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One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest: Combatting Anti-Asian Prejudice

  • Mikhail Philip Kattuparambil
  • Jan 12, 2022
  • 14 min read

ANTI-ASIAN PREJUDICE IN INDIA AND WORLDWIDE


There have always been targeted words that support ethnic stigmas and a deeply entrenched degree of racism that people of privilege could never truly realize the gravity of, unless they peeled back the various layers of the bigoted onion. Something as macabre as stretching the side of one’s eyes to elongate it and make it look more East Asian-like seems firmly embedded in various cultures as a status quo for mockery to refer to them, without any qualms of the crushing hurt it would bring to denigrate them in this manner. This has also been the case for Northeast Indians who have been made fun of for their "Chinese-like" appearance. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated just how acceptable anti-Asian prejudice is, with something as simple as pointing at East Asians or people who look like East Asians and screaming "Corona". It’s not just India, though.

Representation has also not been too great in the past and even currently in Western countries. It’s not just that Asians are, more or less, underrepresented but their roles are also taken by non-Asians in Hollywood, making up only about 1% of Hollywood’s leading roles. White actors have taken Asian roles to make Asian characters more palatable for audiences in a phenomenon known as ‘whitewashing’.


For example:

  • The (originally) Japanese protagonist in Ghost In The Shell was played by Scarlett Johannson.

  • The North Indian protagonist Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek: Into Darkness was played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

  • The Ancient One, a character of Tibetan descent, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was played by Tilda Swinton.

  • Mickey Rooney played the buck-toothed Japanese Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

  • In Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise plays William Cage, a version of the novel's Japanese protagonist Keiji Kiriya.

As bleak as it was when it comes to Asians in various sectors around the world, including the US, there has now been some degree of progress with more representation of Asian Americans in the status quo.

To name a few:

  • Kamala Harris became the first US VP of Indian descent in 2020.

  • Jagmeet Singh became the first non-white individual to lead Canada's left-leaning New Democrats Party in 2021.

  • Sadiq Khan became the Mayor of London in 2016.

  • Satyanarayana Nadella, Pichai Sundararajan, Parag Agrawal, Leena Nair and Amrapali Gan became the CEOs of Microsoft, Alphabet, Twitter, Chanel and OnlyFans respectively.

  • Andrew Yang was a prominent Democratic nominee for the 2020 US Election.

  • Hasan Minhaj hosted the 2017 White House Correspondents Dinner and his Netflix show Patriot Act.

  • Artists like Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Michelle Yeoh and Dev Patel made it big in Hollywood. Lucy Liu played Joan Watson in the show Elementary, which is, funnily enough, reverse-white-washing since the original character is white.

  • Comedians like Ken Jeong, Aziz Ansari, Russell Peters, Mindy Kaling and Kumail Nanjiani made a name for themselves.

  • Movies like the Harold and Kumar series, Crazy Rich Asians, Minari, Parasite, Asian-led superhero movies like Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings (Simu Liu), Eternals (Kumail Nanjiani, Gemma Chan, Don Lee and Harish Patel) and Jacob Batalon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe were acclaimed. An upcoming Marvel project has a Muslim Pakistani-American teenager play the lead with Fawad Khan also playing an undisclosed role.

  • TV shows like The Big Bang Theory (which has faced its own criticism), Quantico, Killing Eve, The Mindy Project, Master of None, Citizen Khan, Mind Your Language and Never Have I Ever and the rise of K-dramas and K-pop like BTS and Blackpink means that there is a bit more representation now.

Despite such advancements, it's sad to see such overwhelming evidence that anti-Asian prejudice exists even today.


