In the Asian culture, anything that is strange or foreign is actually very educational and for some even privilege as it means you get to meet or experience something from the ordinary upbringing or culture, Yet, as the most talked about term nowadays, Xenophobia is “fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.” This where the cultures divide the definition as explained by Merriam and Webster I Started with this remembering my years both the global community that you meet various people from the public and private sectors from different cultures and countries,
One of the things I've learned is to carefully listened to touchy questions when it pertains to race related issues, have them repeat it in case it wasn't clear. This is especially true if your in a position that can influence a lot of issues. Hence is what happened in today's Asian American Violence in the United States implied simply from the words implied from the words of it's former 45th President.
America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States Hardcover – November 26, 2019 by Erika Lee (Author) An award-winning historian reframes our continuing debate over immigration with a compelling history of xenophobia in the United States and its devastating impact The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia. In America for Americans, Erika Lee shows that an irrational fear, hatred, and hostility toward immigrants has been a defining feature of our nation from the colonial era to the Trump era. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their "strange and foreign ways." Americans' anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese incarcerated, and Mexicans deported.
Lee writes, “Asian immigrants, once so despised that they had been largely excluded from the United States, were slowly being remade into supposed ‘model minorities,’ racial minorities who worked hard to overcome obstacles and achieve the American dream .. displaying the attributes most prized by American capitalism and its emphasis on achievement”. The model minority myth advanced a racist/xenophobic attribution of Asian success to a combination of their upbringing and genetics.
Former President Donald Trump, had repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus," among other offensive terms, during his presidency, the recent events in Atlanta, GA cause the lives of 8 people where 6 of them where Asian American women. The Stop AAPI Hate Coalition received nearly 3,800 hate incidents from March 19 to Feb 28 of this year. Among them were 68% women victims as target according to ABC news. Asian Women, the elderly, from San Francisco, New York abuse and violence have spike tremendously this year.
For now the Asian American community is grieving the lives lost in the shooting with the hope for a better tomorrow.
