Welcome to part 2 of our launch episode of At the Moment! Hosted by Sylvia Peng and Janrey Serapio, “At the Moment” is a podcast where we explore Asian American as a term, identity, and political movement.
We’re kicking off our launch with a look back at 2 key topics in 2020: BIPOC racial justice and COVID-19. In part 2, we examine how COVID-19 has impacted marginalized Asian American communities, namely Southeast Asians. We talk to Professor Catherine Ceniza Choy to give context to Filipino frontline worker histories and experiences during this time. Then, we talk to Chhaya Chhoum, the founder of Mekong NYC, about how Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese refugee communities are coping with government neglect by providing mutual aid in Bronx, NYC.
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Sylvia Peng 00:00
I'm Sylvia Peng.
Janrey Serapio 00:02
I'm Janrey Serapio.
Sylvia Peng 00:04
You're listening to At the Moment
Janrey Serapio 00:06
By AZI Media.
Janrey Serapio 00:12
Welcome to part two of dual episode launch, which looks back on 2020.
Sylvia Peng 00:16
Last episode, we focused on the origins of the term Asian American and the importance of Asian American solidarity with Black and brown folks. You know, really answering the question, how does the term Asian American become a unifying term?
Janrey Serapio 00:29
So this week, we'll continue on the slight cliffhanger we left y'all on about that disconnect between Filipino Americans and the other Asian American students in the protests.
Sylvia Peng 00:37
If you don't know what we're talking about, we highly recommend you to listen to our first episode.
Janrey Serapio 00:42
Part one is linked in the show notes, if y'all would like to take a listen. We want to begin our episode with a moment of silence for the lives that we've lost from the pandemic. And this brings us to the second important topic of 2020: COVID-19.
Sylvia Peng 01:01
In the US, we've lost over 300,000 lives and counting.
Janrey Serapio 01:06
The pandemic, like many things in America, had a disproportionate effect on marginalized communities.
Sylvia Peng 01:11
According to the COVID tracking project at The Atlantic, for every white person who dies from COVID, 1.3 Hispanics or Latinx people have died. And 1.6 Black people have died.
Janrey Serapio 01:22
The same data showed the Asian COVID death rate to be lower than white people, which seems to show that Asians are not marginalized by this country's racial inequality. And without breaking the Asian racial category further into specific ethnic groups, immigration status, gender, geographical locations, and more, we tend to miss out on the nuances of the people that make up the umbrella term, Asian American.
Sylvia Peng 01:44
In fact, there are many Asian American scholars and researchers and organizers advocating for more disaggregated data when it comes to the Asian American demographic. According to the National Nurses United, Filipino nurses only make up 4% of the nurse population nationwide, but they account for nearly a third of the COVID deaths.
Janrey Serapio 02:03
Okay. This statistic is particularly personal to me because of a number of reasons. One, my mom is also a Filipino nurse. Bless her. And she actually got COVID way back in April. I also basically grew up in a nursing home and I spent a lot of my childhood with other Filipino nurses that I know were heavily affected by COVID.
Sylvia Peng 02:21
I'm so sorry to hear that. And Janrey, I think that these stories remind us that there are actually people behind these statistics, leaving their houses every day to keep the rest of us non-essential workers safe.
Janrey Serapio 02:32
Yeah, it's so important to personalize these stories.
Sylvia Peng 02:35
Exactly. And in this episode, we'll be focusing on Southeast Asian communities. However, instead of just focusing on the ways Southeast Asians lack in social, political and economic resources, we want to ask why. Why does this difference exists in Asian America? In high school, the only thing that I learned Asian American related was the Chinese Exclusion Act and how it was signed by President Arthur in 1882. I remember when we were learning it in class, my eighth grade social science teacher, Miss Adams looked at my Korean friend the whole time when she was telling the story. And then Jessica raised her hand was just like, "ma'am, I'm Korean." And then she still kept looking at her the whole time, every time Chinese Exclusion Act, looked at Jessica.
Janrey Serapio 03:23
Ms. Adams!
Sylvia Peng 03:26
Yeah, I mean, but even though the story was super cringy, and the experience was super cringy, I felt some kind of pride in almost being seen when I heard the word Chinese Exclusion Act mentioned in class, which was kind of messed up, you know, thinking about in retrospect.
