Read on Twitter
Using this... uninteresting self-pity tweet to make a point
Anti-Asian racism in the US is rooted in xenophobia - bigots perceiving Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners who don't belong here, regardless of how long their families have been in the States https://twitter.com/LauraHuangLA/status/1359932430598119424
Anti-Asian racism in the US is rooted in xenophobia - bigots perceiving Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners who don't belong here, regardless of how long their families have been in the States https://twitter.com/LauraHuangLA/status/1359932430598119424
Anti-Blackness in the US is rooted in viewing Black people, whether African American or other Black ethnicities, as not just "not citizens" but as "anti-citizens" (a new term for me, from this essay I've bookmarked to read later) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00933104.2020.1869632?journalCode=utrs20
I remember halting conversations about race, ethnicity, and immigration with Asian American kids I grew up with, and not knowing how to articulate "even if the place to which you belong is misidentified (because bigots) the underlying assumption is that you belong *somewhere*"
African Americans don't even really get that response
"Go back to Africa" betrays that the underlying assumption is a lack of homeland - there's no country to name because the violence of the slave trade, the necessary dehumanization for commerce, erased origin specificity
"Go back to Africa" betrays that the underlying assumption is a lack of homeland - there's no country to name because the violence of the slave trade, the necessary dehumanization for commerce, erased origin specificity
I'm not African American myself, but as a 1st-gen Black American whose family is from another Western Hemisphere country (so, also "New World Black"), I recognize that stolen specificity of origin as a hemispheric issue that is *especially* fraught in the US
No matter how furious and sad and tired this country makes me, I can go "home" (again, fraught, bc 1st-gen) to a majority-Black country where, even though anti-Blackness is global, I am in a place of belonging
My right to citizenship, to personhood, isn't a question
My right to citizenship, to personhood, isn't a question
Maybe there are Black Americans who *do* see the US as a place of belonging where citizenship & personhood aren't questioned, but I don't know them & I'd be unnerved if I did
Especially as someone who sees that ICE moves as pointedly anti-Black as local precincts
Especially as someone who sees that ICE moves as pointedly anti-Black as local precincts
The Black un-citizens in ICE detention: "shithole countries", Muslim ban (Nigeria. Sudan. Somalia.), Pauline Binam
The Black un-citizens (but citizens on paper): subjected to the whims of increasingly armed law enforcement whose origins derive from slave patrols & the Klan
The Black un-citizens (but citizens on paper): subjected to the whims of increasingly armed law enforcement whose origins derive from slave patrols & the Klan
The Black un-citizens caught in the unfortunate liminal space: exemplified by Peter Sean Brown https://theappeal.org/ice-wanted-to-deport-him-to-jamaica-but-he-was-born-in-the-u-s/
The original sins of this country have been upheld by handshake deals throughout history - there are two:
- Blackness is deviance with no real home, & therefore disposable
- the indigenous are relics of the past & don't merit regard as contemporaries
- Blackness is deviance with no real home, & therefore disposable
- the indigenous are relics of the past & don't merit regard as contemporaries
To understand Black, indigenous, or Black & indigenous people as fully human, as citizens, as modern would mean much of US history--from Operation Wetback to the race riots of Reconstruction and so much more--is excruciating
Bigotry keeps that history both relevant & obscure
Bigotry keeps that history both relevant & obscure
So when Black immigrants to the US parrot the anti-African-American sentiments of mainstream US culture, or when Asian Americans treat Black Americans as if hypervisibility is some sort of gift, or something to envy for one's own cause?
It's reinscribing violent erasure
It's reinscribing violent erasure
(Calling out my own community as part of a Black immigrant diaspora because the denial *never, ever spared us* - it's self-injury dressed up as nationalism and it fails, because nobody gives a shit about the curry goat I eat at Thanksgiving when considering whether to use a slur)
(Also because Black immigrants, for the most part, are not read so easily as "not [African-]American" to the white gaze... and even when recognized, violence against Black countries & their ppl is as much a part of US foreign policy as violent interference on the Asian continent)
I'm not downplaying how fucked up anti-Asian-American violence is
What I am saying, is that sensitivity to the distinct roots of the violence against POC in the States is crucial
Especially for those who claim to be well-versed on how race functions in the US
What I am saying, is that sensitivity to the distinct roots of the violence against POC in the States is crucial
Especially for those who claim to be well-versed on how race functions in the US
Anyway, I think that woman is disingenuous, defensive, or both, and I'm sticking to my original response https://twitter.com/LiveNudeJulia/status/1359915253157527559?s=19
