Two years ago, after spending Halloween night at a friend’s house, senior Emma Kang, a third-generation Asian American, began the drive home with her father, hoping to reach their neighborhood off Franklin Street before it grew too dark.
But first, they had to get past security. Within moments of reaching their street, they were greeted by the bright neon uniforms and flashing lights of crossing guards, who were attempting to prevent college students from parking in the residential area.
Kang’s father rolled down his window and began explaining that they lived in the neighborhood—before he was abruptly interrupted. One of the guards insisted that he couldn’t understand what Kang’s father was saying, even though he spoke fluent English. Even after showing his driver’s license as proof, the guard still did not believe him.
“It was like he was refusing [the fact that we lived there],” recalled Kang in a recent phone interview.
Photos courtesy of Emma Kang.
After more than five minutes of argument, the guard finally relented, granting them access to their own neighborhood. But while they were relieved at the outcome, the Kangs were nonetheless both surprised and dismayed that the incident had taken place at all.
As a result of the mass shooting at three Atlanta spas targeting six women of Asian descent in March, a national spotlight has been shone on the discrimination Asian Americans face. Studies show that hate crimes aimed at Asian Americans rose more than 150 percent between 2019 and 2020, fueled in part by an increase in xenophobia due to the Chinese origins of COVID-19. Many Asian students at East attribute part of the xenophobia to the rhetoric of former president Trump, who repeatedly described the coronavirus as “the China virus” or the “Kung Flu.”
According to a study conducted by the Stop A.A.P.I. Hate Youth Campaign, which included approximately 1,000 Asian American young adults across the United States, 25 percent reported experiencing some degree of racism during the pandemic.
Students at East are no strangers to this uptick in racist incidents, describing many acts of physical harassment that either they or their family members personally experienced.
Junior Shiny Shen remembers being “fake coughed on” by maskless college students while walking down Franklin Street early in the pandemic.
“I later realized that, ‘Hey, I’m no longer the ally in this situation, I’m the target,’” Shen said of the incident.
Many Asian American students said that since the beginning of the pandemic they have feared for themselves and for their family members when leaving their homes, not only because of the threat of infection, but also because of the double threat posed by their own appearance.
“Ever since last March, I’ve been fearing for my mother’s safety all the time,” said junior Meilin Weathington, who is half-Asian and half-white. “I have the privilege of not looking completely Asian. But my mother does, which is why every time she goes out, [I have] serious concern.”
However, experiences of microaggressions or even outright racist incidents were not uncommon even before the pandemic.
“I’ve had people call me ‘Ling-Ling’; I’ve had people push their eyes back; I’ve had people tell me to go back to where I came from,” Weathington said. “These sorts of things happened when I was in middle school, and I didn’t realize at the time that they were racist.… When I was at that age, it was really hard to figure out what I should do because I was so concerned with fitting in. As a mixed person already, I kind of just laughed it all off.”
Oftentimes, schools are also breeding grounds for the more subtle “model minority myth,” which not only stereotypes Asians as extremely intelligent solely based on their race, but also perpetuates unrealistic expectations and demands. Like all stereotypes, the model minority myth ignores the distinctions among members of a group. In fact, 23 million Asian Americans come from 20 different countries, and the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community spans the entire economic spectrum, with average income levels differing dramatically across ethnic subgroups.
Weathington remembers classmates walking up to her in her biology class on her first day of high school and telling her that she “looked smart” and asking for help with an assignment.
“I don’t think they realized it at the time, but it was a microaggression,” she said. “I definitely am treated differently in the classroom because of what I look like.”
These experiences, along with the Atlanta spa shootings, inspired Weathington and Shen to begin creating a podcast to discuss their experiences and bring greater awareness to issues faced by the AAPI community.
“It was right after the shooting, and there was a big escalation in events, and so for us, it felt like our duty to talk about [the Asian American experience] because nobody else was. And that was bothering us a lot,” Weathington said of the podcast’s origins. “We wanted to make sure that people had some platform to get awareness from.”
As a member of the Student Government Association (SGA), Shen has also helped organize social and educational events for students and staff aimed at raising awareness and building solidarity for the AAPI community. One event that received particularly enthusiastic reviews from both students and faculty was a showing of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?,” followed by a Q&A session with the director Christine Choy.
In addition to encouraging discussion about Asian American issues, Shen believes that it’s important to educate oneself and to recognize the potential for unintentional complicity in racist acts.
“We need to realize that none of us are completely innocent,” she said. “I know that I’m not completely innocent—I sort of just kept my head down when it came to microaggressions and laughed along with racist jokes, because I didn’t want to stir trouble.”
According to superintendent Dr. Nyah Hamlett, following changes to the state’s social studies curriculum, the CHCCS curriculum management team has been working to include more diverse voices in the classroom.
“One of the things that we are really trying to do is make sure that we’re supportive of the inclusion of diverse perspectives that allow all of our students—not just our Black students, not just our Asian students, and not just our Latino students, but all of our students—to truly see themselves through their learning experiences,” Hamlett said.
Recently, the district has been conducting listening circles with parents, students, and faculty of various identity groups to learn how to better serve different communities.
“I think it’s really important to engage diverse groups of people and also to have actionable steps that follow up,” Hamlett said. “It’s important that people really feel heard, and they really feel like there is a potential for change… [I’m hopeful] that we could work alongside our Asian and Pacific Islander parents and community members and staff so that we have those actionable steps in place, and we know what role each of us needs to play.”
