Writer Biography

Cindy Chen was born in Springfield, Kansas but moved to Utah when she was only a couple of months old. She is the second oldest of four siblings: two brothers and two sisters, and the oldest daughter of two hardworking and loving parents. Cindy is a full-time student at USU and aspires to major in Nursing with a specialty in Anesthesiology. In her free time, she enjoys drawing fan art, dancing to K-pop, watching anime, and doing Douyin makeup for fun.

This essay was composed in December 2022 and uses MLA documentation.

ON TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 2021, twenty-one-year-old Robert Aaron Long of Woodstock, Georgia, embarked on a violent series of shootings at three Asian-owned spas in Atlanta, Georgia. Eight lives were lost in the aftermath, six of whom were women of Asian descent (Figure 1). The tragedy of the Atlanta Spa Shootings would mark the latest in an alarming spike in anti-Asian violence as a result of racist rhetoric surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and further fuel anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. The Atlanta Spa Shootings would come as an aftermath a year after then-President Donald Trump first tweeted on March 16, 2020, referring to COVID-19 as, “the China Virus” and the “Chinese Virus” (Fernando and Mumphrey). Since then, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2020 FBI Hate Crime Statistics has reported an alarming 70% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes (“Raising Awareness” 10). Stop AAPI Hate, an initiative led by AAPI Equity Alliance (AAPI Equity), Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University, have reported receiving an alarming 11,467 anti-Asian hate incident reports between March 19, 2020, to March 31, 2022, in their national report, “Two Years and Thousands of Voices” (“Two Years”).

As an Asian American, myself, I’ve experienced both first-hand and second-hand the impact that COVID-19 has had on anti-Asian racism, anti-Asian sentiment, and the stigmatization surrounding Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders in the United States. As such, it is important—imperative, even—that this topic continues to be included in conversations within our classrooms, our communities, our homes, and in our workplaces as we adjust to a post-COVID-19 world.

In order to understand the importance of this topic, it is important to first identify and understand what racism is, what it looks like, and the history behind anti-Asian racism in the United States. From the Page Act of 1875 (Wang) to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to Executive Order 9066 of 1942, the history of anti-Asian racism, spanning 147 years, is one that is often underwritten in our history (De Leon). However, as we’ve modernized as a society, so too, has racism. If we look up the definition of “racism” in the Oxford English Dictionary today, we get a general definition of what racism is “prejudice, antagonism, or discrimination by an individual, institution, or society, against a person or people on the basis of their nationality or (now usually) their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. Also: beliefs that members of a particular racial or ethnic group possess innate characteristics or qualities, or that some racial or ethnic groups are superior to others; an ideology based on such beliefs” (“Racism”). As it is, this is a pretty standard definition of racism, but it is important to note that racism is significantly more complex than simply the “discrimination” or “prejudice” of people of color. As such, to understand the complexity of racism, it is essential that we talk about the two types of racism and then the three levels of racism and what they look like in our modern society today.

The concept of modern-day racism can be separated into one of two types: active racism and passive racism. Typically, when we think about acts of racism, we think of “loud” acts such as physical harassment, verbal harassment, offensive gestures, slurs, and violence, which are examples of active racism (Wang). Active racism, as its name suggests, are acts of racism that are actively and explicitly intended to discriminate against racial groups and are often backed by the belief in the inferiority of people of color and the superiority of white people and white privilege.

The second type of racism is passive racism, with passive racism referring to acts of racism that can be conscious or unconscious and can include acts of omission or commission that all ultimately play a part in maintaining the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that support the structure of racism within our society. Unfortunately, passive racism is not always as easily recognizable as active racism. Passive racism is not always as easily recognizable as active racism. As a result, many acts of passive racism have become so “widespread and enduring that they cross political, racial, and economic lines, exposing Asians to attacks from a diverse range of assailants” (Heinz 248). This type of racism can manifest itself in forms of avoidance, ignorance, and microaggressions, such as alienation—assuming that all Asians are foreign (“Where are you really from?”; “Say something in your language!”), back-handed compliments (“Your English is so good!”; “You’re pretty for an Asian”), and cultural appropriation, such as the 2018 “my culture is not your prom dress” controversy surrounding 18-year-old, Keziah Daum from Utah, after she sparked a fierce debate on Twitter about cultural appropriation after posting pictures of her wearing a qipao, a traditional Chinese dress, to prom despite having no Chinese ancestry (@daumkeziah). Other examples of passive racism include “the model minority” stereotype that portrays Asian Americans as obedient and submissive, the stereotype that all East Asians are “good at math and science” but “bad at sports” and “the most pernicious stereotypes—of Asians being job stealers, perpetual foreigners, or vectors of disease, and of Asian women as especially passive or vulnerable” (Heinz 248). All of these behaviors add to the increase in anti-Asian racism, anti-Asian sentiments, and the stigmatization surrounding Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders that we saw all throughout COVID-19 and still see today.

