Korean Quarterly

Giving Voice to the Korean American Community

George Floyd

Writers at a turning point in history

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Author Interview: In We Are Meant to Rise, BIPOC Minnesotans write about being at ground zero of a racial reckoning | By Martha Vickery (Spring 2022)

We Are Meant to Rise co-editor David Mura speaks at the book launch at Next Chapter Booksellers in Minneapolis. Photo by Heather Skinner

In the pre-pandemic days of 2019, Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura, longtime friends, writers, writing instructors, and collaborators in conducting community conversations about race, put out a call to writers of color in the Twin Cities.

The initial goal was to assemble an anthology some of the life stories shared in the panel conversations held through a community program dubbed More Than a Single Story.  However, after the topic was all decided, history unfolded in Minneapolis. Everything changed, including the trajectory of the planned anthology.

As 2019 turned into 2020, the two co-editors revised their call for stories twice; once to invite the writers to tell stories about the pandemic, and a second time, in the weeks following May 2020, to invite them to write of their thoughts about the George Floyd murder, the demonstrations in the Twin Cities afterwards, and the effect of these events on their lives.

This turning point in history from the point of view of writers living in that place and time is captured in We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World, an anthology of 34 stories that launched at the end of 2021 by the University of Minnesota Press.

We Are Meant to Rise co-editor Carolyn Holbrook and contributor Sun Yung Shin.

In mid-2019, Holbrook and Mura were well prepared to embark on collecting the stories gleaned from a wealth of community conversations.  There were five years of stories from Holbrook’s ongoing panel discussion series More Than a Single Story, originally designed as a panel series for black women of various ethnic backgrounds, which expanded to include other women of color. The program later added a writing component.

This ongoing program collaborates with public libraries, the Loft Literary Center, and other venues.  Mura joined the program three years in, designing cross-cultural discussions for men of color, as he has done for other programs in the past.

Inviting the would-be anthology writers to write on the topics of pandemic and racial justice, particularly because many of the participants were Twin Cities writers of color, was instinctive.

Holbrook, a Hamline University creative writing professor, explained that the trauma of the times meant assembling the anthology would take longer than original calendar called for.  “There were several people… they were just unable to write for awhile,” she said.  “The pandemic affected people in such so many different ways.  Many people who just write all the time were just flattened and couldn’t write anything.” 

To encourage the writers, she said, “we had a Zoom meeting with several of those people and just had a really nice conversation with them, so that they could try to release whatever was holding them back.”  After that conversation, she said “the pieces began to flow.”  The editors also personally invited some well-known Twin Cities writers of color to contribute.

The collection in We Are Meant to Rise contains both prose and poetry.  It includes first-person accounts of those who witnessed and/or participated in demonstrations following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police.  It also takes in reflections of writers with Minnesota connections, contributing their perspectives of how the moment of racial reckoning reverberated with them.

Some writers recall events that happened during the demonstrations, in that neighborhood, such as Melissa Olson, who writes a journalistic account of how she and family members saved a radio archive, 1200 reels of audiotape from 15 years of interviews by the Minneapolis Native American media organization Migizi Communications, by taking them home in her van, while the buildings on either side of the Migizi headquarters were burning.  Two days after moving the archives, the Migizi building also burned to the ground.  She writes that fire trucks never came.

Other writers submitted first person accounts of how the pandemic and the racial violence have affected them personally.  Author/activist Shannon Gibney describes seeing play out before her a version of what James Baldwin wrote in 1962 about “the fire next time,” describing how as black Americans move out of what white society sees as their prescribed place “heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.” 

Minneapolis poet and writer Bao Phi reflects on living in and bringing up his young daughter in the place where George Floyd was killed.  He and his daughter lay a teddy bear on the memorial for Floyd, and he describes in his essay how the traumas have penetrated her.  He writes that she is afraid of police, and asks him often when she hears a sound at night if someone is breaking in.

Korean Minnesotan poet/playwright Ed Bok Lee’s 23-part prose poem Pandemic Love observes the pandemic loneliness and the impossibility of understanding the moment even as an eyewitness, as he walks around in South Minneapolis in the summer after the George Floyd murder and demonstrations.  Holbrook described Lee’s work as “an invocation,” and said she wanted it to be the first piece in the collection, after the introductory essays.

Lee was quarantined with his then three-year-old daughter in summer 2020 in their third-floor apartment, just blocks away from Cup Foods, where George Floyd was killed. Cut off from friends and other family, and many of the usual ways of amusing his daughter, the two of them took a lot of walks, he said, listening to constant sirens, observing what was happening in the neighborhood.  Her ability to express herself with words grew fast that summer, and she asked a lot of questions.  Amid a lot of confusion, external and internal, he treasures the one-on-one time he spent with his child at a critical time, noticed how their relationship deepened, and how she kept him grounded.

He attaches the word “alone-ness” to how he and others experienced the pandemic amid other new and unfolding traumas.  He searched for what was just below the surface of consciousness during the summer 2020 events, trying to get at that level in his poem.  “Not a lot of people had the language to process what was going on — it was all coming so fast,” he said, with pandemic confusion, racial uprising, jobs and events cancelled, with parents and kids suddenly at home together.  “People were sitting with all these questions, in alone-ness.”

At that moment, Lee said, he was trying to record what happened internally, and it spilled onto the page with what words he could gather up at the time.  In five years, he said, he would be able to do a better job, but he felt a duty to write what he could. 

Creative writers are “journalists of the interior life as they’re experiencing things — on the streets but also deep within them and within the psyche,” he said.  “And not just their own individual psyche but the psyche of society.  That is the poet’s and the creative writer’s job.”  He describes himself in Pandemic Love as cynical, but writes that “at your core, it’s hope more than habit that gets you up in the morning.”

Minneapolis poet/racial justice activist (and Korean adoptee) Sun Yung Shin penned a first-person self-interview entitled A Tangent to a Story About the Smith & Wesson .38, or Attempts to be Fully Assimilated into the White American Project Have Failed Miserably, in the Form of a Self-Questionnaire, in which she is the interviewee, a Korean adoptee who has little information about her origins, and apparently also asking the questions, in the voice of an interviewer who is frustrated that the interviewee seems not to be able to provide the simplest information.  With some dark humor, she brings out many questions that Korean adoptees cannot answer about themselves, even “when were you born?”

Shin, who was the editor of the 2016 anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, a collection of stories of Minnesotans with racialized prejudice, oppression and violence, said her creative piece for We Are Meant to Rise was freeing in that she could just write on a topic from a Korean adoptee perspective.  It was good not to be the editor.

Issues of belonging echo in the Korean adoptee experience, Shin said, and broadly in the community of Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) “in terms of white supremacy and the society that is created and sustained, saying some people belong some places, some people belong in other places, some people don’t belong at all, and some people don’t deserve to live, some people don’t deserve safety.”

This is the paradigm that led to George Floyd’s murder, she said, “which is that an alleged counterfeit $20 bill is more important than a human being’s life,” and that police authorities and other hierarchies get to make those calls. 

As an activist, Shin said, her work to educate about racist policies and heal racism has also been through “cross-racial” efforts to do work to “understand, repair, and transform” relationships.  She notes that racialization is bigger than just Black and white; it is part of a bigger system that takes in Asian Americans and others of many races.  Participating in the anthology was one way to be in discussion with others.  She seeks out such discussions, whether virtual, digital, or in person.  In-person gatherings are the best, she said, because of the sensitive nature of the topic. Shin will speak at some in-person events for We Were Meant to Rise later in 2022.

Mura describes the collection as a moment of history observed from many angles.  The rainbow of perspectives, from people of different ages and generations, he said, as well as the perspectives of people who grew up in the neighborhood or who live in the neighborhood now, make the collection unique. Including descriptions of the racial reckoning by indigenous Twin Citians puts the moment into a broad historical context of white oppression and genocide in Minnesota, he added.

Korean adoptee artists and writers like Sun Yung Shin and actor Sun Mee Chomet are examples of artists who have also become activists in the Twin Cities.  Mura credits Theater Mu for showcasing adoptee stories and encouraging adoptee playwrights and actors since the 1990s.

The anthology also showcases the maturity of the literary community of color in the Twin Cities.  “It is a very activist and politically-engaged community, also a very diverse community and one that has produced incredibly excellent art.”  At the same time, he said, this diverse community is very personally interconnected, even within families.  He related how comedian/storyteller Tou Xiong, addressing an local audience, asked how many Hmong folks in the audience had a black family member, and watched many hands shoot up, amid knowing chuckles.

As a Twin Cities resident since 1970, Mura said the notion of who Twin Citians are has undergone some shifts, but that it needs to continue to change in order to reflect reality.  South High School in South Minneapolis, Mura said, where his kids went to high school, is now 30 percent white, with the rest indigenous, black, East African, Asian American and Latinex.  This indicates that the diversity reflected in the anthology is a realistic demographic mix of the present and future Twin Cities.

“The traditional viewpoint of what Minnesota is comes from Mary Tyler Moore and Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, and that’s not what this area is any more,” he said.

Lee recalled that after the Obama election, there was mainstream talk that the U.S. had entered an era of a “post-racial America” which meant that ongoing racial tensions got much less attention in popular culture.  People of color never bought the “post-racial” notion, he added. Although the same kinds of police brutality and racial tensions have been happening for many years, Lee observed, the George Floyd moment gave it a kind of identity and attention it never had before.  Contributors to this collection, and many other artists of color, he said, have grabbed the moment to advocate for greater recognition of longstanding and systemic racial injustice issues.

Lee said the anthology captures a moment in time that is not available to those who did not experience the aftermath of the George Floyd murder as it unfolded in Minneapolis.  It is also a testament to democratic ideals that writers of all different backgrounds and walks of life added their voices to this collection.  “They are all BIPOC writers, but that’s almost the only thing they have in common,” he said, “that’s why it’s such a good microcosm of the democratization of whose story gets told.” 

Events for We Are Meant to Rise will be held later in 2022, and are listed on the website of More than a Single Story, at: www.morethanasinglestory.com.  Events are also listed at the website of the University of Minnesota Press, at: www.umnpress.edu.

An emerging racial reckoning

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Profiles of KAD Relations with the Black Community: ’92 to ’20 ~ By Woo Ae Yi (Ame Ai)

(LitPrime Solutions Press, Torrence (CA), 2020, ISBN #978-1-9533-9721-8)

Review by Bill Drucker (Summer 2021 issue)

In 2020, at the height of the racial tensions, something else was occurring.  The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) received support from the Asian and Latin communities.  Among Asian American supporters was a subset of Korean adoptees (the author uses the term KAD in the title and throughout the book to refer to Korean adoptees). These minority groups all have in common the issues of dealing with social inequity and racism.

