Content warning: This article discusses violence, including murder, sexual violence, and violence against sex workers.
Like many of you, we at WP4BL have spent the past two days sitting with and mourning the loss of Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Yan, Daoyou Feng, Julie Park, Park Hyeon Jeong, and the two others, whose names have not been released, as a result of the mass murder in Atlanta. We recommend reading and echo the Movement for Black Lives’ recent statement condemning anti-Asian violence.
As the motive of these murders appears to sit at the intersection of white supremacy, anti-Asian hatred, misogyny, classism, and whorephobia, we are sure many of you are feeling shaken. While it is not a coincidence that this violence happened within the context of a rise in anti-Asian and specifically anti-East Asian hatred in the U.S. as a response to race-baiting around COVID-19 in the press — a context exacerbated by the Biden Administration’s deportation of over 30 Vietnamese refugees on Monday — we believe in this moment it is also important to recognize the specifics of why these women were targeted.
While the perpetrator has stated that his act was done because of a sex addiction, his targeting of East Asian women at a massage parlor reflects the ways in which our culture has fetishized Asian women, specifically through the tropes of the massage parlor as “front” for brothel work and the subservient feminine Asian sex worker. The victims’ possible status as sex workers does not deprive them of their their right to a life without violence and harm. Regardless of their sex worker status, these women were targeted via the murderer’s perception that they were easy victims because they were vulnerable. Vulnerable because they were Asian in a white supremacist nation-state. Vulnerable because they were women in a patriarchal nation-state. Vulnerable because they were working class in a capitalist nation-state. Vulnerable because they were immigrants/the descendants of immigrants in a colonial-imperial nation-state. Vulnerable because they were presumed to be sex workers in a whorephobic nation-state. Most of all, they were targeted for all of these reasons together, because the “isms” are co-constructed and co-dependent, and because, in upholding whiteness above all, the U.S. puts vulnerable communities at an increased risk of being subject to violence.
These entrenched structures of violence alongside the profligacy of gun violence in the U.S. does not make these losses any easier to process, and in many ways it forebodes the fact that these structures will remain intact if we do nothing. The timing of these murders so close to the one-year anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s murder by the state speaks volumes to the ongoing violences experienced by all women of color in the U.S.
Despite the ways in which the state is set up to harm, not protect, women of color, we have seen that this mass murder has already been used to justify furthering policing in NYC, and we urge everyone in this moment to reflect on the non-carceral systems of support we can center to protect communities of color. Policing as a structural arm of the white supremacist state is never a solution to protect the AAPI community, or any community.
Despite this racist violence, we have a rich history of movement building to draw from and we know we can uplift one another when we come together to fight for change. Alongside the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the past eight years, we have also seen the continued increase in the organizing of other people of color-led movements. While white supremacy seeks to pit different racial groups against each other, we know that racial justice will only be achieved via coming together across race, class, ability, and many other identities; it is through coalition and solidarity work that we have the greatest chance at dismantling the systems that only benefit the most powerful. As white people, our proximity to whiteness and our silence will not save us; only working in community to abolish racist systems will save us.
We at WP4BL stand in solidarity with all communities of color in the face of white supremacist violence, with the Asian community, and right now in particular with working class Asian femme migrants.
ACTION ITEMS:
For those in a position to give support in this moment, we follow Dr. Lisa Lowe’s suggestion to support the following organizations:
For people looking to further support communities, we recommend the following events:
Thursday 3/18, 8 p.m. ET: Red Canary Song Vigil for 8 lives lost in Atlanta shooting
Friday 3/19, 4 p.m. ET: How to Stand Up Against Anti-Asian/American Harassment When It Happens to You by the Barnard Center for Research on Women’s Upcoming Anti-Violence and Bystander Intervention Trainings with Hollaback!
Monday 3/29, 3 p.m. ET: Bystander Intervention to Stop Anti-Asian/American Harassment and Xenophobia by the Barnard Center for Research on Women’ s Upcoming Anti-Violence and Bystander Intervention Trainings with Hollaback!
Tuesday 3/23, 6 p.m. ET: Anti-Asian Violence and Black-Asian Solidarity Today, a lecture by Tamara K. Nopper, presented by Asian American Writers Workshop
We also suggest people read Call On Me, Not the Cops: A Community Resource by 18 Million Rising and watch Don’t Be A Bystander: Six Tips for Responding to Racist Attacks, a video production by BCRW and Project NIA.
Finally we would also like to uplift the Red Canary Song Response to 8 Lives Lost in Atlanta.
This piece was written as a collaborative effort by members of White People 4 Black Lives. WP4BL is a white anti-racist collective and activist project of the Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere (AWARE-LA) and operates within a national network of white anti-racists called Showing Up for Racial Justice. WP4BL is rooted in acting in solidarity with Black Lives Matter: Los Angeles. Visit www.awarela.org and follow us @wp4bl.