Now, to best illustrate the three levels of racism and the relationship between the three levels, I will reference and refer to Dr. Camara Jones, MD, MPH, Ph.D., a former president of the American Public Health Association, and her work, “Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale.”

The first level of racism is institutionalized racism. In Dr. Jones’s framework in “Levels of Racism,” institutionalized racism is defined as, “differential access to goods, services, and opportunities of society by race” (1212). Institutionalized racism can manifest itself both physically in material conditions and in the form of access and/or conditions of power. Some examples of institutionalized racism involving material conditions include the differential in the ability to access or inability at all to access safe housing, quality schooling, and worthwhile employment. Regarding access to and/or conditions of power, institutionalized racism can also manifest itself in the lack of control and/or lack of representation and voice in institutions such as the government, media, and in voting rights (1212).

Picture this: a gardener has recently purchased herself a new house. Yay! As she’s moving in, she finds two big flower boxes on her front porch that she decides to use to plant flowers to add color to her new house. One of the boxes is filled with old potting soil, and the other is filled with new, fresh potting soil. The gardener buys two packets of seeds for the same type of flower except the seeds from one of the packets will bear pink flowers and the seeds from the other packet will bear red flowers. Deciding that she likes red flowers better, she sows the red seeds into the flower box with the new, fresh potting soil and the pink seeds into the flower box with the old potting soil. As a result, the red seeds produce healthy, strong flowers whereas the pink seeds produce weak, sickly flowers. As a result, the gardener thinks to herself, “I was right to choose the red flowers over the pink flowers! Look at how healthy and strong the red flowers are compared to the pink flowers!” This allegory illustrates some of the important aspects of institutionalized racism in which it alludes to the lack of awareness and/or ignorance of the differences between the two different soils and further alludes to the normalization of institutionalized racism in certain aspects of society and how that results in the gardener intrinsically assuming and believing that red flowers are better than the pink without acknowledging the difference in the soil that the red flowers were planted in and the soil that the pink flowers were planted in (Jones 1213-1214).

The second level of racism is personally mediated racism or interpersonal racism. Dr. Jones describes interpersonal racism as, “discrimination and prejudice, where prejudice means differential assumptions about the abilities, motives, and intentions of others according to their race, and where discrimination means differential actions toward others according to their race” (1212-1213). Interpersonal racism is typically what we think of when we hear the word “racism.” The complicated aspect of interpersonal racism comes from the fact that interpersonal racism can be intentional, like participating in physical or verbal harassment and/or racist gestures, or unintentional, like acting on stereotypes. The complicated aspect of interpersonal racism comes from the fact that interpersonal racism can be intentional, like participating in physical or verbal harassment and/or racist gestures, or unintentional, like acting on stereotypes such as assuming that all Asians are good at math, and can include acts of omission, like laughing at a racist joke or watching passively as a someone is physically or verbally harassed, or acts of commission, actively participating in hate crimes. Interpersonal racism can also manifest as suspicion, like someone actively avoiding sitting next to or purposely crossing the street to avoid crossing paths with a person of color, an individual consciously (or unconsciously) clutching their purse to them when they walk past a person of color, or someone double locking their car doors when they’re driving through a neighborhood. It can also manifest as devaluation, dehumanization, and scapegoating, something that we saw become extremely prevalent throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as Asians were scapegoated and dehumanized, portrayed as “bat eaters” and reviving century-old tropes and old-school rhetoric about Asian food being “dirty” and Asian people eating bats and dogs. Clarence Kwan, creator of the cooking zine, “Chinese Protest Recipes,” explains that “[t]he speed with which such false stereotypes resurfaced during the pandemic is a ‘reflection of how little progress we’ve made [as a society]’” (qtd. in Fernando and Mumphrey).

