Stop Asian Hate or Asian Lives Matter?
Unpacking the implications of social media responses to anti-Asian violence and the Co-opting of Black Lives Matter
The night of Tuesday, March 16 of 2021, my roommate, who is Asian American, came to me red-eyed. Her face was covered in tears. Later that night, posts with the slogan “Asian Lives Matter” surged on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
These are posts condemning anti-Asian violence—earlier that night, eight people have been killed in the shootings at Atlanta spas, six of whom Asian women.
Outrage spread faster than grief. The deaths became a momentum for activism, and posts denouncing anti-Asian violence circulated on social media platforms. Yet as more people voiced their concerns and solidarity with the AAPI community, the social media posts started looking a lot like the Black Lives Matter movement.
On the same night as the shootings, 88rising, an American talent company that gained its popularity largely through Asian artists, posted a yellow square on Instagram, expressing its “disgust” towards the violence and hate against “the Asian community.” Meanwhile, hashtag AsianLivesMatter started trending on Twitter and Instagram, among other social media platforms. These responses to the anti-Asian violence immediately received backlash on social media, denouncing the use of the yellow square and the slogan “Asian Lives Matter.”
THE YELLOW SQUARE
The yellow square posted by 88rising, whether intentional or not, can be seen as racist and performative. Multiple users have commented on the posting of the yellow square on Twitter, Instagram, and in the comment section of the 88rising yellow square post. A square, usually without any content or any listed practical actions, has been controversial in the BLM movement and is similarly debated in the recent social media posts denouncing anti-Asian racism. Activism goes much beyond squares like these, as activists organize to combat race-related discrimination across different areas such as work, healthcare, arts and representation, etc. Many activists go through much effort to educate and raise consciousness through formal and informal education about racism on social media and outside. A square follows the trend and the dominant ideology. A square of some color doesn’t do any of the actual work besides aligning the company image with its audiences.
In the waves of criticism, 88rising took down the yellow square from its Instagram and apologized for any “misinterpreted” purposes the next day, March 17. To date, 88rising made 4 other Instagram posts expressing its intolerance towards anti-Asian racism.
THE SLOGAN “ASIAN LIVES MATTER,” THE CO-OPTING OF “BLACK LIVES MATTER”
More prevalent than the yellow square was the use of the “Asian Lives Matter” slogan. Following the spa shootings, people posted and used the hashtag “Asian Lives Matter” on Twitter, Instagram, etc. The “Asian Lives Matter” slogan similarly received backlash on social media. Twitter users shared on the same night that the slogan and hashtag “AsianLivesMatter” co-opted the BLM movement and urged supporters to use other hashtags such as #StopAsiaHate instead.
If you are unsure how exactly “Asian Lives Matter” takes away from “Black Lives Matter,” here are some ways to look at the issue:
Giving Credit Where It’s Due
#BlackLivesMatter is a movement created by three radical Black organizers: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. Taking the slogan away directly for protests against anti-Asian racism exploits the work of three Black women, who have historically been given little credit for their work.
Different Experiences of Racism
Despite AAPI and Black community’s shared identity as BIPOC communities, anti-Asian racism has been vastly different from anti-Black racism. Co-opting “Black Lives Matter” is a totalizing way of looking at Black and Asian communities’ experiences with racism. Substituting the “Black” in Black Lives Matter with “Asian” can lead to the misunderstanding that Asian Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter belong to the same movement or have the same root and experiences, leaving both movements with vague grievances that don’t tackle specific problems. In reality, the Black community has experienced racism in America on a large scale from authorities, social institutions, and individuals. Mass incarceration, police brutality, discrimination and population control in healthcare are only a few among many other forms of institutional and individual anti-Black racism that permeates different parts of American society. Black Lives Matter centers around Black lives, which have been historically disregarded in the U.S. as citizens and police officers are constantly acquitted from murders of Black people.
Since the Asian Lives Matter slogan was denounced by many social media users, social media activists have used the slogan Stop Asian Hate to mark it as a movement separate from the Black Lives Matter movement and underline the implications of the recent shootings and their experience of discrimination. Leading activist organization Stop Asian Hate was launched on March 19, 2020, when anti-Asian violence was on the rise. Studies have shown that the surge in anti-Asian attitudes and violence follow the former U.S. President Donald Trump’s framing of the COVID-19 pandemic as “the Chinese virus,” “Kung Flu,” among other names that attribute the disease to the Chinese and Asian community. The surge in Stop Asian Hate social media activism since the spa shootings is necessary and frankly informative. After all, the AAPI experience has been invisible in the media for years.
THE SPA SHOOTINGS—A RACIST HATE CRIME AGAINST ASIAN WOMEN
Although 150% more anti-Asian violence has been recorded over the past year, the recent shooting at the Atlanta spas received collective attention on social media and by national media outlets. As the Atlanta spa shootings incident is still under investigation, however, many large media outlets have not called the incident racist, but have quoted the suspect Robert Aaron Long and the police’s emphasis of Long’s “sex addiction.” The media refusal to call it a hate crime has received widespread denouncement on social media.
