I remember first stumbling upon the viral video of the Asian
American Chicago teen being violently beaten bloody and senseless by a group of
six other teens behind an elementary school. (I will not post the video here
because the sheer atrocities against humanity and all goodness in the clip are
so severe it is tear and vomit inducing.)
This was early in January 2012, and I remember it being a
specifically interesting case. The six teens, clothed in hooded sweatshirts and
ski masks, are filmed ganging up and viciously beating the Asian American
victim as he bleeds and pleads for mercy. It is terribly difficult to watch,
and the mere fact that an accomplice had filmed the ordeal and placed it on the
Internet speaks volumes to the current era of social media and some teenager’s
desire for infamy within that realm- but that’s another blog for another time.
The six teens repeatedly berate the Asian American teen with
racial slurs, calling him the N-word and ridiculing him with, “Am I speaking
Chinese to you?”
As the video quickly went viral in early 2012, the hooded
sweatshirts and masks prevented the public from identifying the assailants. But
due to the overwhelming attacks on the teen’s race and continuous use of the
N-word, many thought this was a hate crime and that it was a racially-motivated
attack.
After some investigation, the names of the six teens were
released and to my quickly dissipated surprise, at least four of the six
attackers are Asian American, based on their last names. And then the biggest surprise of all; the Chicago police had
ruled out possibility that the attack was racially motivated, even
though the violence was inundated with the
N-word and mentions of the victims’ race.
Who says people of a certain race cannot execute a
racially-motivated hate crime against their own race? It happens all the time.
What seems to have happened in the situation of the Chicago
teen is a case of the Asian immigrant versus the "assimilated" Asian American-
Asian on Asian hate. Now, I am positive that this is not how the teen attackers
and victim perceived their circumstances of violence at the time, but hear me
out.
Growing up, “Fob” was not a positive term. It still isn’t.
Said jokingly and often as a way to tease others, Fob stands for “Fresh Off the
Boat”, and is said in reference to recent Asian immigrants and the list of
stereotypes that it draws. This, coupled with the devastating lack of
representation within mainstream media of Asians and Asian Americans- with the only kind of mainstream representation being that of
age-old racist stereotypes and tropes (nerdy, quiet Asians, cheap Asians,
exotic dragon ladies, bumbling sexless and goofy men).
It is no wonder growing up Asian in America gets you an
extremely warped view of your own race. Everyone is telling you how much your
race sucks- and soon enough, Asian Americans internalize that mentality like
it’s the lifeblood of their existence. With this kind of frame of mind,
everything Asian (especially Fobs, ew)
is disassociated from their own Asian American personhood and denied in the
fullest. They take on the same mindset that was being fed to them since birth
about the "nature" of Asians and Asian Americans- when in reality, it is ALL falsehoods birthed from racism, Orientalism and hegemony.
Unfortunately, this also manifests in cruel and heart
breaking reactions such as young adults being embarrassed of their immigrant
parents for not speaking fluent English. It manifests as a denial of their
Asian culture for it being perceived by their non-Asian peers as “weird” and
“foreign”. It manifests in Asian Americans refusing to date their own race fueled by the desire to
be a “true American”. It manifests in Asian American teens brutally beating a
fellow Asian teen senseless because the Asian victim is a tangible reminder of
their own Asianness they so despise. So much so, that they feel the need to
destroy that physical reminder and proclaim dominance over what their
internalized mainstream racism calls different and unwanted.
No comments:
Post a Comment