The third level of racism is internalized racism. Internalized racism is described in Dr. Jones’s “Levels of Racism” framework as, “acceptance by members of the stigmatized races of negative messages about their own abilities and intrinsic worth. It is characterized by their not believing in others who look like them, and not believing in themselves. It involves accepting limitations to one’s own full humanity, including one’s spectrum of dreams, one’s right to self-determination, and one’s range of allowable self-expression” (1213). In other words, internalized racism can manifest itself as self-racism or racism towards people of the same race. Internalized racism can also manifest itself as embracing “whiteness” – something that I actually struggled with a lot with growing up. When I was around 11 or 12, I remember I used to watch hundreds of makeup tutorials on YouTube, watching all these beautiful, white men and women create such beautiful makeup looks and wanting, wishing so badly to be as beautiful as they were. On my sixteenth birthday, as a birthday present, my Mom surprised me by taking me to Sephora. I remember being so excited that when I got home, I locked myself in my bathroom for three hours and I remember crying, crying from frustration as I haphazardly scrub the makeup off of my face, feeling like the ugliest girl in the world and wondering why? Why I didn’t look like any of the girls in the videos, why their makeup looked so unflattering on my East Asian features, and how I hated myself, hated my black hair, hated my slanted, monolid eyes. I didn’t touch makeup for four years after that.

A common misconception about modern-day racism is that racism is “not as bad as it used to be.” This misconception, however, is frustrating in its take as it is in its tone. Why? Because it comes from a place of privilege. The ability to say that racism is not as “bad” as it “used to be” comes from a place of privilege that many people do not have the privilege of. If anything, I’d go as far as to argue that anti-Asian racism is arguably just as bad as it was 147 years ago with the Page Act of 1875, an immigration law “[that] banned almost all Chinese women” from the United States (Wang). This first immigration law would only act as a precursor to the troubling history of dehumanization, objectification, and hypersexual stereotypes that portray Asian women as submissive objects of sexual fetishization that have become so normalized in our society (Vinopal). Following the Page Act of 1875 came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States before peaking during World War II with the forced incarceration of almost 120,000 Japanese Americans with Executive Order 9066 of 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor (Wang). Since 1875, the world has seen extraordinary advancements in medicine, technology, and human rights, but this is not to say that the world hasn’t also seen significant setbacks as well. The misconception that racism is not as bad as it used to be…implies that racism is something that gets “better” or “worse” with time, and that only masks the struggles that people of color have faced, are facing, and will face in the future and suggests that we should simply tolerate racism because it’s not as bad as it could be.. This misconception, that racism is not as bad as it used to be, is insulting because it implies that racism is something that gets “better” or “worse” with time, and that only masks the struggles that people of color have faced, are facing, and will face in the future and suggests that we should simply tolerate racism because it’s not as bad as it could be. Racism is a sickness, a mutation that “mutates” alongside our constantly, ever-changing world, a world that, I believe, is in desperate need of a cure for the social cancer that is racism.

So, what can we do about it? What can we, as average, everyday civilians do, to fight against the alarming increase in anti-Asian racism, rhetoric, sentiments, stigmatizations, and stereotypes in our society, spanning hundreds of years? Well, similar to racism, anti-racism can be separated into one of two groups: active anti-racism and passive anti-racism. However, I’d actually argue that passive anti-racism is arguably not that different from passive racism in that passivity breeds stagnation, and we cannot be passive, we cannot be stagnant in this time of crisis. It isn’t good enough to simply say that you’re “not racist,” because if we are to expect the world to change, we have to change with it, and change requires action, and we, the American people, are in desperate need of change. You cannot be passively anti-racist anymore; you must be actively anti-racist. We have to be actively anti-racist.