Author Woo Ae Yi’s publication could not be more timely.  It examines the cultural and historical views of Korean American and African American conflicts in America.  Her specific social timeframe is from the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (Sa-I-Gu or 4-29 to Koreans) to the 2020 George Floyd shooting in Minneapolis.

Yi’s observations as spectator and participant resonate on many levels.  Black, Asian and other groups are moving in solidarity, and activists are not just demanding a call to action, they are offering workable solutions to the challenging racial moment in which they find themselves.  The author believes that the 2020s decade could be the new proving ground for social and racial reforms. 

Yi makes a key point that Korean adoptees can serve a significant role in ethnic/racial justice movements, particularly as a bridge to the BLM movement.  She sees that Korean adoptees share many commonalities with Blacks, and but also occupy a special status in the social mainstream.  As Yi states, Korean adoptees are accustomed to relationships across cultures and races, with whites, Blacks, and other people of color.

The author discusses Korean American and Korean adoptee relations with the Black community.  She argues that the media has largely profiled African Americans and Korean Americans in a negative light.  While the stereotype of Blacks is that they are a group to be feared, Koreans conversely are unseen and invisible unless some conflict arises, such as the recent rise of anti-Asian hate crimes.

The relationship between Koreans and Blacks in the U.S. has been poor overall, mainly due to mutual ignorance and distrust of the other group.  The racial collision of immigrant Koreans and Blacks in a small, poor section of Los Angeles culminated in the 1992 LA Riots with the burning and looting of Koreatown. There was a slow rebuild of the neighborhood after the riots, but today, LA Koreatown thrives as a tourist destination.

Demographic shifts have altered the landscape and social fabric.  The influx of new Asians and Latinos into predominantly Black areas altered the neighborhoods from Black to Black-mixed culture neighborhoods.  Koreans moved into sections also occupied by Blacks and Latinos.  Korean adoptees also moved into Asian-strong or mixed communities in larger cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Paul-Minneapolis, and New York.

As Yi notes, Koreans and Blacks misunderstand one another.  Even when living in close proximity in LA, DC, and other metro areas, Blacks and Koreans have traditionally stayed apart.  In community development, the Black community has been strong politically, but weak financially.  The opposite occurred in Korean communities.  Despite similar social disparities and racism, seldom did the two groups cross over.

If Korean Americans tended to dislike Blacks, they also disliked Korean adoptees. The Korean adoptee brand of Korean-ness was not enough them to be accepted into the very stratified social system which is Korean America.  It was only when Korean adoptees found each other that a new international community was created, the Korean Adoptee Nation.  KADs united, forming an empowered base.  They lobbied for adoptee rights, then moved on to social and racial activism.  It was a matter of time when KAD activities intersected with the Black and other communities.

The author also profiles some influential Korean Americans and Black Americans.  Among the two groups are the issues of identity and acceptance, racism at home and work, dating and marriage, familial and social expectations, conforming or living outside the box.  As adoptees and in mixed-race homes, Korean adoptees experience with racism can be overt and/or subtle.  Conflicts arise with family, friends, and co-workers. The same or similar issues may resurface in marriage and child raising. 

The first group (interviewed in  2007) are Korean and Black adoptees who belong to white American families.  Interviewees include Hollee McGinnis, Jennifer Arndt-Johns, Nabiya, Rhonda Roorda, SooJin Pate, Tabetha Jones and Thomas Park-Clement.

The second group of adoptees (interviewed in 2020) was more engaged in transracial and transcultural relations.  As a group, they were more familiar with Black Americans and activism.  Issues of racism come up being Korean or Black, or Korean Black.  Included are Amy Elizabeth, Bree Davis, David Taylor, Enetty Taylor, Hayley Hoffman, Helsen Valdes, Holly Choon Hyang Bachman, JaeHee Melanie Chung-Sherman, Jessica Farrell, Jordan Davis, Lisa A. Quaites, Matthew Goodman, Milton Washington, Monica Kim, Rachel Kavanagh Baldwin, Renford Reese, Rutledge, SooJin Pate, Yoon-Sook Kim, and Young-wha.

All the interviewees have dealt with racism.  They are aware of or witnesses to the 1992 LA Riots and the 2020 George Floyd killing.  All have become more sensitive to racial justice issues as a result.  For Korean-Black couples, navigating color, race, and gender issues in their personal relationships can be a rude awakening. 

The author, a Korean adoptee, writes that adoptive white mainstream parents tend to see their children as white, whether the child is Korean or Black.  She questions whether they are colorblind, color-ignorant, or color denying.  As Yi states, to deny that an adoptive family is now an interracial family can be as detrimental as prejudicial remarks about people of the adoptee’s race.  While parents practice liberal colorblindness, the adoptees unfortunately still feel their racial difference in the home and outside.  One Korean adoptee mentions it as the sense of Asian token-ness.

Another adoptee brought up that  “most white [parents to adoptees] have seldom been the minority in a room.  My surrogate birthmother’s family invited us to a traditional Korean celebration that was in Korean.  My mother clung to me, for the first time in her life experiencing what I experienced most of the time.”

Notably, as adoptees select mates, interracial relations impact the adoptive parents.  They may act colorblind, the author writes, but race does matter to adoptive parents. Parents may accept out of a sense of liberal posture, push for same race relations, or may outright object.  At least two families and two races are involved in negotiating such new relationships, and no choices are easy or simple.  

Yi states that among Korean adoptees, colorblindness in itself is considered a form of racism, specifically microaggression. One Black adoptee pointed out that the Black parents see you as the same color, even if you are mixed race.  On the other hand, the Korean culture has had trouble accepting Koreans orphans or mixed-race children.

Author Yi discusses the less-addressed issues of racially-motivated emotional trauma.  Black and Korean adoptees shared many common emotional issues.  Among Korean adoptees, “never rock the boat” is a common mantra.  The author asserts that Korean adoptees tend to bottle up traumas, such as school bullying or name-calling. As one adoptee states, maybe if we spoke out sooner, the topics of racism in interracial families could have been addressed more openly, honestly, and supportively.

Korean adoptees have some of the highest rate of suicides in America and Europe.  Trauma in this community stems from loss of identity and culture, racism, and abuse.  For Black adoptees, the trauma can be more physical and violent.  For mixed Korean-Black adoptees, the issues are compounded by racism, color, gender, and status.  All three groups of adoptees have experienced racial trauma, as children and as adults.

The issues of Korean adoptee and Blacks and Black Adoptees trauma are underserved.  The seminal reference book, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is criticized as being an authoritative reference with a “white” lens.  Yi argues for the inclusion of adoption-based and race-based trauma into the DSM.

Yi points out, “It’s apparent that we’re not asking the right questions to understand how we can fix this country, and the problem is that we want quick and easy solutions, but it will require depth and compassion to understand and hear the depth of someone’s pain.  What we are actually dealing with is deep trauma, for both the transracial adoptee, the Black adoptee, and Blacks in general.”

The author writes that Korean and/or Black adoptees can lobby for the inclusion of both adoption-based trauma and race-based traumatic stress into the DSM so it can be studied, diagnosed, and treated in an official manner.  Adoptees can create forums, open discussions, and provide support those who are experiencing trauma.

Yi and her interviewees often point to educating and correcting white authorities.  The white community or the nameless institutions cannot bear full brunt of the tense, racial environment.  A better social understanding is necessary.  Voicing serves its purpose, but protests and demands only go so far.  Solutions should come from adoptees, Blacks, Koreans, and other people of color – in solidarity, to create inclusion in the challenging social issues of the day.  Yi stresses that the participation of Korean adoptees can be a bridge between white, Black and other ethnic/racial communities.

Yi was born in Seoul, South Korea and is a U.S. citizen.  She was adopted into a white family and grew up in the Little Korea neighborhood of the metropolitan DC area.  She has published 12 books on a variety of subjects.  She is a volunteer at the adoptee organization AdopteeHub as a copywriter.

Street level in Minneapolis: May 2020 to April 2021

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Standing for Black and Asian lives in Minnesota, two women find a partner in the battle | By Sarah Han and Kat Porter (spring 2021 issue)

Minneapolis demonstration. Photo by Sarah Han

Sarah Han: May 25, 2020
Four months into a global pandemic, the world had shut down. Violence towards Asian people had increased exponentially due to the racist tone of the Trump administration. I watched a Black man die underneath a white policeman’s knee. It lasted eight minutes and 46 seconds. Not only did I see the life drain from the eyes of George Floyd, but I joined my hometown as a spectator to the racism that had always been there. I witnessed destruction worthy of the start of an apocalypse. To be completely transparent, I could not connect the senseless killing of this man to my experience.

Although I didn’t understand where I belonged in this, something drew me to join the protesters to support Black Lives Matter. I marched with my sign. I taught the kids at my school the importance of this movement. I called out to my white friends on social media to do more. I did everything my white-adjacent person knew how to do. As time went by and I watched the destruction of my city, my fear mounted. 

Kat Porter: May 25, 2020 
I was off work that day. I had recently joined TikTok as a form of solace from the isolation of the pandemic. I received a phone call from my 25-year- old son regarding a Black man’s death at the hands of the police. It happened two blocks from where I raised two of the five of my children, in the Bancroft neighborhood of South Minneapolis.  Not long after, I had watched many videos of this Black man’s death that happened in front of the store we had often frequented for essentials.  He could have been my brother. 

It sucked the life out of me when I saw, on TikTok, a Black man being pinned to the pavement by his neck.  It was the same pavement on which my children and I had often stood, waiting to conduct the activities of our lives. George Floyd’s life leaving his body under Derek Chauvin’s knee tapped into the trauma of Alton Sterling saying repeatedly, “I can’t breathe” just a day before Philando Castile lay bleeding in front of his girlfriend and her child.

Sarah: May 30, 2020    
My wife left me. A white woman walked out the door and out of a Korean adoptee’s life forever. I was left alone in a quarantine while the National Guard took over our cities. Fearing for my own safety, I locked all my windows and doors without hesitation. I downloaded a police scanner app to monitor if anything was happening in my neighborhood. I was left to fend for myself. The re-traumatization of the abandonment caused me to shut down.

