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More on Asian Privilege

My post yesterday about Asian privilege got me thinking about the complexities of being Asian American. Blog length articles just don’t cut it when it comes to trying to tackle that subject matter. There are always ideas that just don’t fit within my self-imposed 850 (more or less) word limit.

For instance, while I believe Asian privilege is a real thing, it certainly didn’t protect the seven people murdered when a racist opened fire on members of a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin last August. In fact, post-9/11 Islamophobia has imposed an experience of racism on South Asians in the U.S. that is quite distinct from that experienced by other Asian Americans. Increasingly, South Asian Americans are profiled less as model minorities than as terrorist threats.

And for Laotian Americans, privilege must feel like like a foreign concept. Almost all of them were driven out of their homeland and into the this country since 1973 by a now-exposed secret war waged by the U.S. The American war strategy included running 580,000 bombing raids. This is the equivalent of one planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years over a country about the size of Utah. The detonations were bad enough, but so much unexploded ordinance is left behind that one third of Laos is considered contaminated.

The experience of Laotian Americans is mirrored in many ways by that of immigrants who came to the U.S. from places like Burma, Vietnam, and Cambodia to flee war and political repression. They know horrors few American-born Asians can even begin to imagine.

Privilege is also a tough word to describe the situation of many Filipino immigrants in the U.S. Many were encouraged to migrate by the Philippine government because it is managing so much foreign debt that debt service is their single largest expense. The terms of the loans made from organizations like the International Monetary Fund have imposed austerity measures, including wage freezes, cuts to healthcare and education, and privatization of water and electrical service. Filipinos often leave to survive and to provide for their families abroad because the Philippine economy just can’t afford them.

And to the family of Vincent Chin and others who have been victimized by hate crimes perpetrated by those answering the call of Asia-bashing with violence, Asian privilege must seem small recompense. They know that even when the stereotypes are supposedly positive, they are nonetheless dehumanizing. And when you cast a person as something other than human, inhumane, even deadly, treatment is too often the response.

Yet, for some of us, the privileges, though conditional, are real. I recall growing up in Hawaii, profiled as Japanese American in a school system in which we were expected to succeed, and in which Japanese Americans were over-represented among authority figures. I surrounded myself with friends who didn’t share in the protection afforded me by my light skin and Japanese surname. We felt one another, but they suffered the kind of racism reserved for those profiled as problem minorities – Native Hawaiians, African Americans, and darker skinned immigrants from Polynesia and the Philippines.

I was every bit the person then that I am now – a guy who has organized literally dozens of protest actions and started a half dozen or so organizations because I am almost, maybe just am, arrogantly convinced of the rightness of my belief that no injustice should be accommodated without a fight. In my school days, if there was trouble being stirred up, I had my hand on the handle.

Yet when the time came to be held accountable, I almost always escaped the worst punishments. In spite of doing poorly in school, I was passed from grade to grade, even tracked into college prep classes. I was considered a troubled child with potential where my often much more talented but darker skinned friends were perceived to just be trouble.

Today, without the benefit of a college degree, I have twice been a foundation executive and now work for a think tank. Now, I’m not going to say I didn’t work as hard and try as mightily as the next person, but in order to try I had to first get through the door. Those doors remained open to me when they would likely have closed to others because I lived under the cover (and intense pressure and scrutiny, mind you) of model minority stereotyping.

Reflecting on all of this I realized, part what makes being Asian American so complicated is that Asian privilege is really white privilege, conferred conditionally on some of us in order to maintain white power. If that’s true, we’re being used. And if being used, even lightly, is what this is about, the question is, are we really in control of how and over what damage that use might do to us and to others?

 

 

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By Scot Nakagawa

Scot Nakagawa is a political strategist and writer who has spent more than four decades exploring questions of structural racism, white supremacy, and social justice. Scot’s primary work has been in the fight against authoritarianism, white nationalism, and Christian nationalism. Currently, Scot is co-lead of the 22nd Century Initiative, a project to build the field of resistance to authoritarianism in the U.S.