A common misconception about becoming an activist and/or participating in calls to action is that they either require us to go out of our way to do something or require us to be in a position of power; however, this is not necessarily always the case. Yes, while you can support the cause by supporting Asian organizations, such as Stop AAPI Hate, and/or actively participating in pro-Asian demonstrations and protests and staying up to date on the latest in legislation against hate crimes, you can also do things such as simply checking yourself and reflecting on your own biases and stereotypes that you may have that you may not have known that you had. You can also support the cause by simply educating yourself, your friends, and your family on racism, what it looks like, how it affects people, and how it affects the community around you, and then holding each other responsible for our actions and our words and holding each other to a higher standard. You can also support the cause by supporting local Asian-owned businesses, such as grocery stores and restaurants that may have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. And most importantly, you can support the cause by simply being aware. Being aware of the people around you, of the events happening around you, and learning to look for racism, to listen for it, to see it, and to speak up, speak out against it. We have to do better. We have to be better.

As we continue to adjust to a COVID-19-free world, it is imperative that we continue working towards correcting and dismantling anti-Asian racism, anti-Asian sentiments, and the stigmatizations surrounding Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders. We must address and reject racist stereotypes, we must educate ourselves, our friends, and our families on racism, and we must hold each other to a higher standard. And, hopefully, as we start transitioning back to our everyday lives, we can continue to have this conversation in our classrooms, our communities, in our homes, and in our workplaces, because we will not be ashamed to be who we are. We want to live, breathe, and celebrate our culture, our ethnicity, and our identities and be able to do so without having to adapt to white supremacy, to the white gaze, to whiteness (Wang) and we want to be proud. Proud of who we are, proud of where we came from, and proud to be Asian. So, hear our voices, and hear our names: Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, Hyun Jung Grant, Yong Ae Yue, GuiYang Ma, Christina Yuna Lee, Yao Pan Ma, Bawi Cung, Xiao Zhen Xie (Wang) and many, many more. Stand up against racism, speak up, and speak out. Thank you.

Works Cited

@daumkeziah (Keziah Daum). “PROM.” Twitter, 22 Apr. 2018. 12:02 P.M. https://twitter.com/daumkeziah/status/988115815068139520.

De Leon, Adrian. “The Long History of Racism Against Asian Americans in the U.S.” PBS NewsHour, 9 Apr. 2020, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-long-history-of-racism-against-asian-americans-in-the-u-s. Accessed 4 Dec. 2022.

Fernando, Christine, and Cheyanne Mumphrey. “Racism Targets Asian Food, Business During COVID-19 Pandemic.” PBS NewsHour, 20 Dec. 2020, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/racism-targets-asian-food-business-during-covid-19-pandemic. Accessed 4 Dec. 2022.

Heinz, Annelise. “The Roots of America’s Anti-Asian Violence.” Current History, vol. 120, no. 827, 2021, pp. 246-249. University of California Press, https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2021.120.827.246. Accessed 5 Dec. 2022.

Jones, Camara P. “Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 90, no. 8, 1 Aug. 2000, pp. 1212-1215. American Public Health Association, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.90.8.1212. Accessed 4 Dec. 2022.

“racism, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, Sept. 2022, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/157097. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022

“Raising Awareness.” U.S. Department of Justice: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Justice, 20 May. 2022. https://www.justice.gov/file/1507346/download. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.

“Two Years and Thousands of Voices: What Community-Generated Data Tells Us About Anti-AAPI Hate.” Stop AAPI Hate, 20 July 2022, https://stopaapihate.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Stop-AAPI-Hate-Year-2-Report.pdf. Accessed 4 December 2022.

Vinopal, Courtney. “What We Know about the Atlanta Spa Shootings That Killed 8 Including 6 Asian Women.” PBS NewsHour, 17 March 2021, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-we-know-about-the-atlanta-spa-shootings-that-killed-8-including-6-asian-women. Accessed 4 December 2022.

Wang, Frances K. “How Violence Against Asian Americans Has Grown and How to Stop It, According to Activists.” PBS NewsHour, 11 April 2022, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-year-after-atlanta-and-indianapolis-shootings-targeting-asian-americans-activists-say-we-cant-lose-momentum. Accessed 4 December 2022.