I adjusted to the new reality of my existence. I questioned everyone and everything. I couldn’t trust anyone. The faith I had in love and in the good of people was gone. The hundreds of people dying from COVID-19, the ruin of the Twin Cities, and the ending of my marriage became too much. Everything I knew no longer existed.

Kat: May 31, 2020    
Nothing about my world was the same. I woke up and observed that the free spirit of Pride Month in Loring Park had disappeared. Instead of rainbow flags, the drab camouflage of the National Guard replaced the colorful garments of the drag queens at the festivities. Windows were boarded up, a reaction to the unrest that had come to the Loring Park neighborhood of downtown Minneapolis. I took refuge in the closet of the 12th floor apartment where I worked and lived, fearing that white nationalists would blow up the gas station behind my building. The only thing that brought me a sliver of comfort was making facemasks for loved ones.

My job put me at the front desk of a luxury residence, protecting white people, while Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) bodies were out there protecting my people. That was the afternoon that a semi-truck barreled into a sea of people while they demonstrated for racial justice on Highway I-35W. The finality of what I needed to do became clear. I sought help for my trauma, which led me to stop making excuses for my complacency. I had to fight.

Kat:  November 6, 2020
After three days of waiting for the election results, a collective exhale was heard throughout the nation when Kamala A. Harris was named the first Black/Asian female vice-president of the U.S.        

Sarah: November 6, 2020    
I had hope again. One of my people was in office. Perhaps we could move away from the white supremacy that kills and hurts Black and brown people every day.

Kat: November 6, 2020
I cried for two hours while I kept checking social media and made sure that my pink and green pashmina was clean, my Converse were on point, and my hair was flat-ironed and ready to go.

Sarah Han

Sarah: March 16, 2021    
Six Asian women were shot dead near Atlanta by a 21-year-old white man. Authorities said the cause was a sex addiction and that the suspect was “having a bad day.” The fact of the matter is, I am Asian and although I didn’t grow up in my skin, I am in my skin. This was made very clear to me that day.

Already experienced in rallies and marches, I searched the internet for an Asian American event. Finding one in Levin Park, Minneapolis, I attended it with a strange sensation the whole time I was there.  The speakers were talking about my people, our oppression, our history. We chanted, “Asian Lives Matter.” I saw many white men walking around and my thought was they were there to objectify and fetishize our women. My photo was taken by several photographers, an Asian woman with almond eyes brimming above her facemask, holding a sign that read “Say their names.”

When I got home, I processed this experience, and for the first time in my life I accepted the skin in which I was born. Things changed after that. A level of fear and anxiety entered my body and became significantly worse when I stepped foot out of my house. I was afraid to walk my dog. I was afraid to get groceries. I had a rational fear that someone driving would see me and run me down with their car. The thought of wearing sunglasses to hide my Korean eyes actually crossed my mind. 

The next day I had received a message from a Black woman I matched with on a dating app.

“How are you?”

“A little crazed from the whole Atlanta thing yesterday. How are you?”

“I’m feeling a little heavy, if I may be honest. This world is not a cool place right now! Are you okay?” My own parents didn’t reach out and ask how I was. This complete stranger who had survived years of her own injustice and violence showed concern for me. Little did I know that this was the beginning of something special.

Kat: March 16, 2021
I was exhausted. When I heard about the Asian women near Atlanta, it was the same violence I had witnessed in my own community. Another murdering white man who, after committing such violence, was still granted a level of humanity and decency by police, although his crazy act had just cost many BIPOC women’s lives. I was tired of trying to explain what mattered in my world. Being a Black woman in a sea of BIPOC folks, buried under white people, I just wanted to reach out to make sure my sisters were held up.

I saw somebody with whom I thought I could share a connection.

Social justice. Check.

Wanting better for our communities. Check.

Not being seen as an object or fetish. Check.

Validated for who we are. Check.

She wanted the same quality of life that I sought, and she was a woman wanting love, regardless of race, gender, class or beliefs. Most of all, I saw her as a human being. That may be generic, but over the past four years, dealing with the previous U.S. administration, it was easy to close myself off to others.  I think my closed-down thinking also came from the reality of being a Black woman in a world where Black and brown ideas of beauty seem so devalued.

Sarah Han and Kat Porter at a peaceful protest during Derek Charvin’s trial.

Kat: April 16, 2021    
The violence against Black people never stopped. A week before the Derek Chauvin verdict, a Black man was killed by a white policewoman during a traffic stop. We went to peacefully hold space in front of the Brooklyn Center police department. Thirty minutes after we arrived, the police announced that demonstrators had to disperse. I looked at Sarah and said, “we need to leave or else we will be arrested.”

We headed to the car which was half a block away when we spotted a line of law enforcement coming towards us. Given my experience with the authorities during protests and the violence that they are capable of, we had no other option than to run.

Brooklyn Center Police Department.

We turned to head in another direction and were met with another line of police. It quickly became chaotic, with people running every which way, jumping in their cars and dodging the men with the batons. When we realized there was no possibility of a safe exit, Sarah showed physical distress and I was done running. A military vehicle pulled in front of us as 100 suited-up men screamed at us to get on the ground and put our hands up. We complied. Alongside hundreds of others, our hands were zip-tied behind our backs and then were escorted to police vehicles. Our identification was recorded, pictures taken, and we were put on a heavily-guarded prison bus.

Sarah:  April 16, 2021, 10:30 p.m.
I thought I was going to vomit sitting in the back of the cop car. Adrenaline pulsed through me with the fear for Kat’s and my own safety as women of color. They ripped me out of the car and put me on the bus. I sat there with 20 other arrestees, and prayed that Kat was okay.

Kat: 10:30 p.m.
I knew the drill. Stay calm. Don’t be flippant. Observe. Much like I’ve done in the past.  I could tell by Sarah’s face that she didn’t understand what was happening. It was more important to observe everything that was going on, versus demanding that I be treated fairly. I wanted to know what my arresting officer looked like, the tone of his voice, any remarkable features or anything out of the ordinary that I would need to report later if I was mistreated    

Sarah:  11 p.m.
The door to the bus opened and she was there. I moved to sit near Kat and we quietly discussed what might happen. She was calm, cool, and collected. I was not. The prison bus left Brooklyn Center around 11:45, and headed towards downtown Minneapolis to the Hennepin County jail.

Kat: 11:45 p.m.
I checked out  (emotionally)  by the time the bus drove underground to the jail entrance.  My only hope was that I would make it out… alive. The processing began, and they put me on the men’s side. Sarah went to the women’s side. I was alone throughout the booking process. Sarah had support from about 10 other women who were arrested. I complied with everything, but I was treated like an animal.

Sarah: April 17, 2021: 1 a.m.
I had to disassociate. If I allowed my emotions to attend this experience then I would have had a panic attack. I somehow survived the four-hour booking process, the body search, the mugshot, the constant questions, the medical check and the sitting in the dirty, tiny holding cells. At 4 a.m. they walked us up to Block B on the fourth floor.

Kat: 1:30 a.m.
I unrolled the itchy wool blanket. I looked around my cell and saw a disgusting toilet and sink. There were drawings on the wall, bodily fluid stains and other unknown stains. I sat on my bottom bunk and held onto the blankets. The bright fluorescent lights dimmed and I noticed that one of the drawings was dated April 27, 2012. I was sick. I didn’t hear anyone else come into the area. I resisted sleep.

Sarah: 4:30 a.m.
I laid on my bunk afraid of the quiet. My cell had a drawing on the wall of a potted cactus flowering. I am pretty sure it was drawn with feces. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. I worried about Kat.

Kat: 7:30 a.m.
The lights came back on and breakfast was delivered, consisting of milk, juice, and cereal bars. An hour later a guard opened our door and said we had an hour to walk around the common area. I walked across the room, and through a slatted window I saw Sarah’s tattooed arm. I approached her cell and we talked through the slot in the door.

Sarah: 7:30 a.m.
Seeing Kat’s face through the window after not knowing where they had taken her made my heart skip a beat. She was unharmed, that was all I cared about.

Kat: 1:30 p.m.
A guard banged on my door and said, “Porter, roll up your bed and go through that door.”

Sarah: 1:30 p.m.
I was on the phone making a collect call when I saw a guard tell Kat to get her stuff and exit the block. I hung up and she approached me and said she was being released. We were both released and breathing fresh air by 2:34 p.m.  Right after that, we discovered that my car had been towed. It cost $300 to get it out of the impound lot. I had numbness and pain in my left hand, and later found out I had suffered nerve damage from the zip-ties being too tight. Another $250 for a doctor visit. Peaceful protesting costs a lot.

George Floyd Square in Minneapolis. Photo by Sarah Han

Kat and Sarah:  April 18, 2021
We travelled to George Floyd Square to attend a celebration honoring the historic connection between Black and Asian communities. Standing side by side in a sea of white people, feeling distrustful, given the past 24 hours, all we had was each other. This experience that we weathered through together as a Black woman and a Korean woman secured the need to continue to fight for both races despite the white supremist wedge. For Kat, embracing the Asian folks in her life allows her to understand the commonalities that exist, but she doesn’t take for granted the path that her Asian sisters have to walk. We build each other up. We put our heads and hearts together, and through that, we find respect. When we stand alone, Kat sees 180 degrees, Sarah sees 180 degrees. But when we hug one another, Sarah sees Kat’s back and Kat sees Sarah’s back.

Visiting the Gold Spa parking lot

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One Minnesotan connects with Atlanta Korean Americans post tragedy | By Mae Ouhr (Spring 2021 issue)

Gold Spa in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Mae Ouhr

Mid-February 2021, I had just lost a long-time friend. The third in three months. Preoccupied with grief, on March 16, the first words out about the Atlanta spa murders only grazed my consciousness. My body connected to the upheaval before my mind did.  My realization of what had happened there unfolded over time.   

I read a few headlines late Tuesday. “Not another shooting…” I thought. Wednesday, the rest of the information trickled in.  A witness quoted in the South Korean Chosun Ilbo newspaper heard the 21-year-old killer, Robert Long, scream: “I am going to kill all Asians” before the shooting at one of the three spas he attacked that day. Atlanta police Captain Jay Baker explained the killer’s motive to the nation sympathetically: “He was pretty much fed up, and kind of at [the] end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.” From the police captain’s perspective, killing eight people (half of whom were Korean) seemed like nothing more than a tough/bad decision.  An accident.  Our lives might just have to be sacrificed for a 21-year-old’s bad day.

