FAWK’s Statement on Recent Anti-Asian Hate

March 18, 2021

FAWK was founded in 2014 to combat the invisibility and dehumanization of Asian women using comedy. Today, we’ve got nothing funny to say about the slaughter of the 8 individuals who were shot to death last night by Robert Anthony Long, a 21-year-old white man.  

The slaughter in Atlanta is a manifestation of the things we already know and have lived: that for many in the United States, Asian women are invisible or exist only as sidekicks, servants, and sex objects. The continuous positioning of us as “perpetual foreigners”--outsiders, invaders,  illegal, un-American--is dangerous. It positions us as not human enough.  

Sometimes, we are not human enough to deserve a story or screen time. Last night, the victims were not human enough to live because one white man had a “bad day” and blamed them for his “sexual addictions” (his own words, not ours).

We wish we could offer more than empty thoughts and prayers to those who died: Delaina Ashely Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaoie Yan, Daoyou Feng, and three yet-to-be-identified women as well as Eclias Hernandez-Ortize, the sole survivor. 

The poet Jane Hirshfield said, "What we name things changes our relationship to them."

The poet Camille Dungy said, “Naming is an act of empathy. It’s an act of attention and care, and it’s also an act of survival.”   

It is heartbreaking that we must name ourselves, so that others might see our humanity. 

You’re probably wondering how you can be helpful and in solidarity during this difficult time. We don’t have all of the answers but we do know several things to be true:

  1. Check in on your Asian friends, family members, neighbors, and colleagues. Reach out, even if you feel that you don’t know the right thing to say. That is okay. Speak and write from your heart. I promise you that it will mean a lot to anyone to know that what they’re feeling and experiencing is not in isolation. 

  2. The violence on Asian bodies in America and overseas is not new. The inhumane use of our bodies for labor in America and overseas is not new. We ask that you learn about:

    • In 1853 a Chinese miner named Ling Sing was murdered by George Hall, a white man. Hall was convicted due to testimony from Chinese witnesses. However, the conviction was turned because Hall appealed, stating that Asians could not testify against Whites. An 1854 California Supreme Court Case called the People v. Hall set a dangerous precedent ruling that Asians and other persons of color could not testify against a White person in a criminal proceeding. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6618 

    • In the police-sanctioned 1871 Chinese Massacre, 500 White and "Hispanic" persons lynched 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants in downtown. All convictions were overturned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_massacre_of_1871

    • In 1906 a Chinese fishing village of 200 people outside Monterey, California was burned down. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Monterey-excavation-reveals-Chinese-fishing-3247099.php 

    • In 1885, white mobs in Rock Springs, Wyoming, murdered 28 Chinese coal miners, wounded 15 more and burnt down the city's Chinatown. https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/rock-springs-massacre 

    • The Page Act of 1875, which prohibited the entry of Chinese and East Asian women. The law’s sponsor, Horace F. Page, described the bill to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.” The Chinese Exclusion Act which banned Chinese men followed in 1882. 

    • On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which placed 120,000+ Japanese Americans in internment camps, regardless of their citizenship status. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-signs-executive-order-9066 

    • On March 16, 1968, American soldiers massacred a village of Vietnamese civilians of mostly women, children, and old men. This is known as the MyLai Massacre. 

    • On June 19, 1982 Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was killed by two white male auto workers who blamed the decline of American automaking on the Japanese. The killers received slaps on their wrists. 

    • The 1989 mass shooting at a Stockton, California elementary school that killed 5 Cambodian and Vietnamese children (all under 10 years old) and injured 30. The killer was a 24 year old white male “drifter” who later turned the gun on himself.  https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/stockton/need-to-know-the-1989-cleveland-school-shooting/103-bf6463b2-ce78-4ba1-9216-fc2c79907f82 

    • During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, 2,200 Korean owned businesses were damaged. This time was known as Sa-I-Gu by Korean Americans. 

    • The 2012 killing of six Sikhs at their Oak Creek, Wisconsin temple by a 40 year old white male veteran and white supremacist. https://www.cnn.com/2012/08/06/us/wisconsin-temple-shooting

Resources (more will be updated):

Stop Asian Hate StopAAPIHate.com

Addressing Anti-Racism with students https://smithsonianapa.org/learn/learn-archives/2020-04/