Janrey Serapio 03:40
No, I think I honestly felt the same way. Whenever I heard the word Chinese or even just like Asia, I was like, word that's my history.
Sylvia Peng 03:47
But you're not even Chinese!
Janrey Serapio 03:50
We're learning today it ain't like that. But the Chinese Exclusion Act didn't just exclude Chinese people from the US. In fact, this law led to a series of other racist legislations that ended up banning all immigrants in Asia up until the mid 1900s.
Sylvia Peng 04:05
Classic, it's like every time they think about one of us they loop us all together. And like, just to be clear, these bans didn't mean that Asian people weren't immigrating here.
Janrey Serapio 04:17
Yeah, exactly. These laws were specific to Asian laborers. So, you still saw politicians and handpicked exchange students that were entering the borders. One group of Asian laborers that was legally and actively recruited during this time, were Filipino laborers.
Sylvia Peng 04:31
That's interesting. So to unpack this history a little bit more. Our team reporter Niveda Tennety went out to interview some folks who knew a lot more than us about Filipino mass migration and how Southeast Asian communities came to the US in the first place.
Niveda Tennety 04:46
I wanted to talk to Dr. Choy about Filipinx health care workers needs, support systems and activism, as well as on the strengths and limitations of the term Asian American in meeting the needs of the Filipinx community.
Janrey Serapio 04:57
One of these folks Niveda talked to us Professor Catherine Ceniza Choy.
Catherine Choy 05:01
My name is Catherine Ceniza Choy. My pronouns are she hers. I'm a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. I'm also an associate dean of Berkeley's College of Letters and Science undergraduate studies division. And I'm an Asian American historian who focuses on the experiences of Filipino Americans, women, laborers, and migrants.
Janrey Serapio 05:28
Professor Choy is also the author of "Empire of Care, Nursing and Migration: Filipino American History."
Sylvia Peng 05:34
Wait, Janrey, isn't that the book that you literally carried everywhere on campus?
Janrey Serapio 05:38
It was! Like I learned so much from this book and from this woman, and so I was super excited we got her on the show. But in this book, she details why we have so many Filipino Americans working as nurses and frontline health care workers in the United States. So when I was reading it, I was like, yes, that's my mom's history!
Sylvia Peng 05:56
And Professor Choy's book also goes into a lot of the questionable practices that went on in the 1960s. Filipino nurses were recruited thinking that they were getting this amazing job as a registered nurse, but in fact, they were actually being employed as other kinds of nurse practitioners. And why does it matter? It means that they're getting paid significantly less than what an registered nurse would make. So they were pretty much given false promises.
Catherine Choy 06:21
It's important to remember that there is a long history of this kind of migration from the Philippines to the United States that's actually over a century long. And it begins with the early 20th century and US colonialism in the Philippines that created an Americanized training hospital system there that would eventually prepare Filipino nurses and other health care workers to work in the United States. We start to see Filipino nurse mass migration, beginning in the 1960s. And alongside the unique struggles and challenges of Filipino nurses and other health care worker migrants in the United States, we also see Filipino nurses rise up to these challenges by organizing themselves and by becoming activists and advocates for Filipino nurses, other health care workers, and Filipino Americans as a whole.
Sylvia Peng 07:29
I think it's so important that Choy began the story on the history of colonialism in the Philippines.
Janrey Serapio 07:35
No, I think it is too. And especially in the Filipino diaspora, Spanish and US colonialism has really affected our migration to places like the US.
Sylvia Peng 07:44
So Janrey, can you tell us a bit more about what actually went down in the Philippines?
Janrey Serapio 07:48
Well, it was fucked up to say the least. So in the late 1890s, the Philippines was occupied by Spain. In 1895, Filipino revolutionaries who wanted independence started rising up to undermine the Spaniards. They even exiled one of the revolutionary group leaders, Emilio Aguinaldo. This tension boiled for three years until the Spanish American War. So in the beginning, the Filipinos really thought the US was like this buddy, who like them, was joined in a common struggle against Spain. So Syl, you remember Aguinaldo, right? Yes. Well, the US was like, why don't you come back and rally up some Filipino revolutionaries to help us? If we win, you get your independence.
