Is the media responsible for the anti-Asian hate crimes?
Media portrayals of Asian-American women could be harming us.
One evening in this past week, I was walking home from work. I walked down the stairs to wait for the F or the M train at the 42nd station to get home and I walked towards the middle to wait under the overhead screen that tells you when the next train is coming. I walked towards a crowd of people, where my instincts told me it was safer to wait by. Stood in the middle along with myself were two senior Asian women. One of them had silver hair and her mini suitcase. The other with her reusable bag and black puffy coat. We all looked at each other with a familiarity, a connection; we were looking out for each other, and we all knew why. Us three Asian women, standing in the middle of the platform, our ears pricked like a fox that heard a snap of a twig in the distance when the train rushed by.
Christina Yuna Lee was another victim, not too long after Michelle Go. This past year was a tough year for everyone, particularly for the Asian-American communities in major cities that have seen an uptick of hate crime and disproportionate violence against them. Our space - from public transportation to a place that we consider our home - is becoming more and more unsafe. You may think crime is crime, as some people have put it, but this is a pattern that has been prevalent this past year that it’s hard to disregard.
I question who to blame, because it’s certainly not our fault - people in our community came to America for the opportunities, people fled here from war-torn countries, people want to live a better life. We, like any other group in this country, are people trying to make a living and contributing to this society. So why?
In my digging and reporting for past stories on the Asian and Asian-American experience, I tend to find that the representation of Asian women tend to fall on the familiar monolithic trope of the “lotus blossom”. Think Kim from Miss Saigon or Memoirs of a Geisha (which, if you noticed, are both written by white men); it is the fragile and delicate Asian woman, complicit and gentle, comforting and feminine, sexually subservient. In the lenses of white men, they also tend to be sex workers (think again of Madame Butterfly and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket).
This kind of representation harms us and our community. On March 16, Robert Aaron Long marched into Gold Spa with a handgun and shot and killed eight people - six of which were of Asian descent. It was allegedly reported that Long was being treated for a sex addiction. His intent behind the shooting was to “eliminate his temptation”. What does this mean? Is it the stigma around spas as places of sex work and exploitation or the fetishization of Asian women?
The media is a huge contributor that controls how we think and perceive the world around us. Although the media is changing and diversifying, with emerging films and literature that center’s more accurately and appropriately around the Asian-American experience, history has not forgotten how unkind the media has been to Asian and Asian-American women.
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was only 31 years old when Joseph Sanza raped and murdered her. Her death, a heartbreaking and violent one, came just after the release of her now cult-classic book Dictee that explores the Korean-American experience. Her death went unreported. Her death was forgotten. Her legacy was just as important and uplifted her and the Korean-American’s voices, but her death was part of it. It was part of a conversation that often gets pushed aside, swept under the rug.
Who is to blame for this? The white male gaze.
The perception of Asian and Asian-Americans are changing, and that is because production teams and newsrooms are diversifying. It is one of the reasons why I wanted to get into journalism and communications - as a journalist, as a writer, you hold for a moment the power to influence thought. The power of ideas and stories. I’m just now discovering this power and learning how to harness it, but I want to use it to change the world.
To answer the title of this piece Is the media responsible for the anti-Asian hate crimes? Yes. We’re all journalists at heart, whether it’s posting on social media or writing a blog, so we all hold a responsibility. It is up to us to ensure that we’re not harming our communities, but we’re helping.