Let's take a step back. How is the spa shootings incident in Atlanta a hate crime? Even if the shootings were indeed solely motivated by the suspect’s sex addiction, the incident where six Asian women were killed out of eight victims doesn’t appear coincidental. Given the recent spike in anti-Asian hate crimes, it’s difficult to believe that Long’s violence was not racially motivated. Even if it wasn’t, Long’s actions still raises fears of such brutal violence in the AAPI communities around the U.S. and worldwide and inspires more extreme hate crimes against the AAPI community.
Long’s claims of his motivation “sex addiction” still carries hypersexualized racist preconceptions of Asian women. Asian fetish isn’t a new word for many of us. It has its root in the long-standing Eastern fetishization by Western societies. The “Oriental” cultures were long thought of as the “other” that is different from “us” (the West). Asian women were deemed mysterious and exotic sexual objects.
Illustration via Lithium Magazine
The culture of Asian Fetishization is integral to the history of U.S. treatment towards Asian people and Asian women. Asian women were hypersexualized as sex workers and dangerous temptations for men in the history American immigration law. The Page Act of 1875 prohibited Asian women from entering the U.S. Although similar to their white counterparts, some Asian women engaged in sex work, the Asian sex workers were largely scapegoated as the ones who disproportionately spread sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and were therefore barred from immigrating to the U.S. by Western xenophobia. The scapegoating of Asians and the non-Western world as the mysterious and primitive “Oriental Other” is clearly still relevant after almost 150 years, as Africans were scapegoated for Ebola and as Asians are scapegoated for the COVID-19 outbreak. In the years following 1882, when the better-known Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, American xenophobia and fetishization of the “Oriental” further consolidated anti-Asian sentiments.
Hate crime should not only be a hate crime when the perpetrator is actively thinking about race at the time of crime. Long’s action was guided by preconceived notions of Asian women as sex objects, the reason for his sex addiction, and thus the target of his vengeance. The impact of his violence has also sparked fear in many more people in the AAPI community and has possibly inspired more hate crimes against Asians. The Atlanta shootings are a hate crime, a hate crime confounded with Long’s understanding of race, gender, and sexuality. It’s a hate crime with a ripple effect on the AAPI community. It is a hate crime against Asians and against women.
THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH AS A TOOL FOR WHITE SUPREMACY
While recognizing the rise of anti-Asian violence, we must also keep in mind that the AAPI community has also been framed as “the model minority,” a narrative used by white supremacist America to perpetuate racism by creating a false sense of racial equality in the U.S. It is essential for the AAPI community to recognize their historical role in racism and not erase the struggles of other BIPOC communities. The model minority myth “focuses on prevailing stereotypes of Asians as hard-working, independent, intelligent and economically prosperous, according to Jiyoung Lee-An and Xiaobei Chen, instructor and professor at Carleton University. The model minority myth sounds like a compliment to any person, and yet it assumes a single identity for all of the AAPI community and obliterates many different AAPI identities and experiences of “racism, poverty, labor abuse, and psychological needs.” Many of the people who experienced anti-Asian violence have been working-class Asians and first-generation, older immigrants: spa workers, restaurant workers, etc. Asian women, who work in lower-paying service industries, experienced twice as many violent incidents from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021.
The model minority myth was also used in U.S. history to make claims against the existence of racism. The AAPI immigrants, largely immigrating to the U.S. more recently, have sought to belong in a white supremacist America. They rushed to assimilation. They gave up much of their cultural heritage, complied with dominant ideologies, and haven’t been as active in politics as other BIPOC groups. As a result, a racist America established the Asian population as the “model” for other BIPOC communities. The narrative of “if the Asians can be successful in the U.S., other BIPOC people should also be able to, and racism isn’t a big problem in the U.S.” permeates across different racial groups, including the AAPI community. Such a narrative fosters an inherent misunderstanding, then, between different BIPOC racial groups, further aiding the dominant narrative that other BIPOC groups are lazy and delinquent. The narrative pits the AAPI community and other BIPOC communities against each other to weaken the power of solidarity among BIPOC groups, giving more space for white supremacy.
The AAPI community occupies a peculiar position in the U.S. that has led the community to both experience racism and to uphold racism. The recent Stop Asian Hate social media reaction to anti-AAPI violence is much needed to recognize the rising anti-Asian sentiment and violence. The posting of a yellow square and the use of Asian Lives Matter, on the other hand, underscores the long due in-depth education about the AAPI community as a racialized group in the U.S. The social media backlash against the yellow square and the Asian Lives Matter slogan has raised some consciousness around AAPI racism and history. Yet there is much more to be done at schools and in the media to educate more people about the AAPI community’s place in American racism.
If you’d like to continue informing yourself on the Asian American experience, please check out Politically Invisible Asians.