Sylvia Peng 08:35
Okay, that sounds like not a bad deal.
Janrey Serapio 08:38
Just hold on a bit. On January 23, 1899, the first Philippine Republic was born as Asia's first democratic republic, with Aguinaldo as its president. Under Aguinaldo, the Philippine Revolutionary Army was also renowned to be racially tolerant, multi ethnic, and progressive. Just like, basically what we want now. Like, this is crazy! We love to hear it! Exactly. But when Aguinaldo turned to the US and said, okay, you can leave now, thanks. The US was like, hmm actually think we're just gonna squat here. And that was the end of the first Filipino Republic. Literally, it lasted like, not even a minute.
Sylvia Peng 09:13
That's like almost shorter than Britney Spears's first marraige!
Janrey Serapio 09:16
Oh my God! Iconic. Aguinaldo tried to fight it. But in the end, he had to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And the US continued to squat there for 50 years.
Sylvia Peng 09:28
That's just so messed up, like I can't even describe. It's like the US loves to shit on colonialism, when it's the Europeans who are doing it. And then they do the exact same thing, and they just can't like see that parallel where like, you're squatting there, just like the Spanish squatting there previously, and like you're doing the same problematic system, because you think that like people of color can't rule themselves. But anyways, that sounds messed up.
Janrey Serapio 09:55
No, it was. And honestly, my people are still traumatized by it over a century later. And it's honestly a big reason why there's so many Filipino nurses and health care workers in the US, and we'll make that connection in a bit.
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Sylvia Peng 11:00
Okay, so more War history. When Filipinos were migrating to the US in the 1960s, the US was waging war in another place: the rest of Southeast Asia.
Janrey Serapio 11:11
Mm. Here we go again.
Sylvia Peng 11:17
So if you remember another thing we did learn in high school, the Cold War. And we learned that it was called the Cold War, because no real violence broke out against communism in Russia. But in the 1960s, the US was waging a war with Vietnam for the same exact reasons. The US war wasn't just in Vietnam, they actually dropped 2 million tons of bombs in its neighboring country Laos, which is nearly equal to the amount of explosives that the US drops in Europe and Asia combined during all of World War Two. Wild. And keep in mind, this includes the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan, making Laos the most heavily bombed country in history. The US also bombed Cambodia, which contributed to the rise of the Communist led Khmer Rouge regime.
Janrey Serapio 12:08
This is also the event that led to the Kent State protests, because most American citizens didn't actually want to escalate war in Southeast Asia. The National Guard responded by killing four students who were anti-war.
Sylvia Peng 12:20
And in Cambodia, under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge regime wanted to eliminate all signs of cultural and political influence of the West, demanding that the nation effectively start over, by returning to year zero.
Janrey Serapio 12:34
This began with the Cambodian genocide, which took the lives of approximately 2 million people. Most of those who survived approximately 300,000 were resettled in the United States, following the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. And the US government resettled most of these Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian refugees in some of the most precarious urban neighborhoods in the US. These were areas that were being abandoned, and in some cases, marked for destruction.
Sylvia Peng 13:13
That's awful.
Janrey Serapio 13:14
And honestly, looking back at this history, it actually angers me that we barely learned about any of this.
Sylvia Peng 13:20
And it really makes this narrative we feed to immigrants that they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps so tone deaf. Like, let me bomb all your ancestors and resettle you someplace we were thinking about destroying in the US, and see how like, see how you can pull your bootstraps!
Janrey Serapio 13:35
Right. How dare you accuse us Americans for not giving you enough opportunities?
Sylvia Peng 13:41
I think the point of this is not to say that there are no good Americans out there during this time. But more to show how, if we forget all this history, we believe that there is equal opportunity in the society. When in fact, there are so many more factors at play affecting how an immigrant adapts to the United States. So one of the areas Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in was Bronx, New York. Namely over 10,000 Cambodian refugees were resettled in what is now known as Little Cambodia, in the Fordham area of the Bronx neighborhood.