There were so many layers of rage and grief in reading the shooter’s declaration of hate.  I am an adoptee. I grew up in a small town where I was the only minority in the entire school.  I was no stranger to racial jokes and slurs, physical assault, discrimination; starting around age six. My well-intentioned white family did not understand, would/could not support my racial experience growing up.  Before I learned to love my ethnicity, I had already spent four-and-a-half decades internalizing racism that became self-hatred.  Ideas about being Korean made me very uncomfortable and alienated. The closest thing that I had to Asian pride was acknowledgements of my race through self-deprecating jokes.

Growing up, I had conversations about race that included whitewashing, such as “Everyone is the same/We don’t see color.”  I noted inaccurate perspectives of post-racial America: “We marched for civil rights back in the ‘60s, so racism isn’t a problem in America anymore.”

I also heard a lot of denial, because, for some, making a problem invisible is the next best thing to solving it: “Why do you have to bring that (racism you experienced) up?  Are you trying to upset everyone?”  “Can’t we just have a nice time? You ruin everything.” “Get over it.”  “Forget about it, keep working, you will be fine.”

I also was subject to outright gaslighting: “Racism is probably just in your head.”  “You don’t know if that (bad behavior doled out to the only minority in a group) was racism.  Don’t be like that.” “You are handicapping yourself by thinking people are against you.”  I was conditioned to never play the race card.

I’ve worked a myriad of customer service jobs.  Dealing with micro-aggressions, blatant racism, and intrusive questions affected me and continued to shape my ideas about the way others see me.  The dreaded question “Where are you from?” sometimes included every ethnicity except Korean.  I was asked if or routinely told that I looked Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian.

I knew there were many Asian countries, but in America, Asians are perceived as “all the same.” Remembering Vincent Chin, I knew this could be fatal to people with faces like mine.

In 2018, decades after Hallyu the Korean Wave of pop culture, that also made Korea and Korean-ness visible, I returned to the Motherland. I learned to appreciate and take pride in being Korean for the first time in my life.  In early 2020, I was one of the people who initially did not think the coronavirus was a threat.  I perceived the first threat to be the immediate rise in violence against Asian people.  When people I knew referred to COVID-19 as the virus from Wu Han, or the China-virus, or spoke negatively about China’s government, I would get upset. This was not because of national politics, but because I already was starting to fear for the safety of Asian Americans.

In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) amended guidelines, advising national authorities, science and medical communities to not name diseases with terms that include: “Geographic locations, cultural or population references, or terms that incite undue fear” (WHO, 2015).  A disease named after a location motivates backlash against people related to that place, which can include violence and murder. Yet some white friends, who claim to be liberal, still did/would not recognize how calling COVID the “China virus” exacerbates the threat to all Asians. 

Asian Americans have been assaulted while grocery-shopping with infants, taking out the garbage, walking their dogs, going to work, sitting on the bus.  In seeing so many headlines reading “Asian attacked” or “Asian assaulted,” the only commonality that I saw was an Asian face scapegoated.  I know what I saw.  I recognized it.  And I recognized the denial by the media and law enforcement denying these were hate crimes.  It was a very old and familiar frustration.  I read of repeated acts of racism followed by public denials of prejudice in America.  In a way the truth made public was finally validating, but it was the kind of validation that I never wanted.

When Atlanta happened, my body physically reacted with shock, trauma and grief beyond what my brain was able to comprehend.  It’s impossible for me to discuss Atlanta without relating it to George Floyd, and most recently Daunte Wright. Injustice to one is injustice to all.

When I just turned 21, one of my first Black friends explained to me why they would not tolerate anti-Asian/any racially hateful statements.  He was one of the first persons to verbalize the idea: “I don’t tolerate anti-Asian talk, because the same people that call Asians “ch###s” use the n-word behind my back.”  I felt I found my family.  I started to learn about solidarity.

George Floyd was my age, we both worked in security around town. I felt connected to him. Perhaps it was because of these parallels that I was putting myself in his place as a person of color.  For that and other reasons I can’t name even now, his public execution by police affected me.  Deeply.

For about half of the summer of 2020, I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours. I was experiencing hypervigilance. Since I couldn’t sleep, I read, and learned quite a bit about trauma and the sympathetic nervous system, as I tried to make sense of what was happening inside me.

Following the Atlanta mass murders, I recognized this reaction returning. For the first four days, I would cry every morning, and throughout the day.  By end of the week, I would only cry once a day.  Progress.  I constantly was frustrated and angry. I felt isolated.  Alone.  Enraged at the police press release that sympathized with the murder; “news” and law-enforcement that still insisted “there was no proof that the Atlanta shootings were hate crimes.”

One day, I offhandedly mentioned I felt like going down there. That thought, that verbalization, sparked the first alleviation of anxiety, stress, anger and frustration that I was feeling.  I mentioned this to a few more people.  On a Korean adoptee page, somebody I didn’t know offered to let me stay with their family.  The more I started to plan, the less despair I felt.  I wanted to go and see for myself what was really going on. I wanted to see Koreatown in Atlanta. I wanted to show up in solidarity for my community.  I wanted to connect with some organizations, and bring back knowledge to help people in my city.  I wanted to eat Korean BBQ.

A few nights before I left, I participated in a Zoom meeting with AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) Korean adoptees from the west coast, east coast the southern U.S. and Europe.  It was such a relief to be able to talk about the tragedy without having to navigate any white fragility.  It was no surprise that our reactions were almost identical.  Though the group members were different ages, occupations, adopted family experiences and religious/political backgrounds, we all were crying, anxious, unable to sleep, frustrated and exhausted. Even among those isolated from any incidents of anti-Asian hate, we felt the same, around the world.

Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta. Photo by Mae Ouhr

I did not have many expectations.  It was raining the day I left.  It rained every day that I was in Georgia.  I visited my first H Mart (an everything-Korean franchise super-store) in Atlanta, and then we went to Gold Spa and the Aromatherapy Spa. Approaching Gold Spa, my mind went momentarily blank.  My shock melted into sadness, seeing the gigantic word “L O V E” arranged in the parking lot, constructed with tree branches and flowers. So many flowers. Signs. Messages. Memorial offerings.  I read notes about each person lost.  That was the most difficult.  The pain of their families was my pain.  The loss of their community was loss of my community.  It was the loss of our family, our community, uri, (“our” in Korean) grief had rippled around the world.  People could try to deny or ignore it, but our bereavement did not care, and did not rest.

Photo by Mae Ouhr

I also attended a conference at the Korean American Coalition (KAC) in Atlanta. Researching different Asian organizations in Georgia I noticed KAC did not list an address on their website.  I assumed it was for protection of the building and Koreans who were there.  KAC also held a vigil, which was grounding. There were prayers from Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian denominations.  The Black and Jewish community showed up to represent, offering solidarity.  There was music and poetry.  There was a healing strength in unity.

Takeaways: It is important to reach out to like-minded people, and that positive activity can decrease negative rumination, depression, anxiety and anger.   I found like minds in the Twin Cities through the Minnesota Asian Safety Squad.  The Asian Safety Squad is a volunteer group that does community security walks in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, in a popular Asian American shopping district.  It also offers free rides to elderly/differently-abled people in need.  Even walking together for this shared purpose has been very meaningful to me.

In all of our struggles, we are all interconnected — like it or not.  As individuals, our struggles may be different, but there are important intersectionalities.  We have more in common with each other than we do with our oppressors.  Now is a time for change.

The old ways of avoiding racism as Asian Americans, to “Put your head down, let go/get over injustice, and keep working,” are not the path to safety that we were once led to believe.  Not anymore.  At this point, upholding silence and endorsing Asian invisibility has gotten us hunted and murdered.  We (Asian communities and all marginalized people) need to continue to connect, adapt and evolve.  We need to be seen, heard, recognized and respected.  We need to lose the “divide and conquer” mentality.

Today, I had three work meetings discussing diversity, equity, inclusivity.  I experienced the healing power of connecting, and I gained strength in just discussing our truths.  Lived experience is real. People, both Asians and non-Asians, are learning about anti-Asian discrimination.  Asians are coming to grips with the racism they have battled and navigated their entire lives.

Atlanta has been an awakening for many people.  Now is a time for world change.  We have a chance to redefine ourselves, and fight for our right to exist in peace.  Unity is the only way. Solidarity for the win.

Lastly, demanding accountability of our police, politicians and our own communities is part of that.  The status quo model of how marginalized communities and what we will put up with as minorities in this culture is not working. What is the definition of insanity?  Repeating these same methods, expecting different results. We need to demolish and reconstruct.  The disaster of COVID has left some benefits in its wake, including the opportunity to rebuild something for our future. Let’s build. 

Inside the chaos, build a temple of Love.  ~ Rune Lazuli 

The art of being seen

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Mindy Tsonas Choi creates the Be Seen Project, an online space for artists of color working for social justice | By Martha Vickery (Winter 2021 issue)

Be Seen Project initiative: Red Mask Project, anti-racism visibility, by Minday Tsonas Choi.

An artist is, at the most basic, a master questioner and problem-solver, and Mindy Tsonas Choi has demonstrated that mix of skill and talent in creating the Be Seen Project.  It is a website devoted to the work of artists of color who are using art to speak for the marginalized and create cultural change.

The site provides a short introduction to each artist, with clickable links to their work. By design, the participating artists and crafters are Black, indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), working in media ranging from knitting to photography.  Their work is unified in one characteristic – using art in the cause of social justice. 

For example, the interactive I’m Tired Project invites people of color to submit photos of their bare backs or hands, with a message written on their skin of what they are tired of. “I’m tired of mourning my people,” is a message on one Black woman’s back in a black-and-white photo.  

Other projects invite participation in a charitable cause, such as the Knit the Rainbow project, which collects knitted garments and donates them to LGBTQ homeless youth. Knitters can participate by donating garments and also by knitting or crocheting tiny heart tags for the clothes, to remind recipients that someone cares.

Podcast guest Kam Redlawsk, a Korean adoptee illustrator and a self-described “Disability + Pleasure Advocate.”

Choi is passionate about articulating the project mission. To that end, the Be Seen Project also has a spin-off quarterly newsletter Brave Space + Being Seen, which reports on where Be Seen Project fundraising is going, among other topics. There is also the Be Seen Podcast, in which Choi discusses art more in depth with guest artists, exploring how “it is not just the artist and what they make, but the complexities of their lives and marginalization, and how that formed their work and how that shapes them as people.”

The idea of art as a change agent is central to the project.  Choi has recently revised the mission statement to read, in part: “The creative process is inherently revolutionary.  It reflects culture, invites engagement, archives history, builds relationship, and shares visions and narratives that can confront social systems in a powerful way when used as a tool for change.” 

