The hypocrisy of Rachel Chang

In a recent article in hellogiggles.com, Rachel Chang complains about racism against Asians while, at the same time, displaying her own bias against whites.

On March 2nd, I went to Costco. News that coronavirus (COVID-19) could hit the U.S. the same way it had devastated China in January was just starting to spread, so I figured I might as well take my annual shopping trip to the warehouse in Clifton, New Jersey, to stock up. With toilet paper and paper towels in my cart, I walked toward the front of the store, passing by a product representative hawking samples. “Stay away from my face!” she said sternly. I looked around. Was she talking to me? There was another Asian woman in front of me. When I turned back toward her, I couldn’t even make eye contact with the product representative—she was holding a box in front of her face, shielding herself from us.

Whether this was directed at me or the woman ahead of me—or both of us—I didn’t know, but I shrugged it off. After all, comments reflecting anti-Asian sentiment like this have long been a part of my life: I was born in Chicago and raised in California by Taiwanese immigrants.

Sometimes these incidents are just a passing comment—or the pressing question, “No, where are you really from?” Other times they’re harsher, like when a non-Asian stranger incessantly shouted at me, “Ni hao ma?” trying to get a chuckle out of me, or when a neighbor asked how I could see through my “small eye slits.” “But really, how do you see?” he insisted. There was even the time I was told the only reason I landed a magazine editor job was because I was Asian and someone got a diversity hiring bonus.

Whatever form discrimination against Asian Americans takes, it’s been on the rise in recent weeks. We are seeing more violent and extreme instances of discrimination stemming from unfounded fears that those who are any kind of Asian are more likely to carry coronavirus since it originated in Wuhan, China.For example, there was the spraying of Febreze on an Asian man on the New York City subway ,the stabbing of a two-year-old Asian American girl and her family at a Texas Sam’s Club, and the punching of a 55-year-old New Jersey Asian woman by a young girl during quarantine…

As of April 15th, there were 1,497 reports of discrimination against Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) across 45 states and Washington, D.C., on the Stop AAPI Hate site, a reporting center launched on March 19th by the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and the San Francisco Asian American Studies department. The incidents include being denied services and being verbally abused, shunned, coughed and spat upon, and physically hurt, among others. Specifics include a 71-year-old Asian man who was chased out of a California convenience store…

…an Asian family in Oahu who was coughed on by a car full of strangers, and an Asian victim who was told by a Bakersfield child that they caused the child’s father’s death. Even from the safety of their homes, 40 Asians experienced hacking on their Zoom calls, with a perpetrator saying, “All y’all have coronavirus, every single one of you.”

Of all the specific incidents listed above, not a single one is known to have been perpetrated by a white person. All of the ones we know about were perpetrated by blacks or Hispanics, and yet Chang makes no mention of their race. The only time she mentions the race of a perpetrator is in the case of…

a white woman who stomped on bread and accused a Taiwanese woman of touching it

Chang goes on to explicitly blame whites, when she writes:

“The racist myth that Asians host and disseminate disease and illness conveniently conceals the nation’s practice of white supremacy and its exclusion of some immigrants,” Storti adds.

Had Chang lived in 1930s Germany, no doubt, she would have blamed “The Jews.” Mindlessly latching on to the scapegoat du jour, Chang comes across as lazy and reckless. Her article is just as much a hit-piece against whites as a defense of Asians. No, Mrs. Chang, “white supremacy” is not to blame for blacks and Hispanics attacking Asians. It’s probably not even to blame for WHITES attacking Asians; white people can be jerks without being white-supremacists.

But it’s not enough to ignore the crimes of blacks and Hispanics against Asians. Chang feels obliged to look to blacks for solutions:

“… She suggests “thinking creatively” about more effective ways to report incidents and learning from Black community organizers “who have built alternative models of safety, support, and healing.”…

Already, a new campaign launched on April 27th called All Americans, which joins together marginalized communities in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic by uniting Asians facing racist attacks and Black and Latinx communities disproportionately affected by the disease, in terms of economic struggles and lives lost.

A primary source for this article is the The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, which lists “Notable Incidents from Last Week.” The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, while ignoring the problem of black-on-Asian crime, at least points out that a couple of the perpetrators were black. It does the same, of course, for white perpetrators – leaving an overall impression that blacks and whites are about equally likely to attack Asians. I’m pretty sure this is not the case. The site goes on to give us a several sets of statistics. None of them address the ethnicities of the perpetrators.

Is anti-Asian racism that bad? I don’t think so. After all, there is an “Asian American Studies department,” an “Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council”, and a “Chinese for Affirmative Action” organization, as mentioned earlier. There are no such organizations, that have any official recognition, for white Americans.

On a totally different topic, I’ll be embedding one of my favorite short movies, from YouTube or other sites, at the end of each post. Hopefully, these flicks will make your Corona Time pass more quickly. As you’ll see, my tastes are quite eclectic. I hope you enjoy them too. I’ll start with one that’s a bit older, and was purged from YouTube, but it’s still on Vimeo. It’s called The Candidate:

[vimeo 42934682 w=640 h=360] THE CANDIDATE from David Karlak on Vimeo.