Janrey Serapio 14:11
Many Cambodian refugees took poverty wage work as garment workers and retail middlemen, basically getting paid pennies per piece.
Sylvia Peng 14:19
When that wasn't enough to survive on, 80% of the Bronx Cambodians applied for welfare, and stayed on welfare for the next decade and a half.
Janrey Serapio 14:28
Of course, until 1996, when the US government passed a law that severely restricted how much welfare they could take. Today, 80% of the Cambodian population in the Bronx received some kind of welfare assistance. 42% live in poverty. Close to 24% are unemployed. And 62% have less than a high school education.
Sylvia Peng 14:46
But don't take our word for it. Take it from someone who has experienced it all firsthand. We talked to Chhaya Chhoum, a Cambodian refugee, activist and a Bronx native.
Chhaya Chhoum 14:56
My name is Chhaya Choum . I go by she her hers. I am the executive director of Mekong NYC. We are based in the Bronx. And we work with the Southeast Asian community, mostly Cambodians and Vietnamese and Laotian folks who were resettled here in the 1980s, as part of the refugee resettlement program. A lot of our community members can't read or write. And particularly for the Cambodian community, can't read or write in English or in Khmer. And so you have a population who were resettled here and pretty much abandoned by the US government. And, you know, for us, we have lived in the realization that the government has failed us and that the refugee resettlement has failed us. But we're small, resettled in locations in New York City and the Bronx, where the Bronx was burning at that time. And so you can imagine, like, I live in two refugee camps before we settled into the Bronx. And it was literally, you know, I use this term because I know what it is, to live in war zones after war zones, and, you know, in poverty and moving into urban poverty, and the sense of just abandonment from the US government and around us. And so, our people didn't have the skills, the marketable skills here, the United States, and the US pretty much said, here's 12 months of service, this is important. Here you go, you know? You've been resettled now. Live your life. And rebuild your life. And some of us have been able to do that, but most of us have not. And that's because of the impact of PTSD and trauma, and that existence, and the compounding systemic racism, and the insertion into urban poverty.
Janrey Serapio 16:42
I think often we think of trauma as individualized pathologies and chemicals in the brain. But it's so important to address how historical trauma could actually impact someone's mental health and also continue to impact generations. This is a discussion that I saw a lot of Asian Americans having online, especially among first and second generation Asian Americans.
Sylvia Peng 17:00
Right. And you know, what, actually, 70% of Southeast Asians suffer from PTSD. Amongst Cambodians, 81% suffer from depression. And I think all this history that we talked about ties together the many barriers that Asian people face in the US around mental health, such as stigma, language accessibility, and the lack of culturally competent and affordable service providers. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the government didn't really have a plan for these Southeast Asian immigrants, aside from maybe using them as human laborers. It's not that much of a surprise that we have such a high need among this particular demographic, because they struggle from historical trauma, and they're in a country that didn't really prepare anything to help them through that trauma. And all this got me thinking, do Asian bodies not count?
Janrey Serapio 17:52
Mm. Super important points, Syl. And this leads us to this moment right now with COVID-19. This pandemic has disproportionately affected people of color, especially Black and brown communities. But don't let the Asian American umbrella data for you. Within Asian Americans, Southeast Asian communities have really been hit hard too. History has positioned Southeast Asians in frontline worker jobs. Refugees were placed in low income low resource neighborhoods. This is no coincidence.
Sylvia Peng 18:19
But don't get us wrong. It's not all doom and gloom. Our frontline and essential workers have been incredible during this time. Southeast Asians are a really resilient community, and they're relying on each other to rebuild what was lost.
Janrey Serapio 18:34
We'll learn more about this after the break.
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Janrey Serapio 19:29
Before the break, we were talking about the resettlement of Southeast Asians in the United States, specifically the relocation of thousands of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees to New York City.
Sylvia Peng 19:38
The lack of support from local and federal governments forced these communities to help themselves in the only feasible and time sensitive way: mutual aid.
Janrey Serapio 19:47
So Syl, I feel like a lot of people have seen this word thrown around this year because of COVID and all the events that happened in 2020. And they're like, kind of getting what it means but maybe not fully. So can you just quickly explain what mutual aid is?