The Be Seen Project may not have happened without the pandemic. Until March, Choi, who lives in northeastern Massachusetts with her husband and two sons, was working as the executive director of a program that organized artist’s retreats at a camp. The job folded, and so did the company, due to the lockdown.

Be Seen emerged, she said.  In the void of job loss, lockdown, “beginning to process the idea that racial inequities were being exposed, and Asian Americans attacked by the president around the origin of this virus. …It was one of those moments where I knew I was ready to take action but not knowing what exactly that would be.” 

Mindy Tsonas Choi creator of the Be Seen Project.

In addition to all of that, Choi is a Korean adoptee, and had begun a birth family search in early 2020, “and it has been a very long, winding road to get to that decision, and take the leap,” she said.

Back in 2015, she had “scribbled some notes” about the importance of being seen as an artist of color, and had thought about a future project in connection with that idea. It was never the right time. She describes her own realization that she wanted to “decolonize my own self from white communities and whiteness. Not the color of peoples’ skin but the systems of oppression she was living inside and sort of bound by, unknowingly.” 

Choi said she realized she could not lead a project so “direct and sometimes confrontational” unless she had worked on herself first.  “But as we came into 2020, it all magically sort of became the right time.  The work met the moment, and the moment met the work.”

One extra shot of kismet came when she was about to go live with the site – it was the day George Floyd was murdered.  “Like so many people, I had a such a visceral response to that event.”  It quickly became clear to her that part of the mission had to be about “making an impact in the realm of human rights and making a change for equity and justice.”

Choi wondered about the structure her future artists’ site, and what would happen if she built a BIPOC community from the ground up. Would it operate differently? Would it be more equitable than other ad-hoc arts-oriented communities she had known? Her conclusion so far “It is so much simpler to build something new that has diversity, equity and inclusion in its DNA than to turn something predominantly white into something more diverse, because of the culture it is built upon.”

Micro-grant recipient: Darci Kern, Craftivist, Knitter, photo recreation series Knitting While Black.

Be Seen Project’s structure has also pushed against conventional art economics, not necessarily promoting the successful, but raising up less-well-known artists whose work deserves attention. Her first “micro-grant” went to Be Seen artist Darcy Kern for her photo project Knitting While Black. Choi has been collecting donations for micro-grants and other supportive donations by making art pieces for sale, and developing some sponsors who wish to support the project. 

Identity is also a huge part of Choi’s work. “It probably has a lot to do with my being a Korean adoptee. I’m always curious about the intersection of all of our different identities and how that informs what we make in the world.”  A new podcast about to drop at the time of the interview is of Korean adoptee who is an industrial artist involved in “creating tools for people with differently-abled needs,” she said.

Choi often deals with questions about why she has not contributed art to the project. There is a value she treasures in saving that public face for others. “I wanted to create the space, and create the resources, and pass the torch,” she said. “We lean so heavy on and really validate individualism, that as soon as we want to talk about something more collective, that doesn’t have ownership, I think it short-circuits people’s brains a little bit. It is a kind of culture, and I am pushing also against that culture by not having myself in the project.” In other words, she said, “It’s not the Mindy Show!”

Also Check out Mindy Tsonas Choi’s essay: On Race and Belonging, Reclaiming my Korean Self that appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Korean Quarterly.

The year of loss and lessons

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Korean Quarterly’s snippets and snapshots of 2020, the weird year that was | Editor’s Note by Martha Vickery (Winter 2021 issue)

Korean Quarterly Winter 2021 cover of the print edition.

Toilet paper. That is what comes to mind about the beginning of the 2020 pandemic. It was a silly and selfish beginning phase of what became a horrifying challenge for our country.  The ridiculous specter of shoppers fighting over toilet paper in big box stores was emblematic. Toilet paper wars stood in for how our normal lives were, in fact, going down the toilet.

We learned quickly how important the many small things in life really are – going to the library, hanging at the coffee shop, hugging our loved ones, seeing our coworkers, going to a play or concert, because those things were suddenly impossible.  We complained.  We looked at our own four walls way too many times. We grieved the small things.  Some grieved the big things, like the loss of a career, or the biggest – loss of loved ones from a disease that left them dying alone.

For all of us our small and large disasters, they all seemed to shrink in importance because so many were happening to others all around us.  It was a shared year of loss.

It may be too soon even to have much historical perspective on 2020, or to draw many meaningful lessons from having gotten through it.  Right now, it’s more a sense of “What just happened?” like being hit by a truck, and watching it lumber away into the distance.

But this year in review is a chance to look back, on some of the good, bad, and ugly of a very weird year, as seen through the work of KQ’s reportage and its very perceptive contributors.

Winter 2020, before toilet paper weirdness
At the time we published the winter 2020 issue, the toilet paper mania was yet to come.  The new virus as something in China, too distant from our reality to worry about yet.   Was it sort of like the flu? We weren’t sure, and as we would learn many months later, Chinese authorities were deliberately tamping down release of information they knew about coronavirus at that time.

As South Korea competently ramped up to fight the virus, Americans were told by their fearless leader not to worry,  that it would one day disappear like magic.   Impeachment was ongoing. Columnist John Feffer wondered in his winter 2020 KQ column whether impeachment would even harm Trump’s chances for reelection, opining that it would really depend on whether the economy would hold steady through the election year. That prediction was partially fulfilled. The economy has tanked, but the reason Trump was not reelected was way more complex than the economy. It was not something anyone could have foreseen.

Taiko HERbeat

Also in February, KQ covered a once-in-a-lifetime get-together and concert HerBeat: Taiko Women All-Stars. Held at the Ordway Theater on February 29 to a packed house, the event took a year for local taiko artist/instructor (and Korean adoptee) Jennifer Weir to put together with funding, partners, timing, and invitations to 18 of the world’s most elite women taiko drummers. They had to be persuaded to come to Minnesota “in the dead of winter,” Weir remarked.  No event like it had ever been held.  Documentary filmmaker Dawn Mikkelson recorded the concert and other related events for a documentary film to be premiered sometime this year.

Weir spoke later about how the concert took place, serendipitously and luckily, just weeks before all performance venues had to shut down. If it had been two or three weeks later, it probably would not have happened at all. There is now a trailer for the film in which Weir says something like “This is the biggest thing I have done, ever, and it makes me very happy and slightly ill.” The trailer and other info about the film is available at a new website:  www.herbeatfilm.com

Illustration by Emma Wunrow

Pandemic uncertainty
The spring 2020 issue of KQ had a graphic of three Korean faces wearing masks imprinted with U.S. and Korean flags.  By then, the pandemic had arrived in the U.S. but it had arrived in Korea first.  Some columnists felt we were headed for a drastic change in our own country, while others observed how Koreans were intelligently beating back the coronavirus through infection control methods (story here), contact tracing, testing, and plain old common sense.

Frequent KQ contributor and artist Lora Vahlsing described how there was uncertainty and change in the air during her trip to New York in early March to take a yoga instructors’ workshop and have some fun with her daughter (story here).  One of the visits they made was to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The two went through many of the rooms of objects “from guitars to teapots,” enjoying the feeling of being around so much creative beauty.  That night, they found out that the Met had closed its doors indefinitely that day, due to pandemic restrictions. She writes that is encouraged that a pandemic cannot take her creative spirit from her. “Art is necessary precisely because it allows us agency: It both grounds and elevates us, and it can even keep our hearts from breaking during these uncertain times.”

Vahlsing was busy creating during the pandemic year. Some new creations, made of paper, thread and canvas are in an exhibit entitled What the Paper Reveals, at a gallery in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin through March 28. 

Columnist Seth Mountain, who writes from the perspective of an American living and working in South Korea delivered the bare truth that so many Americans hate, don’t want to hear and are still struggling with, that coronavirus is a “test for all of us”: 

Coronavirus doesn’t care how we respond. But in a democracy, this contagion can only be subdued by people who understand that freedom requires self-restraint and caring for neighbors. The curve can only be flattened by collective effort.

Columnist Christine Heimann, a Korean adoptee from the Twin Cities, works with children through a service organization for adoptees she co-founded, Adoptee Bridge.  After seeing Korean adoptee kids be the subject of racist remarks related to coronavirus, a beautiful, spare essay poured out of her that has enough food for thought for a year’s worth of podcasts or perhaps a Ph.D. thesis.

The jist of the essay is that through the ages, there were always racist or homophobic theories as to the origin of pandemics.  In the 1300s, Jews got the blame for the bubonic plague, in the 1980s, gay men got the blame for AIDS, and in 2014, West Africans got the blame for Ebola.  The flames of racism in the 2020 pandemic were further fanned by Trump as he continued to call COVID-19 “the Chinese virus.” 

Heimann wrote with hard-headed commonsense about realities that became clouded by the speculation, suspicion and rumor that was the daily news cycle around coronavirus.  “New diseases have been and will always be a part of our lives. We cannot let new diseases (or any new unknown) cause mass hysteria, and most importantly, we cannot permit new and unknown diseases to be an excuse for hate and racism.”

Teachers, actors, restaurateurs, and others who come into daily contact with the public had to either suspend their activities or retool to cope with new structures needed for a COVID reality in 2020. KQ checked in with friends and resource people around the Twin Cities about how coronavirus has affected their lives (story here).  One group we spoke with were several people engaged in education, from kindergarten to college.

Laura Sharp getting “assistance” from her dogs and two of her four children while working at home.

Laura Sharp, a music teacher and Korean adoptee who works for a school in Roseville, observed how teachers re-tooled a whole system in about three weeks to provide online education, child care for essential workers, and breakfast and lunch delivery to students in their homes.  The really tricky part, however, was persuading students to participate in their on-line education. 

Some students take to online like a duck to water.  Others drop out, and teachers don’t even see them again. Others are just too young. Teachers have a duty to make the online education as accessible and equitable as possible, but they can’t do much about the inequitable living situations some students experience. “That’s the powerful thing about teaching,” she said, “is that you do care about every single one of them.” 

KQ also checked in with the Minnesota Theater Alliance, which reported that an estimated 2,933 Asian Minnesotans’ jobs were affected by theater closures that happened in mid-March – they are coming up on a year of closure in March. Katie Bradley, a Twin Cities actor, said in March that her future was uncertain. “Our job is to get in front of a lot of people crowded into one room. We won’t be able to do that now, but for how long? That is the terror, of not knowing.”

