Poster by artist Monyee Chau, Instagram here
EDIT: New statement by Monyee on the phrase here
In the midst of the recent riots, I’ve found myself, like many others, weighed by a particular numbness that might characterize our generation. This feeling of dread and powerlessness is further exacerbated by a sense of dislocation as an Asian-American, especially following the recent rise of Asian racism. While on the one hand all forms of racism share the same root, I needed to perceive more clearly the particular branch pointed at Asian-Americans. Why is it, exactly, that we’re labeled the “model minority” rather than being thrown under a knee like our fellow Black minorities? How might we be complicit in racism against other minority groups, and within our own? Where do I fit in?
At a rally for Huey Newton, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party
Oakland, California -1969
For a long time I’ve struggled with the reflex to invoke the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment, or any other historical testament to racism towards Asian-Americans when attempting to show solidarity. There are two reasons for this, the primary being an unease with the act of comparison and the secondary being that, as a Korean-American, I can’t properly claim that pain as my own. “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power,” however, made me pause. The line recently resurfaced on my feeds, and I became curious about a “Yellowness” that, despite the embedded racism, is not weaponized as readily against me.
A police officer’s instinct to exercise violence at the mere sight of a Black man stems from a fear rooted in the persistent lie that Black people are not human. He sees a savage, a brute that is not only impossible to reason with, but possesses a physical strength greater than his own. In taking him out, the police officer is preserving both his own life and the sanctity of society:
The colonist is not content with stating that the colonized world has lost its values or worse never possessed any. The “native” is declared impervious to ethics, representing not only the absence of values but also the negation of values. He is, dare we say it, the enemy of values. In other words, absolute evil. A corrosive element, destroying everything within his reach, a corrupting element, distorting everything which involves aesthetics or morals, an agent of malevolent powers, an unconscious and incurable instrument of blind forces.
-Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
The fact that an Asian man is not immediately dismantled means that this fear is, at least for the moment, nonexistent. Two conditions are met: we are considered a species physically weaker than the White man, and we do not constitute a significant threat of corroding American values. The former is going to be the ignorance it is, but the latter belief has not always been so stable. Recently enough, the pandemic has shaken it, releasing images of a people who consume exotic animals and pollute the public health. With the rise of China in the near future, I can only anticipate a resurgence of “Yellow Peril” and its concomitant violence.
The origin of “Yellow Peril” manifested in response to cultural and militaristic threats. The phrase is most commonly known as being used to discriminate against Chinese workers who were supposedly taking American jobs:
The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.
In 1895, German Emperor Wilhelm II had a dream that Buddha had come to storm Europe on the back of a dragon. Sharing this dream with European and US leaders helped justify geopolitical maneuvers into Asia, and in the coming years a demand for Japan to give up its Chinese colonies led to the Russo-Japanese War.
If the alarming nature of our tenuous position is not clear enough, there is abundant evidence that we are not exempt from a dehumanization that slides all too easily into violence. Though the death of Vincent Chin in 1982 is a famous example, Chinese immigrants were lynched in the Chinese Massacre of 1871 and similar racial tensions eventually led to the Seattle riot of 1886.
Know, then, that the seeming indifference towards Asian-Americans is owed not to a lack of racism, but rather to a lack of conditions that threaten White dominance. Andrew Yang’s recent call for Asian-Americans to get involved in our communities in order to be recognized as real “Americans” misses this fact entirely. Obediently upholding the status quo in order to earn the White man’s stamp of “American” approval is to receive nothing but a lie, that we will ever be seen as fully equal and human. Being handed positions as associate lawyers, consultants, bankers, software engineers — these are all but appeasements made to retain a system of power, the consequence of blunders made in immigration policies and Cold-War accumulation of foreign talent, among other factors. If America as it was truly intended perfectly executed its mission, these respectable, influential positions would never have been given to a race seen as anathema to American values. In order to remedy this accident, a “bamboo ceiling” has been quietly patched to prevent true access to power.
