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Published in Asian Identity · 12 min read
Aug 16, 2016
White Supremacy & You
“If you don’t understand racism/white supremacy, everything else that you think you understand will only confuse you.” — Neely Fuller Jr.
As Asians in the West, we’ve endured a lot. The history of Asian immigration to the united states has been underlined by the resistance and persecution of Asians, particularly Asian men, in America. From when we first arrived on these shores to the attempted legal genocide of our people, to the continued cultural and institutional oppression we face today, its real-world consequences affect our personal lives in our pursuit to find love or happiness, just like any other human being on the planet. It may not seem like it in the day to day lives, but our oppression is real. The discrimination and racism faced by many is not just in your head — it is living, breathing, and malignant, like a cancer threatening to metastasize at any given moment.
Whew, that’s damn heavy. So, who’s to blame for all this? Who’s responsible for our fall of grace? At one point, an Asian man was the sex symbol in America. Sessue Hayakawa was that man , who acted in countless movies where he was the lover and the villain; he was not type casted into any stereotypical roles. Hayakawa refused to adopt the negative stereotypes. He represented us human, and not as a stereotype. But those are from times of past, and there’s no question that right now, in the present that we face malice in this country, but the real question is: What is the source of this malice? Is it an individual? A group? A political party? A race?
It’s easy to blame and point fingers at white people, at “White people”, but that’s an oversimplification for the sake of convenience. Most White people just don’t care, and while some are even genuinely friendly towards Asians or have dated Asians, blaming individuals is too extreme. What you encounter at a day to day level in the real world, except during specific instances (e.g., “where are you really from?”, “Hey ching chong!”, etc) are minor instances of a larger issue. It’s important not to focus on these minor instances, or else you will overlook the forest for the trees. So, whose fault, is it?
30 years ago, there was an Asian American author and playwright from Berkeley, California (of course) named Frank Chin who identified the culprit. The enemy, to be clear, is not a White person. It is not even White people necessarily. It is Sauron, the shadow in the East. It is White Supremacy. Remember that? We talked about that in the last chapter.
White supremacy is a system of order and a way of perceiving reality. Its purpose is to keep whites on top and set them free, while minorities remain subjects and caged in the system. From Frank Chins, Racist Love:
Colored minorities in white reality are stereotypes. Each racial stereotype comes in two models, the acceptable, and the unacceptable. For Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril, there is Charlie Chan and his Number One Son. The unacceptable model is unacceptable because he cannot be controlled by whites. The acceptable model is acceptable because he is tractable. There is racist hate and racist love. White racism enforces white supremacy.
Charlie Chan — That’s a white man playing an Asian Man. The original white washing. The Positive Stereotype
And here’s Fu Manchu, the Negative stereotype.
The enemy is not a person, people, it is a SYSTEM. It’s fitting to use a quote from The Matrix, which most adequately describes this system here.
“White Supremacy is a system, Neo, and that system is our enemy. When you are inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, the very minds we are trying to save. Until we do, these people are part of that system and that makes them our enemies. You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, they will fight to protect it. White Supremacy is everywhere. It is all around us. Even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” — — Morpheus-senpai
Feel-Trip
Do you ever feel like you get along great with your white friends until the topic of Asian racism somehow comes up, and then your complaints fall on flat ears? Ever feel like a conversation is going swimmingly with an Asian chick until you mention WMAF? Ever turn on the TV, and enjoy Game 3 of the Cavs and Golden State, and realize that the only Asian dude you’ve seen flash across your screen is Ken Jeong? Ever notice how there seems to be nobody talking about Asian American history or the racism we face in school? It’s just ignored. Ever feel strange about even broaching the subject with those closest to you? Ever feel a slight twinge of guilt or embarrassment when you see yourself in the mirror compared to the images you see in movies and magazines? Ever feel embarrassed about your own embarrassment, and the need to drive those kinds of thoughts out of your head and self-medicate with videogames, or porn, or sports, or drugs/alcohol? That’s racist love. That’s White Supremacy.
If the system works, the stereotypes assigned to the various races are accepted by the races themselves as reality, as fact, and racist love reigns. The minority’s reaction to racist policy is acceptance and apparent satisfaction. Order is kept, the world turns without a peep from any non-white. One measure of the success of white racism is the silence of that race and the amount of white energy necessary to maintain or increase that silence. The ideal racial stereotype is a low maintenance engine of white supremacy whose efficiency increases with age, as it became “authenticated” and “historically verified.” Those stereotypes operate as a model of behavior. It conditions the mass society’s perceptions and expectations. Society is conditioned to accept the given minority only within the bounds of the stereotype.
Racial stereotypes are designed to operate as a “model of behavior” which conditions mass society’s perceptions and expectations of how minorities are supposed to behave. How do minorities react to these stereotypes? Well, it’s a delicate balance of balancing acceptance and oppression in regards to each stereotype. So, what’s an example of this? The most common stereotype for Asian Americans is the model minority stereotype.
What is the acceptable part of this stereotype? The acceptable part of this stereotype is the image of the hard-working Asian, who works hard, excels academically, is smart, wealthy, docile, submissive, obedient, and uncomplaining, which work together to produce an image associated with a stereotype in society. In the face of society, and the white supremacy; we become the perfect behaving minority in the eyes of many.
As a minority group, this stereotype has become accepted by Asian Americans, the positive qualities of this stereotype have led us to believing that we have gained acceptance into society, and satisfied with this, we as a group have become complacent with this stereotype. It has become authenticated and verified over time. This stereotype is good, isn’t it? No, it isn’t. There are real effects to this stereotyping groups of people. When we hold the image in society that we are doing well as a group, things like casual racism faced by Asian Americans become ignored and dismissed. We are lulled into a sense of false comfort — that the social issues that persist as part of being a minority are overlooked, because this positive stereotype leads many to assume that racial issues & discrimination is not faced.