Actor Sun Mee Chomet had almost a year’s worth of performances scheduled when all her contracts were cancelled in March, and she was wondering what was next.  In the midst of the uncertainty, she was trying to stay grounded and work on positive activities, like learning Korean.  “Life is more important than art …and there are things more important than plays.  We will come back, but this is one of those times.”

Photo by Tiffany Pauling.

Minnesotan George Floyd, and how it happened in our neighborhood
A couple days after George Floyd was killed on Memorial Day, KQ’s board chair Phil Lee got in touch and asked if he could submit an essay. Because our new online edition had been launched a couple weeks before, we planned to put it on the website because his topic — Asian Americans in a moment of racial reckoning — was so timely, and the shock was still so new.

Lee wrote his essay from the point of view of a Korean American whose north Minneapolis church was mobilized to distribute food, water, and basic supplies to people whose neighborhood stores were burned down in the violence and anger that spilled out after the videotaped murder of George Floyd went viral. While packing and hauling groceries, he had a lot of conversations in early June with people of many races and economic classes.

As a 1.5-generation Korean American, Lee wrote, he has been the subjected to both racism and privilege.  Reflecting on how people have asked him “why are Black people looting, rioting, and burning buildings?” he said if police did nothing about a crime committed against his family, such as a child getting murdered, he might burn down a building or do something else to get attention. “For the Black community, it’s not just one child, it’s generations.”

KQ contributor/volunteer Tiffany Pauling wrote an essay from ground zero of the movement to demand justice for George Floyd – her own neighborhood. She also contributed photos of some of the early George Floyd and Black Lives Matter mural artwork in the neighborhood.  Pauling wrote that she got nervous when there was violence at the Lake Street Target and the Third Precinct police station (which was later burned down). But when she heard glass shatter in the window of the convenience store across the street from her home, she grabbed her car keys and went to stay at a friend’s house.

Photo by Tiffany Pauling.

Later she attended the George Floyd memorial, spoke to the volunteers, and watched some of the now-iconic murals in the making.

After the memorial, after the crowds left, and she wandered the now quiet, beat-up, boarded-up  neighborhood, she was left with conflicted feelings, and in her essay, she described them. “Korean adoptees and other interracial adoptee often experience a strange intersection of being the target of racism while also having their own internalized prejudices.” Understanding that intersection was, for her, a personal racial reckoning in a year of national racial reckoning. Likewise, her neighborhood may have undergone a permanent change. “In fact, I may never see it in the same way again.”

Despite everything, moving forward
Between summer and fall there was a movement to a new normal, in part because of the urgency and the excitement of the general election. Emphasis was on the hard work to push forward initiatives like getting out the vote among Asian Americans in the Twin Cities, and the Reclaiming the Block initiative.  There was a sense of getting on with work that needed doing with or without a pandemic. 

Cover of the Fall edition of Korean Quarterly’s print edition.

On the cover of our fall edition were the faces of five Korean American candidates for the House of Representatives, the most that ever ran at one time (story here). Only one, Andy Kim (D-NJ 3rd District), was an incumbent, fighting to get reelected in his swing district where only a few percent are Korean Americans. Of those, four were elected, and will (when they have time) form a small, but presumably mighty, Korean American Caucus, the first in the history. They have now changed their notoriety from the most Korean Americans to run at one time to the most to serve at one time.

The Coalition for Asian American Leaders (CAAL) in the Twin Cities went after the Asian American vote in the Twin Cities with energy and a smart strategy.  The online session State of Asian Minnesotans: Fired Up and Ready to Go discussed the challenges of getting Asian Minnesotans to the polls, including language accessibility, and the large numbers of voting age that need to be reached in a variety of ethnic groups. Turnout for Asian Americans has been in the 50 percent range, and 75 percent for the overall population in Minnesota.

At the same session, activist Jae Hyun Shim discussed her work for the advocacy collective Reclaiming the Block.  Shim worked with the group over several years to propose ways to shift financial resources away from the huge Minneapolis police budget to other neighborhood initiatives like social services and mental health support.  The job took on more urgency post-George Floyd’s murder.  Nationwide, while the idea of defunding police has gathered strength in the last year, opposition to it has also intensified, Shim pointed out, as police response has become more violent.

Also, very much behind of the scenes, the lobbying group Adoptees for Justice has been working to get now 91 cosponsors for the bill that would make every inter-country adoptee a citizen with no exceptions (story here). An estimated 18,000 or more Korean adoptees may be without citizenship, according to South Korean statistics.  The bill needs only to get before Congress for a vote. A brand new short promotional video and letter of support to sign is now available at:  adopteesforjustice.com/supportletter

As Georgia led the way to stop voter suppression and find voters of color to go to the polls, turning the state from red to blue in the general election, it also sent its first-ever Black senator to Capitol Hill.  At the same time, Asian American participation has risen, mainly due to similar efforts to get out the vote, in Minnesota, Georgia and other states as well.

As a nation, there has been one reckoning after another. In dealing with white supremacy and the recent insurrection in the Capitol there have been contradictory cries of “America is not like this,” and  “no, this is exactly what America is like.”  At the same time, diverse candidates are stepping up and winning elections to show the rest of us exactly what democracy can look like.

It has been a year of turmoil, loss and lessons; it has also been a year of getting back to the most important basics of life.  Many Korean Americans have reckoned with their own racial identity in an environment of heightened racial tensions.  At the same time, there has been a new representation of Korean Americans in politics and advocacy.  It is an energy that can no longer stand on the sidelines. With more Korean American leaders and activists to get us through 2021 and beyond, despite everything, the future is looking bright.

My neighborhood, where it happened

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When glass shattered across the street, I left; returning, I saw South Uptown in a new way  | By Tiffany Pauling (Summer 2020 issue)

My South Uptown, Minneapolis neighborhood is a gentrified environment where young, mostly white couples stroll the streets, often with very well-trained dogs. The smells of coffee, donuts, pancakes and lilacs permeate the air. I like to take a leisurely walk about a half-mile down to Bde Maka Ska, and loop over to Lake Harriet.  When the mood strikes me, I wander over to the Lake Street area to buy groceries, go to the bank, eat some amazing food and otherwise enjoy the comforts of city living.

My lens on this peaceful vision quite literally shattered on Friday, May 29 at the height of the protests over George Floyd when looters came calling for the tiny little convenience store across the street from where I live.

A burned out Wells Fargo bank in the Uptown neighborhood. Photo by Marceline Gemlo

George Floyd had been murdered over on 38th and Chicago the previous Monday on Memorial Day by (now-former) police officer Derek Chauvin as three other (now-former) officers stood by and watched. The whole thing was caught on video by a concerned passerby, went viral, and is now a piece of history as the pivotal moment in a new racial justice movement.  The ensuing days saw mass protests, curfews, calls for change and arrests by the community.  I watched in horror as I saw and smelled my city being set on fire and also watched over and over again instances of police brutality toward protesters, as uniformed police sprayed tear gas and shot rubber bullets to disperse what had been a peaceful group.

Each night since his murder, I stayed up watching the various live streams, Twitter and local news coverage of the protests.  I became anxious when things grew violent on that Wednesday night around the Third Precinct police station and the Lake Street Target.  I panicked hearing the glass shatter across the street.  Then I left.

I packed a bag with a few clothes, broke curfew and went to stay at a friend’s house.  I felt both panicked and guilty for doing it, thinking I should stay.  I should be out there, fighting for fellow people of color: Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter.

Didn’t I know that Minnesota has some of the largest racial disparities in the country? Didn’t I know that Black people are more often than not profiled by Minneapolis police. Haven’t I witnessed this before during the shootings of Jamar Clark and Philando Castille? The police department truly has systemic racism that needs to be dealt with.  But, my heart had been jumping out of my chest for three days straight and my idyllic little neighborhood no longer felt all that safe.  So, I got out of there.

I am a Korean adoptee.  I grew up in the northern suburbs of St. Paul in what was, at the time, a 99 percent white community.  I’ve had my fair share of outright racial slurs and more than my fair share of microaggressions.  However, I had a white family and all the privileges that come from that.  I benefited from many advantages, from attending better schools to living in more desirable neighborhoods.  I know that as a privileged East Asian person, my interactions with police are very different from those of a Black person.

I also confronted my own confusing feelings of racial identity versus racial bias.  Korean adoptees and other interracial adoptees often experience a strange intersection of being the target of racism while also having their own internalized prejudices.

Unfortunately, growing up in a white family also means becoming instilled with a fair amount of racial biases.  Since Memorial Day, I’ve been grappling with my own biases and prejudices, like realizing that while the route to Cup Foods is the same distance as my usual walk, I almost never walked in that direction —- out of Uptown and into South Minneapolis.

Walking around the George Floyd memorial in the wake of the uprisings, I met and spoke with various volunteers and speakers. One group of women, including Jessica Ford, Shaynna Bradford and Brittany Carucci, was running a food stand and handing out snacks and water for free.  They said that later in the day, they were planning on grilling hot dogs and hamburgers.  Another volunteer was standing near the entrance squirting hand sanitizer on everyone who walked in.

Black Lives Matter supporters in front of the Cup Foods store where George Floyd
was killed in Minneapolis. Photo by Tiffany Pauling

Emotions ran high at the memorial with community leaders speaking on megaphones, church groups singing and individuals voicing their opinions, grief and anger over the situation.  Rev. Tommy Russell, an African American minister from Greater Mount Vernon Missionary Church, spoke about unifying the people and the police, bringing peace to the city.  Multiple people in the crowd didn’t want to hear good things about the police.  One group, upon hearing him, started singing church songs very loudly to try to drown out his voice. 

Uptown, Minneapolis. Photo by Tiffany Pauling

Over in Uptown, roughly two miles from 38th and Chicago, in response to all the plywood boards that had gone up to protect store fronts, artists came out in full force. People were painting the walls with memorials to Floyd, Black Lives Matter slogans and the names of other African Americans who died at the hands of police.

Payton Russell, founder of Spray-finger, a graffiti arts and education program, was working on a piece on the corner of Lake and Lyndale.  A father assisted his children with their own graffiti art pieces.  As he worked, he spoke about how this is an opportunity to show how graffiti can bring good, and how it can be a way for artists to showcase their talents.  He tied it to the struggle for racial equity, saying that people have to get rid of racism and injustice before trying to get rid of illegal and unwanted graffiti.

