh — what it does to people who really lived through it.

RUSH: Oh, yeah.

CALLER: — is it minimizes or diminishes —

RUSH: What a great example.

CALLER: — those of us who go through it.

RUSH: What a greatly [sic] example. Christine Blasey Ford and all these people piling on Kavanaugh.

So you agree with the caller that Dr. Ford and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were just pretending about their sexual assaults? Do you think they were making stuff up to grab attention and/or elicit sympathy?

If that’s not making light of one’s experience, I don’t know what is.

Or maybe or a more accurate term for casting aspersions on them is cynical.

Cynical, according to Merriam-Webster, means:

Having or showing the attitude or temper of a cynic: such as
a) contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives
b) based on or reflecting a belief that human conduct is motivated primarily by self-interest

You apologized for a misunderstanding at first. Namely, that you thought Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said she was sexually assaulted during the January 6th insurrection. Later, you said your primary point was not disputing that she has been abused and you weren’t making light of it or laughing about it, yet you continued to minimize her experiences she had both during the insurrection and her mention of being sexually assaulted (along with some of your callers).

You know, the question that got all of this started about her divulging that she had been sexually abused — the question that got it all started — was, “Why don’t you guys just move on? The January 6 thing was January 6th. The siege of the Capitol is in the rearview mirror. It happened. Why don’t you just move on?”

That’s what triggered her to talk about her alleged sexual abuse, and that’s when she said (summarized), “Look, these instances of abuse don’t ever go away. They compound on one another,” meaning the impact is added to each new instance of abuse and what she went through during the siege on January 6 was abuse on top of — which she then shared — was her sexual abuse and so forth.

So put another way. She was asked why she can’t move on from January 6, and she said because of her alleged sexual abuse. She politicized it, not me. She did.

“…and she said because of her alleged sexual abuse.” Not.

You conveniently glossed over horrific insurrection by dismissing Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’ revealation as a sexual assault survivor as she spoke about the fears she experienced that day, comparing the tactics of her some of her naysayers as similar to abusers. And you said she politicized her trauma.

How cynical of you.

According to trauma experts interviewed by USA Today, Ocasio-Cortez’s reaction is normal and expected, and her account aligns with what science shows happens to a mind and body under extreme forms of stress. It’s likely, experts said, that Ocasio-Cortez’s experience with sexual assault intensified what she endured at the Capitol. Clinical psychologist Seth Gillihan told USA Today:

Trauma isn’t processing ‘sexual assault’ or ‘Capitol assault.’ What it’s processing is an overwhelming sense of danger, of feeling powerless, feeling my life is out of my hands. From an outsider’s perspective the sources look different, but inside our bodies and minds … it’s exactly the same message.

People died because of the assault on the Capitol! It was a potentially life-threatening attack on members of Congress, and for Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, it was a trauma compounded by her experience with sexual assault made all the more terrifying by the death threats she has received since she was elected to Congress.

It’s not triggering trauma, it’s trauma overlaid on trauma, Gillihan said.

Experts also said that Ocasio-Cortez’s gender is likely influencing reaction to her emotional disclosures. It’s much easier to suggest Ocasio-Cortez is fragile, oversensitive or even politically motivated than it is to accept the horror of what happened to her. They agreed with AOC and said denial and victim-blaming are common tactics abusers use.

One of the experts, Jennifer Gómez, a psychology professor at Wayne State University stated:

Abusers demand silence. The trouble is such a silence mandate is crazy-making for people who experience the violence and who see the world for what it is: a place that includes such violence just as much as it includes joy.

Screw silence on demand.

I believe as some observers have noted, that Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez spoke in such personal terms in order to reject calls to move on from the events of January 6th. “We cannot move on without accountability,” she insisted. “We cannot heal without accountability.”

Accountability, indeed.

So go take your cynicism to the nearest toxic waste dump where it belongs, Mr. Limbaugh. And throw your imagined badges in there while you’re at it, please.

Y’all stop invalidating @AOC’s experiences because you aren’t hearing about the experiences of other members. Everyone deals with trauma differently, her stories are validating for so many of us with similar experiences and she is showing people that vulnerability is strength.
~ Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Congresswoman, 2/1/21

Sources

Nation
Washington Post
New York Times
Merriam-Webster
Newsmax
The Rush Limbaugh Show
The Spectator
Alternet.org
MSN
USA Today
NY Post
Wikipedia
CBS News
Wikipedia
New York Times
Real Clear Politics
Media Matters