Between Black & White: Asian Americans Speak Out

In celebration of our sister nonprofit, The Serica Initiative‘s, newest film collaboration with WNET/PBS, Between Black & White: Asian Americans Speak Out, we wanted to provide highlights from three launch events held throughout AANHPI Heritage Month and in the lead-up to the series release, including a panel on Asian-Jewish solidarity in the face of rising hate, a sold-out screening and community talkback in Seattle, and a star-studded panel in partnership with WNET featuring Serica’s own Board Member and Queens College President Frank H. Wu. (Conversations have been excerpted and edited for clarity and length).

Serica: Where do other racial groups like Asian Americans or Jews fit into the black and white binary? Has the conversation shifted?

JM Wong: In the arts community, what was fascinating was how America views race as black and white. The arts community started giving a lot of great opportunities to black artists, which was fabulous. But what we started noticing was even though it was great that white people were making black people the good guy because they wanted diversity of depiction, they still needed a bad guy who was the antagonist. They started casting Asian Americans or Latinx people as the antagonists. The BIPOC communitie were looking at how we work together and create awareness. You can’t keep just flipping who’s on top. How do we come together collaboratively in solidarity with each other to create greater opportunities, representation for everyone that is human-centered and not so black-and-white?

Cathy Schlund-Vials: The original naturalization law by which immigrants can become citizens had a requirement that you must be a free white person. At the time that the law was enacted, many Jewish leaders celebrated the fact that there was no religious requirement for citizenship. While Jewish people benefited, other communities were left out. After 1870, when the law was amended to include those of African descent, the law began showing a black and white subjectivity. Asians fall in between those categories. Jewish Americans and Asian Americans have been deemed similar when it comes to operating outside of a white and Christian construct. Additionally, there is an invisibility when it comes to their discrimination. While anti-Semitism and anti-Asian hate are acknowledged, it is deemed less serious because there is not a master narrative of slavery, or a civil rights movement that is completely legible. What connects all these groups is a contestation over citizenship and the idea that what benefits one group does not benefit another group. At various points in history, groups that were privileged may be marginalized. Asian Americans may be elevated in the 60s as a model minority, but in the age of Covid, they are perpetual foreigners. The same can be said for Jewish Americans.

Frank H. Wu: If you’re neither Black or white, or you’re mixed, you are not part of the race dialogue because people don’t know how to process that. Second, the image of Asian Americans is that of the model minority. Third is the perpetual foreigner stereotype. The first thing to establish is that we are Americans and have a right to be here. We’re not somehow super rich or recent arrivals. Once you get past that threshold, there are difficulties of reaching out and building bridges.

Serica: Why is there a predisposition from the media to highlight interracial tensions, and how do individuals change their way of thinking when it comes to solidarity? 

Paula Madison: Clips from the media are made to prove the point that it is African Americans that are attacking Asians. When another attack happens, if there is no video or pictures, the news media will go into the files and pull out the video or pictures of something similar that may have happened. We might see the recording of another attacker. Most of those clips were probably played in another city. The narrative is generated that Black people are the ones that are attacking Asian Americans. But to resolve this gap, it might take close contact and proximity that causes the increase of mixed race groups like Blasians. Frequently, the way to cast Asian Americans is as frightened victims. The media very rarely searches out stories of Asians fighting back. The misconception of Asians constantly being scared and “Black people are coming to get us” is being perpetuated by the news media and adds to the idea of drawing a circle around Chinatown to keep Black people out.

Frank H. Wu: The media images would say that all the attackers are Black people. That is not true. The media pulls up one concept that is counterfactual. Asian cultures all have an adage that the nail that sticks up is pounded down. Compare this to the American adage of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. The framing of Asian versus Black is all wrong. If we frame this as Black versus Asians, that will not improve anyone’s life. The way to help this situation is to embrace American ideals, the civil rights movement, and coalition building. In America, we come together and that’s unique to America.

Kathy Hsieh: Chinese Americans in San Francisco said that desegregated schools were illegal and they protested that. In fact, the black community during the pandemic shared a lot of the ideas for desegregation of schools with Ruby Bridges because they saw what had happened with the Chinese standing up and trying to fight against it legally. There are huge examples throughout our history of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders standing up for our rights, but the United States government worked with the media to create the model minority myth to use us as a buffer between black-and-white, specifically to actually quash the civil rights movement that was happening. All the stories of these were actually not covered. And even in more recent years, the last few years where there are a lot of Asian Americans out there protesting, that was not the story that the media was streaming. During the LA riots, we saw so many examples of how the media tries to keep that divide real in our minds and tries to hide the fact that a lot of us have stood up.