It continues to jar me to see the destroyed buildings in my neighborhood, like my post office and bank. Slowly, the plywood murals are being taken down, but it will be a long time before it starts to look like my old neighborhood again.  Like our entire society, my neighborhood may have undergone a permanent change because of what happened on Memorial Day.  In fact, I may never see it in the same way again. 

As I engage with my neighborhood again, I am seeing its scarred and beat-up storefronts in a new way, as an epicenter of the fight for racial justice in our country.  It has been a scary time but also a privilege to witness what happened here.  There are many cities where this could have happened, but it happened here, outside my windows.  In time, we Minnesotans may feel gratitude that this reckoning day for racial justice started here first. 

Personally, I continue to hope for, and work for, meaningful change which will help do away with the systemic racism against African Americans, and bring hope for better neighborhoods and a better society for the rest of us.

Must Asian Americans cast their stones at Tou Thao?

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With no recognition of differences in ethnicity or history, we live in a black-and-white dichotomy | By Shinyung Oh (Summer 2020 issue)

In the midst of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, Asian American writers and activists have flocked to urge fellow Asian Americans to speak up in support of the movement. Many argue that Tou Thao, an Asian American officer who stood guard while Derek Chauvin suffocated and killed George Floyd, symbolizes Asian Americans’ silence on racial strife in America.

They cast silence as adjacency to whiteness, a miscalculated strategy of social mobility and position of privilege that only foments further harm against Blacks by playing to the myth of the model minority. Arguing against silence, these writers fill Thao’s silence with blame. Jeff Yang on CNN interpreted Thao’s silence as indifference, avoidance, and a sign of apathy.  Sara Li in InStyle cast Thao’s inaction as complicity. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt in Truthout characterized it as “bystander syndrome.”

For Jeff Yang, the mirror image seen in Thao is one Asian Americans must deflect: “His inaction was painful to witness —- and a stark symbol of why, now more than ever, Asian Americans cannot afford to be voiceless watchers of this moment.”  Thao is our other, the one we cannot be.

Similarly, for journalist Larry Lin, Thao’s moment of inaction is his moment of awakening: “I confess that I, like the Asian American officer at the scene of George Floyd’s death, have been a part of the problem.” Where Thao failed, we will compensate.

They claim him as one of their own in order to disclaim him.  Thao is a strawman, the one we need to knock down in order to build the case for our own consciousness, our superior, enlightened understanding. The irony of setting up Thao as a foil to argue against marginalization is lost on these writers.  We cannot afford another inscrutable Asian in our mix, so in response, writers with fancy advanced degrees, with connections to American corporate media, scramble to speak on behalf of a man who reportedly did not complete community college, because after all, he is one of us.

Our designation as Asian Americans is a handle of expedience.  The identity allows us a united front for the sake of political power, even as we remain acutely aware of the differences in our sub-group histories and cultures.  For those on the outside, the designation has a secondary function as an accommodation; the generalizing saves others the bother of having to tell us apart. They need not know our individual histories.  The designation of Asian Americans is a convenience, a lumping of many people of disparate backgrounds for the sake of politics and for the sake of simplifying the story of race in America.

When Asian American writers outside the Hmong community stake a claim to Thao, there is a confusion in perspective. They forget that they are insiders only for the sake of political unity. When it comes to explaining the motivations, frameworks, and the conditions of our individual lives, generalities do not suffice. The history of the Chinese in America does not provide an understanding of the Hmong American experience. The Asian American designation does not negate the disparate sub-groups within; yet, these writers argue as if Asian Americans are monolithic, even as they claim to refute the model minority myth.

Our practice of convenience does not bestow one sub-group owner-ship over another. Just because others cannot tell us apart does not make our stories interchangeable. No Korean American, Chinese American, or any other hyphen-American has the right to speak for Thao.  He does not belong to us.

As we scramble to distance ourselves from Thao, we miss yet another opportunity to humanize ourselves.  He becomes another soulless scoundrel, a degenerate, a viper.  Yet another paper cut-out in line behind the masked doctors, emotionless engineers, voiceless grocery store owners, and Chris Rock’s accountants.

The presence of a Black officer at the scene complicates the story.  Unlike Thao, Alex Keung has been given a complex narrative, a Black man out to change the system, even as he is caught in a horrible scene of injustice.  His family and friends have different reactions to him, even after he helped to restrain Floyd physically.

Others come to his defense and implore us to consider how much power he could have wielded against the system as a lone officer. He expressed ambivalence about his supervisor.  He cries.  He is loved.

No such story is told for Thao, just as there was none for Bong Jae Jang in the Red Apple boycott or Soon Ja Du in the L.A. Riots.  As we have been throughout American history, we are rendered voiceless, devoid of inner conflict, complicated thoughts, shifting perspectives. What was Thao thinking as all this went down? No one bothers to ask.  What was his intent, his goal, his expectation? What did he understand his role to be?  What would he have done had he taken the role of physically interacting with Mr. Floyd instead of standing guard and managing the crowd?  Would the outcome have differed?  What do we know of his character, his general demeanor?

We do not know.  All we need to know of him is the record of complaints against him and his appearance in the nine-minute video of the killing where he stood by, weaving in and out of frame, speaking into the radio in his vest.  The story is clear cut, the guilt obvious, the evil undeniable.

In this story, Thao is reduced to a symbol: Of white oppression; of police brutality; of white adjacency; of Asian American silence.  We have been reduced to symbols many times in this country.  During World War II, the U.S. government made Japanese internees the symbol of Japan’s military threat. Vincent Chin, a Detroit hate-crime victim, became the symbol of Japanese automotive industry’s dominance. Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sihk, killed in a hate crime shortly after the September 11 attacks, was touted as the symbol of Al-Qaeda.  An Asian family attacked in Midland, Texas, somehow became a symbol of the threat of coronavirus.

We have been interchangeable.  All Korean small business owners are stand-ins for Soon Ja Du, a Los Angeles convenience store owner who in 1991 killed Black customer Latasha Harlins, after a struggle in the store over a suspected shoplifting.  Other Hmong Americans are now blamed for Thao’s inaction.  To be reduced to symbols is to be rendered faceless, nameless, and interchangeable in our ubiquity.  This is the running theme and predicament of Asians in America.

Humanizing one in our mix who does a grave wrong requires us to speak, even when it is inconvenient. What would be his story if he could speak?  Would he tell the story of a people paid in rice to fight America’s secret war against enemies who looked more or less like themselves? What does the Black-white divide in America mean for a people whose history includes persecution by the Chinese, mistreatment by the French, scorn by fellow Southeast Asians, betrayal by the U.S. government, and rejection by West Philadelphia?

Is his story not a counterpoint to the model minority myth, one we have been gasping to tell? Hmong Americans suffer from a 30 percent dropout rate for high school.  A mere 39 percent of Hmong Americans can afford health insurance. Around 28 percent live in poverty.  These statistics stem from America’s broken promise, and the Hmong people’s invisibility in U.S. history, despite their service to the U.S. during the Vietnam War.  Hmong refugees were resettled in some of the most neglected neighborhoods, and many of them are among the poorest Asian Americans.  They are not ones who benefit from white adjacency.

We need to tell Thao’s story not to vindicate him, but because the same system that killed George Floyd also created Tou Thao.  If a system creates its victims, does it not also create its villains?

Yet, like others who have been caught in political flashpoints, the cumulative weight of historic injustice falls on Thao, and he is suddenly cast as the oppressor, the privileged. In this reconstruction, his failure to act unleashes an avalanche of wrath and judgment.  This loaded story was written long before Thao even showed up at the scene.  It was written through the merciless killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, and countless others.  It was written by a culture of fear, the ideology of police departments, the acceptance of gun proliferation in America, and a system that presupposes a clear divide between the good and the bad.

As Asian Americans, we are caught in a fishing net. We are grouped together, creating a facade of unity, not because of any inherent commonality, but situationally, as a result of being in the same space and time. This grouping deprives us of the original background that may explain some of our motives and understandings. The deep ocean from which we have been gathered is rendered irrelevant when discussing how best to survive in our new, common displacement.

Perhaps it is this limitation that allows writers like Jeff Yang to ask on CNN, “Do we seek adjacency to whiteness, or coalitions of color?” or for an op-ed in Truthout to claim that Asian Americans have been complicit in “white supremacy.”

Reducing the survival strategy of more than 20 million Asian Americans as “white adjacency” ignores the centuries of history of diverse groups of people who immigrated with their own value systems as well as social and economic strategies acquired over generations.  It deprives us of our own cultural frameworks and perspectives.  How did any of us manage to survive before there were white people to suck up to?

This framing renders Asian Americans as parasites, creatures who cannot exist on their own.  It also centers whiteness as omnipotent. What do we say of our own agency, our participation in our own histories?  How easy to simply blame the white people.  Have we only played supporting roles, always aligning ourselves to forces larger than ourselves?

Setting up the country as a binary system serves to silence Asian Americans.  We are reminded once again that, in America, we live in a black-and-white world.  Our only choice is to be subsumed into one of the two groups and become either complicit in white racism or enlightened supporters of Blacks.  In this binary framework, we negate ourselves as people with different, unique perspectives, with the ability to pave new paths.  We are given the illusion of choice, but it is clear that the cost of membership is to align with one of the two identified groups.  Implicit in this argument is a concession that alone, we are powerless. When we speak up, we are nothing but a reverberation.  We are forever sidekicks.

In this black-white framework, we are judged not against a full spectrum of values relevant to our personal lives, but what is deemed to be relevant at this point in time in America. In this situation, the actions of all Asian Americans of the present and past are filtered and judged through the lens of Black-white racism in America; other possible interpretations are not even considered.

What remains is a thin narrative of us.  We are not afforded any subplots that may cut against the larger narrative on race.  When we are left with only one or two possible storylines for Asian Americans and we are limited to singular attitudes (“many of us have internalized a racist, reductionist history”) and motives (“their (sub)conscious preferences for lighter complexions is a result of deep-seated anti-Blackness”), we are once again reduced to stereotypes.

This binary framing also negates the complicated history of Asians in America.  Among ourselves, we have often wondered where we stand.  We have fought against white majorities as well as other ethnic minorities. We have also stood alone when alliance was not available. We have wondered if we are a distinct group onto ourselves, and how we fit into the larger story around race in America.

This uncertainty and complexity is also a part of the story of Asian Americans.  There are important reasons to support Black Lives Matter. We must not tolerate a state of terror against our Black friends.  We should be outraged at a justice system that condones extrajudicial killings.  We must condemn a culture that promotes a sense of safety for some at the cost of others.  We must not perpetuate a state that inflicts needless trauma on its own people. We must reject a caste system that creates a perpetual cycle of disenfranchisement and oppression.