Scot is a past Alston/Bannerman Fellow, an Open Society Foundations Fellow, and a recipient of the Association of Asian American Studies Community Leader Award. His writings have been included in Race, Gender, and Class in the United States: An Integrated Study, 9th Edition,  and Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence.

Scot's political essays, briefings, and other educational media can be found at his newsletter, We Fight the Right at scotnakagawa@substack.com. He is a sought after public speaker and educator who provides consultation on campaign and communications strategy, and fundraising.

10 replies on “More on Asian Privilege”

Thanks for taking the time to write about these fundamentally important issues and for doing so in such an honest way.

I am so thankful to read this post! I identify as Pacific Islander (I am Native Hawaiian) and live on the continent. I’ve worked with, and left, many “API” or Asian American organizations that never seemed able or willing to address this issue – even though it affects everyone. What you’ve written here is a great starting point for what seemed like an impossible conversation to have. Thank you.

Hey Pio, I’m glad to have you along as a reader and appreciate your comment.

While Asians are often grouped into one demographic in education studies, it’s been found that though Chinese, Japanese & Korean American students may be high performing, Southeast Asians such as Vietnamese, Thai and Laotian are in high risk groups. Yet many programs do not focus on them because Asians students as a whole are thought of as high achieving.

Thank you Scott for these amazing blogs. My question is about Asian privilege.

“Reflecting on all of this I realized, part what makes being Asian American so complicated is that Asian privilege is really white privilege, conferred conditionally on some of us in order to maintain white power. If that’s true, we’re being used. And if being used, even lightly, is what this is about, the question is, are we really in control of how and over what damage that use might do to us and to others?”
Can you explain Asian privilege further? Also what about Asian women? Queer Asian Americans? As a Queer Japanese American woman, I’m struggling with trying to understand Asian privilege.

Sorry to have taken so long to respond. I think what you described, your status as a queer, Japanese American woman, is a good place to start.

The world isn’t neatly divided up into those who have privilege and those who don’t. The vast majority of us enjoy certain privilege, male cis-gender for instance, and while exclusion because of other aspects of our experience, like queer sexual orientation, lack of educational and class privilege, non-Native immigration status, etc.

And privileges are extended to us based on those characteristics that are privileged in society. I’m sure that as a queer woman you’ve observed this. Asian Americans in your school years may have been bullied and found comfort in each others’ company, but then bullied and excluded you because of your sexual orientation. Or you may have witnessed sexism in mixed gender groups of Asian Americans and other people of color fighting for civil rights based on race.

Too many of us choose to cling to our privileges as opposed to build bonds of solidarity with others based on the ways we are excluded. Yet, those of us who are sometimes, even always, excluded for one reason or another are the majority of people in the world. If there’s power in numbers, we’re missing out on it.

Asian Americans among people of color, particularly East Asian Americans, are profiled as model minorities. This is a privilege that, like all privilege, is conferred by the powerful to serve their own interests. When we accept that privilege, even passively, rather than challenge it, we are complicit in their achievement of their interests. But, if we decide to shed ourselves of the shackles of privilege and organize ourselves to take real power through acts of solidarity, the very act of doing so opens alters, however slightly, the unjust power dynamics that put some people in the position to privilege us to their own advantage in the first place.

Scot,
I was really challenged by what you wrote in these two blogs on Asian American privilege and have been digging deeper into understanding this concept. I have also been checking myself within the Asian American community, something I have not done before. I appreciate your blog and for taking the time to respond. Really great stuff!!!

“This is a privilege that, like all privilege, is conferred by the powerful to serve their own interests. When we accept that privilege, even passively, rather than challenge it, we are complicit in their achievement of their interests. But, if we decide to shed ourselves of the shackles of privilege and organize ourselves to take real power through acts of solidarity, the very act of doing so opens alters, however slightly, the unjust power dynamics that put some people in the position to privilege us to their own advantage in the first place.”

All kinds of YES!

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