Sylvia Peng 20:00
Yeah, that's so fair. So first of all, mutual aid was born out of this realization that people couldn't rely on the government to meet a lot of their needs, whether it be food, affordable housing, access to social services, and so much more. People realized that the government wasn't going to save them. So the only thing that could save them was themselves. Hmm. Mutual Aid is solidarity and not charity.
Janrey Serapio 20:23
Okay, so yeah, people have definitely heard that statement before. But what's really the difference?
Sylvia Peng 20:29
Well, when you practice charity, you give to those who are less fortunate than you. And when you do that, you inherently create a system of hierarchy or a way of separating into like the us versus them way of thinking. So by doing charity, you create a power dynamic that reinforces oppression and economic inequality. Whereas in solidarity, it's all about volunteers performing survival work. Like when you participate in mutual aid, people recognize that power dynamics are multi-directional, and that everyone has the knowledge and resources to solve problems. Everyone is invited to pitch in and help solve the problems that the government can't solve for us.
Janrey Serapio 21:10
Right. And unsurprisingly, the United States government just fails when trying to help marginalized communities. In fact, mutual aid organizations have existed in the United States since the late 19th century. Over time, the way we refer to them has changed. So at the beginning, the late 19th century, mutual aid groups were known as, get this, fraternal organizations. Men were paid a day's worth of wages, which was like $2 back then to join these organizations for social and health benefits, like employment opportunities and free health care.
Sylvia Peng 21:44
Sorry, I'm just like thinking about the irony of all of this. I really wonder how like these fraternal organizations react to what became a fraternities today.
Janrey Serapio 21:53
You mean like college frats?
Sylvia Peng 21:55
We're not trying to call anyone out! These fraternal organizations were typically run by working class and low income people in solidarity with one another. With mutual aid, there's this commonly understood and affirmed notion that people have to take care of each other. Pretty basic and simple, right? And despite their circumstances, these groups have managed to provide more for themselves during this time of need.
Janrey Serapio 22:19
Mm right. And over time, more diverse organizations in the United States were developed for more marginalized people, such as Black, indigenous, Latinx folks, and women. Different Asian American ethnic groups also formed their own mutual aid groups to in the United States.
Sylvia Peng 22:33
Like in the early 20th century, in San Francisco, when there was like a large hub of Chinese immigrants, there was the Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association, which advocated for better work conditions for Chinese workers and uplifted their statuses in labor unions.
Janrey Serapio 22:48
Mm, right. And I also just want to note that specifically for immigrants, these networks are so so important. I feel like everyone has heard a story of an immigrant relative linking up with someone from their home country who's already set up in the US and then that person helps that said relative get their feet off the ground and set them up in their cultural community.
Sylvia Peng 23:08
Yeah, mutual aid really happens all the time in immigrant communities because of these shared struggles and the lack of government being there for us. But we don't always refer to these community relationships as mutual aid, even though that's kind of what they are.
Janrey Serapio 23:23
Hmm, that's true. And for some immigrants like Chaya, the Cambodian refugee and community organizer from the Bronx, surviving would have been almost impossible without help from their community members.
Chhaya Chhoum 23:34
I don't know if I could have survived without my people, my community. Whether my parents would have had a job if they didn't know someone from the community who gave them a factory job and vice versa, who got a nail salon who hired like 20 people from the community. And so it was really a moment for us to recognize these systems and structures that already existed.
Janrey Serapio 24:02
Living in the United States as immigrants already placed them in a disadvantaged position. Then COVID exposed this whole asa mess that is US government, and showed its inability to help, not only immigrants, but all of its people. We already know that Filipinx healthcare workers struggled. But what did it look like for other Southeast Asians in America?
Chhaya Chhoum 24:22
Yeah, I mean, you know, the Bronx was hit the hardest, and I recall, like 24 hours sirens. People coming out of buildings every day in stretchers, and so like that image alone was something that our community talks a lot about.
Janrey Serapio 24:36
Although Chhaya has been dedicated to her communities since she came to the States as a refugee, her community's needs have increased with urgency since the epidemic started. So Mekong, the community organizing group primarily dedicated to Southeast Asians, has taken a bigger role in taking care of the community.
