“I would only hire Asians if I could,” a professor once told me. “You all are so hard-working.”
She meant it as a compliment.
Her words came back to me last week, as Asians were the victims of two mass shootings in California: at a dance studio in Monterey Park and at two farms a mile apart in Half Moon Bay. In both cases, the suspects are older Asian men.
The attacks come during an existential moment for Asian communities—and an America historically conflicted over our presence. The initial December 2019 reports of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, unleashed a spate of hate crimes in the US. Between 2020 and 2021, anti-Asian violence rose by 339%, according to California State University Santa Barbara’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. The passage of time has not helped much; more Americans now blame Asian Americans for Covid than at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
And the perception affects Asians at work, both in day-to-day treatment and prospects for ascension. A study from the global think tank Coqual finds one in three Asian and Asian American professionals have experienced racial prejudice, and Asians report facing microaggressions at higher rates than other races.
That Asians are struggling mightily in the workplace might surprise well-meaning folks like my former professor. Except her perception of Asians being diligent and dutiful is precisely a part of the problem: To some, Asian work matters more than Asian lives.
There are so many misconceptions over the Asian experience in the US that create this image. It starts to feel conditional, as if the only place for Asians in the US is that of work, of subservience. Also dangerous is when this becomes how we see ourselves.
Arriving on US shores as guests, then neighbors.
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