On Hate, and Healing

In May, following a year marked by an increase in anti-Asian xenophobia across the United States, Asia Society started a global task force with staff from across the organization. The group launched Asian Americans Building America, a new video series featuring interviews with Asian Americans from a wide range of backgrounds, professions, and perspectives. The interviews, conducted by Asia Society President Kevin Rudd, explore how each participant deals with racism in their personal lives and include their suggestions to build a more tolerant, inclusive future in the United States. The following are excerpts from these conversations.

“I find a lot of comfort in wearing a uniform, because no one questions whether I’m American.”  

Diana Kim, cadet, ROTC 

“At the beginning of the pandemic, when hate was targeted toward Asians, we’d get into the elevator at my apartment complex and people would leave. There was no other reason than that we were Asian.” 

Grace Hwang, cadet, ROTC 

“It started when my mom was deliberately coughed at in public. It was very eye-opening to me. It really hit home. I actually spoke about it in my school assembly, about the rise of xenophobia against the AAPI community. I was really nervous to do so, because no one was covering the issue [then]. But I felt like I needed to do it for my community — that I personally needed to say something.” 

Mina Fedor, 8th grade student activist 

“I came within a couple of feet of a butcher knife that went into a young man’s back at the end of February. Ironically, it happened right in front of a place called Paradise Square. One night a man just came up and plunged a knife into the back of a young Asian man on his way home. I literally shouldn’t be here. If I were two feet away, that knife would have been in my chest, and I wouldn’t be talking to you now. It reminded me of the struggle, why Chinatown was initially created, as an ethnic enclave after the 1882 Exclusion Act. Ever since, we’ve been here, in this little enclave, doing our own thing. And little did I know that over 100 years later, I would be here facing the knife.” 

Wellington Chen, executive director, Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation 

“In the early 1970s, I was pretty much the only kid who looked different at my school. And I was always the smallest in stature, as well. At age 12 or 13, that wasn’t a great combo. I endured bullying and racist taunts and the occasional fistfight. But I decided I wasn’t going to be a victim and I used the negative energy to motivate myself to work even harder at school and do even better. And I promised myself that I was going to be better than every one of those kids that had been giving me a hard time.” 

Leroy Chiao, retired NASA astronaut 

“Growing up as an Indian in Texas, there was always that feeling that you were different. You’d be called ‘Gandhi’ or ‘dot head.’” 

Shveta Pillai, executive leadership coach 

“After 9/11, we would receive calls to our office from people telling us we were terrorists, we were Osama bin Laden, we’d killed many people, we needed to go back to our country. These threats made us afraid to leave our homes. And there’s still fear. My son has a black beard and looks like a Middle Easterner. And sometimes I’m still afraid for him.” 

Rona Popal, head of the Afghan Coalition 

“My daughter used to go by herself on the subway when she was in middle school, but I told her to stop doing that. Now she’s in high school. As for my son, when my daughter was his age, I let her take the subway by herself — but I won’t let him. I have to go with him.” 

Vera Sung, director, Abacus Bank

“A state representative from the east coast recently said that Asian Americans don’t have any issues — which is very false. Asian Americans do have barriers. We do have issues that need to be alleviated. That kind of thinking among our elected officials really dismisses our community.” 

Karen Kwan, representative, Utah’s 34th district 

“There’s a lot of history that’s not taught in schools in our country — not only about Asian Americans, but also African Americans and Latinos. If this education were to be improved, if there were forums for these issues on the community level, and if people in position to seize the bully pulpit could take leadership and start a public dialogue, I think it would go further in stopping these attacks than trying to call for legislation, hate crime penalties, and other carceral solutions.” 

Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director, American Civil Liberties Union 

“I realized after the Atlanta shooting that we can’t fight anti-Asian hate just as an Asian community, just as we can’t fight anti-Semitism just as a Jewish community, just as we can’t expect the Black community to fight anti-Black racism alone. And I think what you’re starting to see is the sense that we’re all in this together. In a painful way, I think there are a lot of groups who feel like they’re the ‘other’ at the moment. Even white men feel under attack in certain ways. Instead of feeling like this pushes us all away, I believe there’s this potential to create a much greater radical empathy for the otherness and pain that different groups are feeling. We should remember that 99.9 percent of our DNA is exactly the same, that our differences are superficial, and that we should stand together against bigotry.” 

Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl, New York Central Synagogue

“In the Asian American community, there can be a lot of stigma against seeking mental health care. Asian Americans, among minority communities, seek mental health services at the lowest rate and also have among the highest rates of suicide. So I think out of all this struggle and difficulty over the past year, which is absolutely affecting the community, I’m glad there’s a conversation about seeking help.” 

Connie Chen, psychiatrist 

“If there’s something that’s good as a result of all this, it’s that Asian Americans, for the first time, actually have a national stage to have a conversation. Even after the Japanese internment, when tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were released, there was never a national conversation about the harm and trauma that was created. Now, for the first time in our nation’s history, we’re able to — as a community, as a nation — address topics of Asian America, our diaspora, and the history of stereotyping and discrimination.” 

Lee Ann Kim, founder, Pacific Arts Movement 

“As a woman in particular, I think the stereotypes that Asian Americans often face is that we’re meek, we’re unambitious, we’re not leadership material, we’re quiet and unassuming, and that we’re not creative thinkers. I’m actually a research biologist and I spend a lot of time in labs. In science, when you’re doing research, creative thinking is what drives scientific discovery. And so the stereotype that we aren’t creative thinkers, that we’re not leaders, and we’re not inspirational can actually have a detrimental effect on us as scientists. This is compounded by the particularly hostile racial climate right now, where Asian American and Chinese and Chinese American scientists in particular are being profiled in the U.S. as, potentially, actors of foreign governments.” 

Jenn Fang, blogger and activist, reappropriate.co 

“I believe you can enjoy so much delicious texture when you’re more inclusive than when you’re trying to be exclusive. You know, I sometimes feel sorry for people who are ignorant and very afraid of things they don’t know or know how to handle. Love is a beautiful ingredient. It does take a lot of patience and education, and in the process you can get hurt. But you can’t shake a hand with a clenched fist.” 

Ranjan Dey, chef 

“I’ve sung opera in German, in Italian, in English, in Russian, in Czech — in all these different languages. Why not, I thought, also sing in Mandarin, too? I could introduce contemporary Chinese opera to Western audiences, using music to help heal and bridge differences.” 

Hao Jian Tang, opera singer 

For more on the Asian Americans Building America video series visit AsiaSociety.org/AsianAmerica.