HISTORY OF ANTI-ASIAN PREJUDICE


Western nations like the US, England and Australia possess a long history of bigotry against immigrants of colour all the way back to the late 19th century, including:

  • White nativists promulgating xenophobic propaganda about Chinese uncleanliness in San Francisco

  • Chinese labourers in California experiencing discrimination from white settlers who saw them as a threat to their jobs (I’m glad that mindset has changed in modern times)

  • The Chinese Exclusion Act

  • Japanese internment camps during World War II

  • Mass lynching and the banning of Chinese individuals from testifying against white witnesses

  • The attack on Pearl Harbour that created political and social uneasiness for Japanese people in the US and that ended up coercing Chinese people to clarify their ethnicity and to declare they hated the Japanese more than white individuals

  • The Vietnam War that conflated all Asian ethnicities as one

  • The 2001 NY attacks

  • Anti-Asian racism during the 2003 SARS outbreak in different countries, which had originated in China.

In the US, Asian Americans are more likely to be victimized by other minority group members, according to one study. In recent times, we’ve had mass shootings in Georgia, wherein 6 Asian women were killed, we’ve

had Asians around the world face verbal abuse, be shoved to the ground, set on fire, have their faces slashed with a box cutter, stabbed, punched and attacked with acid. Despite a smattering of ostentatious supportive statements by celebrities in Hollywood to make them look ‘woke’ and that they're one with the masses by denouncing such violence, not much has changed in the system. There’s been no spike in charitable donations to Asian organizations and no increase in partnerships, diversity initiatives or CSR commitments. Well, at least it was great rhetoric to boost the social image of those who said: “Stop Asian Hate”.


In the television show Fresh Off the Boat, Eddie Huang, the young Asian American protagonist of the show, is shunned and denigrated after consuming his lunch in front of his white classmates because they deem the noodles he’s eating as “gross”, say that he's eating worms and tell him to go away. There’s a segment called “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts” on the talk show The Late Late Show With James Corden, wherein celebrities can either answer personal questions about themselves or eat foods that are considered “disgusting”. Some of these foods include chicken feet, balut and century egg, which are traditional Asian delicacies, perpetuating the myth that the food Asian people eat is disgusting and horrifying and is a form of cultural chauvinism and xenophobia. In the Indian reality show, Dance Deewane, TV anchor Raghav Juyal introduced a contestant from Assam by speaking gibberish Chinese in a nasal voice to indicate the fact that she could converse in Mandarin. During an American award ceremony, a nominee named Jully Lee had her name mispronounced and when her face was supposed to appear onscreen, the organizers had put up a photo of another Asian-American cast member. In an episode under the WWE umbrella, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson got on stage and pretended to say something in ‘Chinese’ while using a high-pitched nasal voice to utter: “Jing bong ding dong hit Stone Cold ayye.” There’s also the stereotype of Asians only having particular jobs, like owning a convenience store or gas station. In 2006, Joseph Biden stated, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”


Mispronouncing names, to some people, demonstrates a degree of laziness to learn the way a name is pronounced, but it isn’t really reflected in white European names. A senator from Georgia, when referring to Kamala Harris, said, “KAH-mah-lah? Kah-MAH-lah? Kamala-mala-mala? I don’t know, whatever.” When names are purposely mispronounced, it becomes a conscious decision to weaponize the name against a person and invalidate their culture and may create microaggressions based on names that create Westernized nicknames, assumptions and biases. In fact, it even makes parents who live in Western societies to Anglicize the names of their offspring to make it more convenient to pronounce, to lessen the likelihood of bullying and allow for Asians to blend in more and be seen as equal to their peers. Renowned Hollywood director and writer M. Night Shyamalan had to change his name from "Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan'' because people would keep mispronouncing it and even call him ‘mango’ instead of ‘Manoj’. In an episode of the US TV show Psych, an Indian introduces himself as Raj, to which the protagonist responds, “I’m just going to call you Roger.” Hasan Minhaj aptly put it, “People are always like, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t pronounce your name accurately. By the way, meet my son, 'Higsby Witherthrottle III.’ If you can pronounce ‘Ansel Elgort’, you can pronounce my name.” It doesn’t help that every time Asian names are typed on processing software, it gets underlined, as if to invalidate the existence of the name and, therefore, the identity. Take it from me, someone with the surname ‘Kattuparambil’, whose name keeps getting underlined on software like MS Word, Google Docs and Grammarly, but my middle name ‘Philip’ doesn’t seem to face that issue.

