On being Asian American in public spaces (and everywhere else)

Last month while biking, I was accosted by a man driving a car who screamed something racist at me. This incident is part of a bigger story, of my life, other Asian Americans, and other people, pedestrians, and cyclists, who are still struggling today to claim a place in the American city.

The incident lasted less than a minute. I was biking on Fessenden Street NW, a minor arterial on the safest route between my house and my parents house, with my six year old daughter following behind me. She was carrying flowers in her bike basket to give to my mother. A man drove his car into oncoming traffic, pulled up next to me, and screamed, “You need to control your daughter. Why is she biking in the street?”

Before I could respond, he pivoted from misogyny to racism. “This is the problem with Asians! You are the problem!”

At that point, my whole body flooded with adrenaline. I felt an overpowering need to run away, but my child was there. I started screaming back. I stopped biking and we were holding up traffic while I lit into him in the most rule-following way possible: I hollered that he was breaking the law by driving his car on the left side of a double yellow line.

He drove away. We got out of the street. My daughter was shocked, and asked if she had done something that she needed to apologize for. I did my best to reassure her that we had done nothing wrong, that the driver had, and that’s it. Or so I thought.

Road rage happens every day, and cyclists are often targets. However, I found myself unable to stop thinking about the incident, which I first chalked up to extra distress because my daughter witnessed it. I would start thinking about it, and feel a physical reaction inside my body, the adrenaline returning, my heart speeding up, my arms shaking, as if I was in immediate danger. It became quickly clear I needed to talk to someone about what I was feeling.

With help, I recognized the particular physical reaction that I felt was the same as a reaction I’ve had in other situations where I have been singled out for attack or blunt criticism, regardless of how big or small the kernel of truth was in the criticism, and even in the absence of any chance of physical danger. It goes like this:

• Something I do or say provokes another person’s dislike
• The person lashes out verbally, or even just in a blog post comment, or via email, or social media
• I have an intense emotional and physical reaction that is disproportionate to both the credibility and the magnitude of the attack

Working with a therapist, I was able to trace back to the root why I am occasionally so frightened by a particular kind of attack or criticism. When I was in seventh grade, on four separate, traumatic occasions I was singled out and attacked by groups of other kids. I can’t give anyone a complete answer about why, though with adult hindsight I have my suspicions. Twice what words were spoken sounded like generic bullying, and twice there were explicit racial slurs. One of these attacks was verbal. Three were physical. One group of kids was mostly white. Two were mostly Black. Once it was two Latino boys. But these four incidents had one key thing in common: no other kid or adult responded to defend me, despite the absurdity of the odds. If there was a racial component uniting all four attacks, it was this: there was no one on my side. I felt like I did not belong to or with anyone.

And in fact, this is what happened on Fessenden Street. Multiple pedestrians and drivers saw the incident and no one intervened or even spoke to me afterwards. However, the explicit, out-loud racist nature of that man’s attack returned my memory to old trauma.

There has been a recent rise in anti-Asian violence in the US, including a white man who killed eight people, six of them Korean and Chinese women, in a mass shooting in Atlanta in March of this year. The trend is serious enough that Congress took bipartisan action to craft a legislative response, which was signed into law by President Biden last week.

But while anti-Asian violence may be on the rise, it is not new. That Asian Americans are perceived by many as incurably foreign — literally, alien — and will never belong is an old stereotype. It was also the law of our land from 1882 to 1943, under the Chinese Exclusion Act (the only US law to ever prevent all members of a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the US or naturalizing/becoming citizens).

When I was growing up in DC in the ‘80s, there were very few Asian Americans in the region (and even today, we wouldn’t even have a term like Asian American at all, if we weren’t clumped together for protective critical mass). I felt isolated and unwanted because I was.

It is a sign of progress that what I experienced was just a pale shadow of the pre-World War II history of Asian Americans in America: forced into Chinatown ghettos, excluded by zoning, or in the case of Japanese Americans during WWII, displaced and dispossessed.

It is also a sign of progress that when I told other people what happened on Fessenden Street, they responded with a righteous outpouring of support, affirmation, and concern. I write today in part to express my gratitude and to try to explain why that solidarity matters so much.

In our region, the displacement of Chinatown and the hostility that growing Korean, Vietnamese, and other immigrant communities have faced in the suburbs are established inequities, past examples of a continuing cycle.

I got a bunch of messages this morning asking if Snider’s, a local grocery store in Silver Spring, is closing. I haven’t heard anything about it. Then I saw this racist email going around— pic.twitter.com/hKAVLy2BcU

— dan reed(@justupthepike) July 18, 2020

As Asian American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month draws to a close, I honor and observe the time by recommitting myself to these healing principles:

• solidarity with everyone who is facing displacement, work to break the cycle, *and* to be part of an inclusive DC that welcomes new people
• to begin the personal work of releasing my fear of getting jumped by a gang or piled on social media (not because it will never happen, but because it’s not likely to end my life), and redirect that survival energy into service energy (a change many in the AAPI community are pushing for)
• advocacy for alternative forms of accountability instead of criminalizing racism
• to embrace my pride in my identity as an Asian American Washingtonian

I belong here. I love it here. And I am not alone.

There will be a rally to show solidarity against AAPI hate organized by Asian-American activists from our region on the National Mall between 7th and 7th St. this Monday (Memorial Day), May 31, from 1 - 6 pm.