Jennifer Wu: Driving a wedge between Asians and the Black community boils down to the model minority myth. But Asian victims of attacks are not as concerned about the race of the attacker as they are of how to survive the attack. What’s missing is the victims’ trust in the structural systems that are supposed to protect them, like the media or hospitals. The distrust you see in Asians is similar to the distrust you see in any other racial group. There are more parallels than divisions, but what’s required is reaching across to talk to one another. We are seeing people talking more about differences and less of people discussing similarities.

Paula Madison: There is a major difference between the immigrants in the past and the immigrants now. Past immigrants were solely considered as laborers and not people who succeeded in business. As soon as the US was done with that labor, they wanted Asians to leave. The difference now is that some of those who stayed lived next to African Americans. There was a symbiotic relationship between those communities that we are not seeing today. But when we lived next to each other, we had the opportunity to get to know each other. We are siloed now.

Bunthay Cheam: I think it’s easy to point the finger to your neighbor. It’s harder to understand that the system has created this economy and has taken the things that they’ve been taught and kind of acted on those things. We often think of violence as interpersonal, like hitting somebody or stomping somebody out. But it’s hard to think about violence as these conditions that you put inside them. That this economy exists within the small space that you’re given. It’s not a surprise that that person hits that person, that person hits that person. When I was watching the second episode with different intersections that were represented, what are the conditions that might cause those things and for them to experience those things? I always think about who is in the position of the power to create that. Oftentimes I look at the state or the dominant society and ask a lot of questions about how we undo those things. What does solidarity look like amongst different folks across all different identities? I work with a lot of folks that are impacted by deportation. How do we get together and learn from each other? And the common enemy is the state, right? Every time there’s legislation created, it’s most definitely going to impact the least powerful people in the room.

Serica: In regards to allyship or collaboration or cooperation, what has been effective? What are some specific examples of how communities have come together in solidarity to seek justice or to protect those who have been traditionally marginalized, or how communities are pitted against one another when it comes to highlighting interracial tensions? 

Kathy Hsieh: I sought out stories of Asian Americans who stood up from the railroad workers in the 1800s. They actually went on strike so that they could get equal pay to their white laborers. Filipino county workers in Seattle have a huge history of all that they did to stand up. It’s always been about how we look at what exists and find the real stories. How do we create greater awareness using documentaries like this to share the true reality from our own perspectives, getting to know people, sharing their stories? Because it’s only through that that we actually come into solidarity with each other and realize we do have much more in common than not, and it’s how we combat these divisive narratives that the bigger systems in power are trying to perpetuate in order to keep their position on top against the rest of us. That’s why I always love filmmakers and storytellers and people speaking up about the true reality and trying to break down perceptions.

Shira Loewenberg: Since 1906, the American Jewish Committee has worked with other community organizations (ethnic and religious). Over the spike with anti-Semitism and anti-Asian hate, we have found reason to work more closely with other initiatives. Allyship is really important when communities feel under threat. It’s even more powerful when others speak to it because it legitimizes it. People trust people who are like them, or who they know, so when someone from your own community is testifying that this is actually happening and a threat to all of us, that’s a very powerful thing. Historically, when you look at Manzanar, the American Jewish Committee was the first non-Japanese American organization to sign up and advocate for the apology and reparations given to Japanese Americans.

JM Wong: Some of my earliest moments of solidarity here in the U.S. is actually organizing in the workplace. I used to work in a nursing home and there are so many differences between Asian workers and black workers. The moments when we did try to unionize, though, it takes moments of really taking the risk to trust each other. It takes each community really willing to take the risk for the possibility of something different. And sometimes it doesn’t work out and sometimes it does.

Frank H. Wu: There are many divisions and bridge building is incredibly hard. It means going places where people might be hostile, and it means being able to embrace that discomfort. I saw some rallies in which there have been speakers from all different races, like in Queens at the height of the pandemic. We have to nurture this and help sustain it.

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