By Leslie Nguyen-Okwu, Photo: An Rong Xu/The New York Times, The New York Times, May 30, 2022
Black and Asian communities in America today are often portrayed as in conflict with each other. But we have a long history of organizing with each other, too. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Asian Americans working as immigrant laborers in the United States were often subjected to racial violence. That experience of discrimination created solidarity with the Black community.
In 1869, Frederick Douglass spoke out against restrictions on Chinese immigration. Yuri Kochiyama, a friend and ally of Malcolm X, cradled his bleeding head when he was assassinated in 1965. Jesse Jackson took time away from his presidential bid to protest the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982. These stories of loss, struggle, change and hope are the most powerful tools we have to understand one another and bridge what divides us.
The Asian civil rights movement was inspired in part by the Black civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. It was around this time that the model minority myth emerged, portraying Asian and Pacific Islander Americans as mostly hard-working, well educated and healthy, the artist and activist Betty Yu explained. “The model minority stereotype falsely depicts Asians as a wealthy Ivy League-educated monolith while completely ignoring the economic inequalities that exist to this day,” she said.
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