This is a series of posts designed to help people approach diversity and inclusion. These are questions and scenarios we’ve actually heard or seen in the wild. This is part of our corporate programming for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. For more information, click here.
Question: As an Asian American woman, I have experienced both race and gender discrimination many times over the years, at work, in school and even on the streets. Yet, when I try to share my stories with my friends who are POC or Indigenous Americans I sometimes feel like they are rolling their eyes, as if oppression and discrimination are a contest. How can I best express my own pain and fear without seeming as if I am making light of the atrocities faced by others, especially people I know and care about?
I can completely relate to your question as an Asian Canadian woman myself. Ironically, in trying to answer your question, I faced the very struggle you implied. I wondered if my voice was worthy enough to answer this question.
The invisible and perpetual comparison contest is an everyday paradigm for women. Women are constantly compared to one another in terms of their beauty, level of success, and merits. Pageant shows are a two hour spectacle of this idea. Add an Asian identity to a gender identity of being a woman and you are left with an intersectionality of cultural, gender, and societal expectations that often leave Asian women feeling pressured to be silent porcelain dolls.
The truth is, the pandemic has been incredibly difficult on Asian communities, especially Asian women and women in general. Women have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, due to restrictions forcing them to cut back on work and take on more childcare duties. Asian women face this difficulty in addition to experiencing an unsettling uptick in violent hate crimes. The media shares horrific stories of Asian women being slaughtered while also having a long history of portraying Asian women as docile, submissive, and ready to grant sexual favours to domineering men. Asian women are fetishized while murdered, and this twisted combination sends the public a message that Asian women are easy targets who won’t make a peep.
While women of all ethnic backgrounds have been oppressed for generations, Asian women face unique cultural nuances that leave us feeling extra challenged to speak our minds. Family honor and filial piety place a heavy responsibility on Asian women to follow cultural customs. These cultural customs inadvertently share similar shadows with media portrayals of Asian women, leaving many confused and afraid of whether they should speak their minds.
Our Asian ancestors leave Asian children with a legacy of uprooting their lives and endless sacrifice to bring forth greater gifts of life, while adopting a “model minority” status to not disrupt the peace craved for their children. While we may feel insurmountable gratitude for our elders, it also doesn’t exactly empower the Asian community to challenge this pattern of peace by speaking up.
We are extra sensitive to the eyerolls when we dare to open our mouths. We likely hear the faint echo of our elders’ voices ordering us not to complain about our lives because someone always has it worse.
We are all affected by the racist notions that society has socially constructed. The fetishizing and sexualization of Asian women inadvertently place a primped cover on our lived pain because of the allure that society places on sex and beauty. The polished cover of an Asian woman’s exterior gives others a false impression that racial injustices don’t hurt us that much, even though they do.
The sensitivity to another person’s pain is bred from compassion, but feeding into the fear that we are making light of another person’s atrocities also tightens the locks on our voices.
Throughout our collective history, POC and Indigenous Americans have narratives rife with pain, suffering, and cruel injustices. There is no denying that POC are still much more affected by systemic discrimination in terms of accessing resources such as jobs, money, education, housing, or even everyday privileges like walking down the street. While we may overlap in certain areas of discrimination and this can remind us of our common humanity, we can’t ignore the fact our friends from these groups are hurting in unique ways that I, as an Asian woman, could never fully understand.
That being said, I personally don’t see the point in engaging in pain Olympics to see who deserves the gold medal in oppression and discrimination. Ranking our pain will only perpetuate the racial hierarchy that keeps racism alive. Understanding the ways that oppression divides us is one of the keys to creating a more unified force for change.
We can’t see each other as well when our eyes are blurred from the tears of our own pain. Instead of us battling over who deserves to keep the tissue box, how about we dab the tears away from each other’s faces and connect in our common humanity of pain, joy, and suffering? Perhaps then, we can not only really see each other, but join together for change.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Thank you for the article. An instructive view into your life and the need for compassion for ourselves and others. Cooperation not competition.