K Tempest Tumbles

jhameia:

titotibok:

After ESPN called Jeremy Lin a “chink” in an article headline and KPOP songwriter Jenny Hyun argued for genocide against black people, race scholar Dr. Sarah Jackson tweeted about things that blacks and Asians in the US share:

On the real though there is a lot of love and history between Black folks and Asian folks no matter what these individual a-holes do/say.

So I will now tweet some facts in the name of Afro-Asian love. #spreadlovenothate

(click on the link to read more!)

I have many feelings about this.

On the one hand, yes, absolutely, we need to remember the histories of black and Asian peoples working together in cooperation, that we benefited from relationships with each other long before white supremacists came to fuck shit up and before many Asians started drinking the whiteness Kool-Aid. We need to remember those histories because they give us a point of reference to move forward with, and also to help us envision what solidarity looks like.

But.

I also feel it’s necessary to recognize the systemic privilege that Asians benefit from, even as it’s from a Model Minority position, especially those of us who are of East Asian descent (and as ardhra reminded us yesterday, those of us who are upwardly mobile and affluent). Not just within the U.S./Canada, but elsewhere as well, where in Asian countries, black peoples face racism, and colorism/shadism further complicate and drive in the divides. 

There’s room for both sets of conversations, right?