Chhaya Chhoum 24:52
As soon as our staffing work remotely, we did a lot of one on one check ins. We did a lot of cash assistance. So far, we've Given over $50,000 in cash assistance to many Cambodians and Vietnamese who worked in nail salons, in restaurants, in hotels. Industries were impacted by COVID. We did a lot of care packages that included culturally appropriate groceries, including lemongrass for steaming, ginger everything. Throughout the pandemic, Mekong has offered more social services than ever before. From sharing information on voting and local elections, to actively sharing informations on COVID testing sites, Chhaya and her colleagues have expanded their duties beyond just advocating for the Southeast Asian communities in the Bronx.
Chhaya Chhoum 25:36
So doing door knocking, our community members going around saying like, hey, does anyone have food, security, childcare needs, who needs a job, this nail salon is hiring. So like collecting all of that stuff, we do social services.
Janrey Serapio 25:52
Unfortunately, there were losses in the Bronx community. New York was one of the hardest hit places in the US at the beginning of the pandemic, with over 25,000 total deaths, just in New York City. Mekong has taken a proactive role, in making sure those who lost loved ones are still cared for.
Chhaya Chhoum 26:08
For example, like a family member lost his job, then he lost his wife to COVID. And so we had children who didn't know remote learning. And so we had to make sure that we provided tablets. And so there was a sense of just like, if the government was not going to provide any of this for us that we would do it for each other. We have always existed in scarcity. We have always living at so much intersections of oppressions. And so like, you know, we're not single issues organizations of people.
Sylvia Peng 26:41
In her conversation with Niveda, Chhaya really sums up why mutual aid is just so important in a time like this, when all the inequalities that already existed are even worse because of the pandemic.
Chhaya Chhoum 26:54
The failures of the governments and cities elected officials and our leadership meant that we go back to how we survive is by the community connections that we've always had, that sometimes get lost in capitalism, in imperialism, in racism.
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Janrey Serapio 28:10
Before the break, we heard Chhaya talk about how the pandemic exposes need for community and protection in Southeast Asian communities.
Sylvia Peng 28:17
Right. And if we think back to what Professor Choy said at the beginning of this episode about Filipino American communities and COVID's impact, her own takeaways align with Chhaya's.
Catherine Choy 28:28
So to relate to what is happening right now with Filipinx healthcare workers and the devastating toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on this particular group, one of the things that has emerged is a website called kanlungan dot net. And kanlungan, which is spelled k a n l u n g a n is a word that means refuge or shelter. Kanlungan dot net is so much more than a website. It's a digital memorial. It's a data wall, regarding all the Filipinx healthcare workers around the world who have died from this pandemic. And it was created by Jollene Levid, and a transnational anti-imperialist organization called Affirm. So this is one concrete, but so important, and such a relevant example of Filipino Americans and Filipinos in the diaspora directly contributing to anti-imperialist movements, and speaking to one of the most important issues of our time.
Janrey Serapio 29:50
Yes, this website is so incredible, and the digital Memorial wall is really touching. We'll link kanlungan dot net in our show notes if you guys want to check it out. So Sylvia, I don't know about you, but even just unpacking some of the histories of what has happened to our ancestors is really traumatizing and pretty upsetting.
Sylvia Peng 30:09
I feel.
Janrey Serapio 30:10
Yeah. But hearing about the mutual aid efforts has actually really helped the healing process for these communities, and also for myself. So just knowing that there's like so much resiliency in Filipinx and Southeast Asian communities, it gives me hope for the future. And these mutual aid networks feel like really powerful.
Sylvia Peng 30:26
No, I feel you. And I feel like this whole episode has been quite a rollercoaster of emotions. You know, I'm mad, and hopeful. But also, I'm really frustrated, because I see these dynamics play out even today. You know, during my day job as an nonprofit staff in New York City, I often see the government funds that are highly inaccessible. For example, there was a rent relief program that was launched by the city a while back, and a lot of the community organizers were really scrambling to help their communities apply for this relief, because the application was completely in English. And to really complete it, you need to have quite a high English literacy, and also digital literacy and be able to access to the internet and know how to fill out a form. And on top of all this, these communities have to apply in a timely manner, before all these funds round out.