Asians are often stereotyped as being passive and meek: qualities that make them more attractive targets. According to primary research, people who are of East Asian descent and who have lived in India their whole lives, are deeply rooted in Indian culture, eat the same food as their Indian peers and speak the local tongue fluently and yet, still have doubts about calling themselves Indians. They’ve been asked how they speak the local tongue so well when they look Chinese and are catcalled with remarks about their appearance like “made in China” and “Chinese maal (Chinese goods)”. The question has been asked countless times: “No, where are you *really* from?” and yet, no answer satiates the curiosity with which it was asked.


Conversely and in a fun sense of hypocrisy, there is the model minority myth, a notion that Asian-Americans are among the richest, most prosperous, well-educated and most successful groups in America. This has been used as a strawperson’s argument to dispute the fact that racism has not been perpetrated against Asian Americans and to negate the notion that racism could exist in the US since Asians seem to be doing well. There's an interesting line I came across: “Whites love us because we’re not black.” Asian Americans are often painted with a wide brush as economically successful, even though the group is quite economically diverse: being both very poor and relatively successful. This model minority myth has the potential to place an immense amount of pressure on Asians to live up to cultural expectations (it's not like they have enough of that already) and discourage them from speaking up when experiencing discrimination and violence. This myth also creates the illusion that Asians are a monolithic racial group to be seen through the lens of group membership, instead of being diverse individuals with unique life experiences that are interchangeable. At the same time, they still feel like they’re foreigners, even if they’ve lived in countries their entire lives and have to try hard to prove themselves to be true citizens of that country. It’s a strange dilemma in the US: Asians aren’t accepted as people of colour because they’re seen as economically successful, but, at the same time, they’re viewed as foreigners, because they aren’t white.


PREJUDICE SINCE COVID-19


Anti-Asian prejudice, discrimination and violence have been on the rise since the outbreak of COVID-19. According to the Pew Research Center, around 30% of Asian adults fear being threatened or physically attacked, about 80% of Asian adults believe that violence against them is increasing and around 15% state they’ve been told they should return to their home country and that they are to blame for the COVID-19 pandemic. According to primary research, an individual of East Asian origin in India has been accosted, has been called “Coronavirus” and has been asked if they have eaten bat soup. In India, Northeast Indians have been asked to vacate hostels and places they have rented because of a misguided fear that they would spread the virus, while also dealing with COVID-19 hatred and being called names like “Chinese”, “momo”, “ching-chong” and “chowmein”. According to many people, former President of the United States Donald Trump has also helped exacerbate prejudice against Asians with his rhetoric of insisting the virus be referred to as the “Chinese virus” and has even used the term “Kung Flu”, but, at the same time, he has expressed support and protection for Asians, calling them ‘amazing people’ and stating that, “The spread of the virus is not their fault in any way, shape or form”. However, there weren't any direct government measures to combat anti-Asian prejudice in the country during his administration at the time of the pandemic. Reports of bias have plagued the entire world, not just the US or India, directly or indirectly encouraging hate crimes and racism against Asians around the globe.


All of this has caused psychological distress for Asians around the world and Northeast Indians: symptoms of anxiety, elevated levels of stress, depression, PTSD, sleep problems and general concerns of physical safety. It’s the cross Asians are forced to carry, wherever they go. To make matters worse, mental health is heavily stigmatized among Asians who misconstrue therapy as an undignified sign of weakness, but hopefully, this is changing and the stigma of getting help and the idea of “saving face” is slowly reducing.


WHAT CAN BE DONE?


Certainly, something can be done to cut down on anti-Asian prejudice. Here are a few possible solutions:

  • Promoting intergroup contact: A renowned social psychologist posited that if there was increased contact among people of different ethnicities and regions within a country (like North-Eastern Indians and South Indians), this could play a role in reducing discrimination, social tension and prejudice. As long as common goals were established, there would be a sense of equal status and a sense of interdependence.

