The New Asian America

It wasn't always this way. We were not so often the headline. Our elders' safety was not a cause célèbre. We weren't even sure that we were a "we"-can so many people with so little in common say that? Still, there were a few shared things. Cooking ingredients, tropes we were sick of. And when the attacks first started in early 2020, we found we shared another: a terrible feeling of dread.

- By Madeline Leung Coleman, Joy Shan, and Ryu Spaeth

Some days it feels like hate crimes created Asian America. Our loosely tied demographic was sloshing in the mainstream without political heft until Trump's "China Virus" hysteria lumped us all together. You didn't have to look or be Chinese to feel the ground shift. For the most privileged of Asians, the surge in violence and casual racism was a shock; for those struggling already, it was yet another indignity. The reports of punching and spitting and shoving piled up. People were hurt and died. The rest of us got organized or did nothing. We hunkered down or we became defiant. But everyone had to choose a way to deal with it. Whether we liked it or not, we had skin in the game. Asian Americanness-an identity that has so often felt generic or theoretical has become a term that more of us care to claim. Its significance is more concrete even as its definition feels more fractured. Some Asian Americans are poor, Black, white, Indigenous. Some aren't Asian American but instead Asians in America and not concerned with this kind of soul-searching at all. There are Asian Americans so rich that street violence can't touch them. And there are many who already knew what it was like to be a target. If a trauma united Asian America, our attempts to recover could pull us apart. Even if this new kind of violence was inspired by a president, it isn't enforced by the state. Governments are eager to offer solutions: more police, more punishment. Whether that will make everyone safer long term is the question confronting Asian America now. After all, it's easier to call the cops than it is to abolish them. Asian Americans deserve to be seen. But if we look in the mirror, do we know who's looking back?

1. HOW TO HIT BACK