Janrey Serapio 31:16
Yeah. And I think even if these communities have been able to provide mutual aid for one another, and instances where the government makes it really hard to access help, it's also really important to demand that government take action and hold themselves more accountable to this neglect.
Sylvia Peng 31:32
Yeah, what I mentioned is honestly not acceptable. And I think the government has to do better to help the immigrant community.
Janrey Serapio 31:38
Mm , right. And, honestly, I think it might be because of the model minority myth a little bit. Because once again, Asian American is not monolithic. But to white people and the government, we probably are. But if we keep thinking of Asian Americans as East Asians of a certain success threshold, we risk erasing the diversity in Asian American struggles and needs.
Sylvia Peng 32:00
Yes, the model minority needs to go. Like honestly.
Janrey Serapio 32:04
Mm it really does.
Sylvia Peng 32:06
All this is to unpack the main point of this pod. If this term Asian American fails the people it's supposed to serve, why do we still hold on to Asian America?
Janrey Serapio 32:16
And I think Professor Choy had a really good summary on how this term can still have power.
Catherine Choy 32:21
I want to emphasize that even though there are limitations, and even though there have been important social critiques about the term Asian American, I firmly believe it is still a category that is so historically important and so relevant for the times in which we find ourselves. On one of the issues that Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora throughout the world have been confronting as a result of the pandemic has been increasing anti-Asian hate incidents and anti Asian hostility. And in order to understand that the category as a political category and as a racial category, Asian American remains very relevant.
Sylvia Peng 33:13
Hmm. I like that Professor Choy brought this all back to the Asian diaspora in general, because it's a reminder that this is larger than just the six to 7% of Asians in the States. It is a global issue. The larger point of the unbalanced dynamics of power in class, specifically in relation to diasporas of Southeast Asians. These dynamics translate into real genuine conditions of Southeast Asians living in America. And some of y'all listening might be like, well, my parents were born here in the US. My grandparents were born here. And as far as I know, all of my ancestors were born here. So why do I need to learn Asian history? And I want to argue that it's not just Asian history, it is Asian American history. I think what makes this Asian American identity so interesting is that we can see ourselves as having as much stake in the country as white Americans have, but still belong to a diaspora, because those histories do influence who we are as Americans today.
Janrey Serapio 34:11
Right. It's so important to acknowledge that being Asian American doesn't discredit the fact that we are also people of a diaspora. Right? Exactly. And even unpacking all the histories as we did in this episode, I also realized that I have so much more to learn. And that's coming from somebody who had the opportunity to take some Asian American studies classes when I was in college. It's just a reminder that we need to continue organizing and uplifting marginalized Asian American communities in the US and keep informing ourselves about how we can do better.
Sylvia Peng 34:40
That's a really good takeaway to end on.
Janrey Serapio 34:42
Thanks, girl.
Sylvia Peng 34:43
Anytime, B. And that's a wrap on part two of our launch week episode for At the Moment. We'll be releasing bi-weekly episodes on Tuesdays going forward, so don't miss us too much.
Janrey Serapio 34:55
We're excited to take you all on this journey with us to explore these complex conversations about what the hell is going on in the world right now and in our country, and how that all affects us here as Asian Americans.
Sylvia Peng 35:05
Until then, stay safe y'all!
Janrey Serapio 35:12
You can read our source materials, stay updated on this story, or email us at AZI dot media. That's AZI dot media. If you liked today's episode, please leave a five star review on Apple podcasts and share with your friends. It's the best way to show your support and get it out to more listeners.
Sylvia Peng 35:28
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong and Blake Lew Merwin. Edited by Cynthia Liu. Story research and reporting by Niveda Tennety and Alina Panek. Our music is by Satoru Ohno. Cover art by Susu Schwaber. And special thanks to Tiffany Huang, Alice Liu, Aye Min Thant, Priyanka Bansal and Sabeen Shalwani. And I'm your host, Sylvia Peng.
Janrey Serapio 35:49
I'm Janrey Serapio.
Sylvia Peng 35:50
Thank you for listening.
Janrey Serapio 35:52
And see y'all next week.
Sylvia Peng 35:54
Bye y'all!