When we preach that America is a “land of immigrants,” history makes clear that “immigrants” was an exclusive term. Quotas were set in place to retain a White majority in the Immigration Act of 1924, and the eventual change was due to an accident involving one Congressman’s negligence. The whole story can be read here, but here is an excerpt:
In July, standing in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Johnson signed the Immigration Act of 1965. “The bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” he said. Most agreed with the assessment in the Congressional Quarterly, which opined that the law “foreclosed any long-term upward trend in the numbers of immigrants.”
It was clearly Congress’s intent both to maintain immigration levels and to continue to draw immigrants from Europe. How wrong they were! The legislation led to a dramatic spike in the number of new immigrants coming to the United States, as well as a revolution in immigration patterns. Before 1965, most newcomers hailed from Western Europe; afterward, most migrants came from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Politicians can debate whether the results of the law have been beneficial to America, but there is no doubt that American immigration policy today is based on a massive blunder.
In this context, the threat of the racial minority quickly growing to overwhelm White dominance naturally gives rise to the “model minority” myth. Used as a wedge between Asian-Americans and “less successful” minority groups, this tool is another piece of nonsensical propaganda, eliding the spectrum of Asian-American socioeconomic statuses and erasing disparate histories that determine various racial groups’ starting points. This illusion works in tandem with that of the “American Dream,” which shifts the blame from a rigged system onto the handicapped rodents of the rat race. If the dream is strictly defined by the ability to go from rags to riches, it has some validity. But if it is to encompass hallowed lines such as “All men are created equal” so frequently invoked to justify American exceptionalism, then it has yet to have any standing.
Before returning to Black solidarity, I want to briefly return to geopolitics and Asian-Americans’ relationship to a history of tribalism and contemporary developments that are often beyond our control. Inherent in “Yellow Peril” and the term “Asian-American” is an idea of pan-Asian unity that belies the reality of historical rivalries and animosities that characterize relationships between Asian countries. In fact, “Yellow” itself can be exclusive as it traditionally refers to people of East Asian descent, and the absence of “Brown Peril” or a term to the effect speaks to the absence of such a threat in White eyes. Recognizing this dissonance is not to undermine the use of such terms or camaraderie, but to underscore the work that lies ahead in understanding such intricate histories and staving off the bile of racism within our families and, hopefully by extension, motherlands.
Because after all, the conquerer will never cease to divide in order to plunder, and in his eyes we are all of a sub-human essence, if colored differently — to quote Fanon again:
This explosive population growth, those hysterical masses, those blank faces, those shapeless, obese bodies, this headless, tailless cohort, these children who seem not to belong to anyone, this indolence sprawling under the sun, this vegetating existence, all this is part of the colonial vocabulary. General de Gaulle speaks of “yellow multitudes,” and Monsieur Mauriac of the black, brown, and yellow hordes that will soon invade our shores. The colonized know all that and roar with laughter every time they hear themselves called an animal by the other. For they know they are not animals. And at the very moment when they discover their humanity, they begin to sharpen their weapons to secure its victory.
In saying “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power,” I am not blindly comparing historical traumas or claiming to understand the cruel brunt of racism Black people have suffered for far too long. Though the particular nature of the hateful fantasies directed at us will always be different — and it is essential to understand these differences — I am standing in solidarity against their single source in a class that aims only to preserve power.
Furthermore, the onus is on me to better understand where I stand and what work I can do. These past few days I have been appalled to discover the story of a Korean woman named Soon Ja Du who, in 1991, shot and killed a 15 year old Black girl named Latasha Harlins. This came shortly after the videos released of Rodney King, whose beating by the police led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The Black-Korean alliance disbanded shortly after, and I wonder if it may be at all possible to mend it today (would love to hear from you if you live in LA and might be interested in looking into it). Soon Ja Du’s case is probably only one of many, and racism is never as simple as it seems. In calling for White allies to do the “work” remember simply being a minority does not exempt you from this work as well — if anything, it may be even more necessary.
Notes of a Korean-American 