  • Quashing misinformation: Ever since the start of the pandemic and even before COVID-19, the promulgation of misinformation on social platforms and stereotypes about Asians have only served to hurt or tarnish their reputation without any factual basis. A possible solution is to promote counter-stereotypical information and fact-check information being spread and forwarded by having influential people disseminate veracious information to debunk lies and foster tolerance.

  • Focusing on individuality, not group identity: The human brain’s natural tendency is to categorize people, instead of seeing them as individuals. Thus, looking at people as individuals and not emblematic of their group identity could play a role in cutting down on bias and stereotypes, because Asians are not a monolith.

  • Engaging in giving and listening to perspectives: It’s important for Asians around the world and North-eastern Indians to be given a voice, tell their stories and perspective of how prejudice and discrimination have affected them over the years and show people what it’s like when the shoe is on the other foot. Members of majority groups or dominant social groups tend to benefit more and reduce their bias and prejudice when hearing the perspective of minority groups. This would foster a meaningful connection and break down barriers.

The onus of enacting change ought not to be on Asians or East Indians, but should be the responsibility of non-Asians and people in positions of power as well. They ought to work diligently to change systems that perpetuate racism and bring about awareness and education. When people are active bystanders and allies instead of silent witnesses, the stigma can be obliterated, the negative impact can be reduced, health disparities can be resolved and social norms can change. Societal prejudice can be challenged by prosocial physical intervention with the intention that racist behaviour ought not to be tolerated.


On the plus side, in May 2021, US President Joseph Biden signed into law the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act to address the rising rate of anti-Asian attacks, expedite reviews of violence and hate crimes against Asians and promote multi-language services to make it easier for reporting incidents of violence. In a measure to further reduce unconscious bias against Asians, there would be training and educational campaigns for the public.


More than a year and a half has passed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to primary research, there hasn’t been adequate support against anti-Asian bias and the degree to which it’s meted out has stayed the same. Anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination didn’t start with this outbreak, it’s been predominant in society and embedded in the way we interact with people of different ethnicities, long before this came along. Yet, there has been dramatic exacerbation of the issue and has, at least, exposed how rotten the issue is and how badly it affects the people around us, unbeknownst to us. Prejudice and bias can never truly be obliterated and no matter how hard people try, it will always colour their judgement. All we can hope for is that people are cognizant of what they do, mindful of what they say and stand up for injustices meted out to people around them, no matter who the prejudice is coming from, even friends or family. All we need is more accountability for us and the people around us. The acts of violence and prejudice need to be mitigated at the earliest by mobilizing political and social forces to protect those who are vulnerable and promote respect for them. There’s a tsunami of scapegoating and fearmongering and, hence, we’ve seen a larger reckoning around race, amplified more during the Black Lives Matter (the notion, not the political group) and this has meant that this is a moment-turned-movement for Asians around the world.


When the word ‘Asian’ comes to mind, the first immediate word associated with it is probably ‘Chinese’. It probably was the image you had in mind every time I used the word “Asian” in this piece. But that’s yet another stereotype, be it conscious or unconscious. There are about 50 Asian countries in the world, it’s not just China and India. That means it’s not a “them” problem, it’s probably an “us” problem.


One may contend that reading this piece won’t reduce Anti-Asian sentiments. I don’t argue it will. But I do hope that it does open one’s eyes to what’s happening around us. Because the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing and based on what’s happening in the world, it looks like that’s exactly what good people are doing. One may also contend this is yet another self-serving piece of meretricious rhetoric to make me sound ‘woke’ and virtuous without offering any actual measures to solve what’s going on in the world. But if my piece made you see a side or realize the gravity of what’s happening to people who may not look like you, then I will have considered my mission successful. Because the first step to solving any problem is recognising there is one and being cognizant of how we're passively allowing it to happen.


But enough of the identity politics to guilt you into recognizing the gravity of the issue. There’s a poem by German theologian Martin Niemöller that’s probably been overused, but could not be more fitting for what we're talking about:

“First, they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist.


Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist.


Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew.


Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me.”


At the risk of sounding like another piece of superficial rhetoric: we’ve been washing our hands more regularly since the start of the pandemic; it’s about time we started washing away the hate.



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