The rapidly growing list of innocent Black people murdered for no justifiable reason raises the urgency to support BLM and to speak out.  We should speak up —- loudly and with indignation.

It is possible to speak up without shaming each other or effacing ourselves. We can speak up because we care. Because we are citizens. Because we have a voice.  Because we too are fed up with the injustice of it all.

Those who purport to speak for us all should attune to the silence among us.  If some of us are silent, perhaps it is because there are painful truths in our corner.  Racism comes in many forms. We have been called Chinks and told to go home, and not just by white Americans. When white Americans speak to each other, Black Americans recede. When Black Americans speak to white Americans, we recede.

As a college student in April 1992,  I watched, glued to the TV to news footage of the Los Angeles Riots, as Korean American shopkeepers standing on the roofs of their stores were portrayed as menacing vigilantes.  At that time, I wondered, who will speak for us?  Who will humanize us and our parents?  It is painful now to read Asian Americans typecast as racist perpetrators of a white system, as its beneficiaries, when Korean Americans have been burned by the very fire started by the system.

Sara Li’s one-line description of the LA Riots as simply a consequence of “anti-Blackness” of the Korean American community pits all the blame on one side, with no understanding of the systemic dynamics involved. The ongoing failure of America to redress its 400-year history of enslavement and oppression came crashing down that day in 1992 on one immigrant community.

Let us not confuse casting stones with speaking up. Historically, Asian Americans have not been shy about breaking the silence to distance themselves.  Filipinos argued they were not Mongolians to fight for rights not afforded to other Asians. During World War II, Korean Americans and Chinese Americans wore buttons that said “I’m no Jap” and “I am Chinese” when Japanese Americans were rounded up like cattle and thrown into pens in the middle of forlorn deserts. The rest of the Asian American community let others know they were not Koreans during the LA Riots.  And what better way to distance ourselves from the likes of Tou Thao than by condemning him? By casting our stones at him, we publicly differentiate ourselves and position ourselves as the good ones.

The imperative for Asian Americans to find safety is understandable, especially against the bursts of hate crimes reignited by the pandemic. However, it is a misguided hope that just an alliance with one or another dominant group in the U.S. will save us.  Time and again, alliances have frayed in times of strife.  We may wax solidarity now, but no one admits that it is easier to do so when our businesses are not the ones being looted, when our parents are not perched on roofs of our small businesses armed with handguns, when there are no picket lines in front of our groceries and liquor stores, when we’re not cast as the enemy.

When we have been cast as the enemy, as in the Red Apple boycott or the L.A. Riots, the only voices that rang out were those asking for police protection, which never came. The Asian American alliance did not materialize.

I am not suggesting we give up on collective action.  There is power in numbers, but we will never be seen or heard as a group unless we are seen and heard as individuals.  A collective without humanity is no different than an enemy.  The current BLM protests were fueled by George Floyd’s humanity.  His cries for his mom reached the ears of mothers in all corners.  His vulnerability in those terrible minutes spoke louder than any statistic or missive.  We cannot forfeit our humanity for the sake of the collective, no matter how expedient it feels in the moment.

Asian Americans’ call to arms in the shadows of Tou Thao’s inaction is a screed of shame: For not having done enough for our Black friends; for being too successful; for not having suffered as much as our Black and brown friends; for having aunties with racists views; for enjoying the privileges of capitalism; for taking on the wrong survival strategies; for not being brown enough.  We are an underdeveloped bunch who fail to live up to the ideals of American democracy, who inadequately exercise the right to protest.  We cannot avoid comparing ourselves to other ethnic groups, even as it plays into the hands of racist policies that set up success as a zero-sum game.

Tou Thao has unleashed all of our misgivings.  It is not simply enough to support BLM; we have to fall on our swords and repent.  We need to prove we belong as we see ourselves through the judging gaze of other communities.

One day, we will be afforded all the foibles and emotions that come with being human. One day, we will enjoy an identity that is not fused with all others who look like us. Maybe we will get there if we put down our stones long enough to own up to them. 

Silence is violence

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Learning to use my privilege as a Korean adoptee in the cause of racial justice  | By Christine Heimann (Summer 2020 issue)

The corner where George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. Photo by Tiffany Pauling

People say that adoptees should be grateful, that we are lucky. Some of us escaped poverty or extreme discrimination in our homelands, due to our being born to single mothers, or having birth defects, or perhaps being born a daughter when our birth families longed for a son.

When we were adopted, we lost our birth culture, birth language and  birth families.  What is lucky about that?

When I was adopted, I admit I was launched into a world of privilege, one that I would not have experienced in my birth country.  But I lost so much because of adoption.  Is it privilege being abandoned by my birth country and colonized in a white country.  How is this privilege? While I didn’t have a say in any of this, it is still true that I have benefited a lot from these privileges —- even the white-sounding name I was given, which is now my legal name. 

However, the reality is this:

I am a Korean American adoptee.  I was adopted into a middle-class white family, and except for my brother (also adopted from Korea), I grew up in a predominantly white community. I grew up with an American-sounding name, speaking English, eating instant white rice, and for the most part living in a way that erased my Korean language and culture. Even though our family would go to the local Chinese restaurant for takeout or the Korean restaurant in St. Paul to celebrate our “arrival days,” nothing could replace living in Korea and experiencing a Korean upbringing.

Because of my adoption, there were many times that I not only thought of myself as white, but wanted to be white. I would wish I could be white —- to have blonde hair and blue eyes.  I did not know how to talk about race.  I would even use the phrase “let’s not make it about race.”  This gaslighting of myself, and denial of my own race and identity would add to pain and confusion about identity later in life.

For most of my life, I was comfortable in the white world.  Because I grew up in a white community, I sound like a native English speaker.  Many times, people do not even appear to know or be curious about my race.  I am the first to admit it:  I identify as culturally white and I understand the privilege that comes with it. Being raised in a white family, in a white world, has brought not only cultural, but economic privileges.  For many adoptees, the white world is all we know.  But as a trans-racial adoptee, I will always be missing a piece of my cultural identity.

In fact, I come from two communities —- the white world and the Korean community.  Both of these worlds have historically been racist and biased towards people of color, especially when it comes to the Black community.

I have heard people proclaim they “don’t see color,” but I don’t believe it.  Our beliefs about people’s race are affecting our judgment before we even meet a person face to face.  I know that most of the world sees me as Asian, and that the first thing people will see when they meet me is my Asian appearance.  They don’t know how white I feel. 

Sadly, because of racial inequities in our society, our society’s racial grading system of people from most- to least-favored seems to place Asians ahead of other minorities.  This is not to say Asians and Asian adoptees have not experienced racism and xenophobia.  I have experienced my fair share; the recent increase in racist attacks toward Asians and Asian Americans over the presumed Chinese origin of COVID-19 is only one recent example.

I have been lumped into so many of the Asian stereotypes, from the “China doll,” to the quiet, submissive, model minority.  I have the model minority privilege —- one that has come as a byproduct of colonialism and racism.  This privilege is a byproduct of white colonialism that extends privilege to whites and sets minorities against one another, as we all buy into our society’s reinforced systemic racism.

With my Asian identity, the recent racism (due to the racist nickname of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus”) was, of course, hurtful.  But it is not even close to what black Americans have felt historically and up to the present. History has shown that racism and xenophobia towards Asians climaxes in times of intense economic or military challenges. But eventually, it dies down, although it never really goes away.  Anti-blackness, however, is a steady and continuous form of oppression that has plagued American society, robbing African Americans of wealth and power for hundreds of years.

So, I have privilege from growing up in a white community, I have Asian privilege associated with the model minority.  So what can I do? As I reflect on how I can better serve and advocate for communities of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), the cause of Black Lives Matter, and myself, I need to acknowledge and remember the following five important points:

1.  Everyone is prone to racism — even Korean Americans and other BIPOC communities

Internalized racism is in all of us, and in our own communities.  No one wants to be called racist.  No one wants to be labeled as a bad person. But this is the truth. We all have implicit biases; it is human nature. As I learned more about my Asian-ness and my Korean culture, I was ashamed to learn of the racist and xenophobic views the Korean American communities have historically had towards non-Koreans —-especially towards the Black community. Even today, some Asian American/Korean American communities sadly continue to hold these harmful and stereotypical views.

In the Korean American community, this bias is coming from people who were treated as racially inferior, even as subhumans, by Imperial Japan for over 30 years during the Japanese occupation of Korea.  As a people who have already suffered from racism, I would think that this history would make Koreans welcoming to oppressed groups, but this is not the case.  Koreans place a lot of value on maintaining a homogeneous society.  This is the same mythology that made Korean international adoption possible and African Americans unwelcome in Korean American places.

2.  Colorism is real, and it perpetuates racism towards the Black community

These days, Korean skin care products are in high demand.  Interestingly, many of these products contain “skin whitening” ingredients.  Some of the products are even named “skin whitening cream,” or variations like “Snow White cream.” For years, Asians have preferred light skin over dark, from which comes the popularity of Korean skin care and make-up products. This colorism can be seen across Asian cultures, not just Korean. The idea of skin whitening as a sales hook sells a lot of face cream all across Asia.

Lighter skin historically represents a higher socioeconomic class (while the lower-class farmers are working outdoors getting darker, upper-class people stay indoors and stay lighter).  In many traditions, not just Korea, wealthy and educated means lighter skin, whereas poor and uneducated means darker skin.  While I am proud that my birth country has produced so many top-quality cosmetics, I am not proud of the colorism they perpetuate.

3.  We need to remember Black Asians

Korean adoption started because bi-racial children were born to Korean women and American soldiers during the years following the Korean War.  Approximately 40,000 children were the products of these relationships.  Some of the biracial children were Black and Korean.  Many fathers went back to the U.S., some knowing and some not knowing they had fathered children with Korean mothers.  Because of financial hardships and severe social stigma in Korea, towards both single mothers and mixed-race people, many single Korean mothers relinquished their bi-racial children for adoption.

We cannot forget biracial and multi-racial individuals, as this new wave of the racial justice movement continues. 

4.  There is racism even within adoptees’ own families

I’ve met so many adoptees whose own family members outwardly express racist views.  People are surprised to hear this, that some transracial adoptees have grown up seeing racism not only in the outside world, but also in their own homes. Many transracial adoptees may have endured microaggressions from family members or friends —- people we thought we were close to. This emphasizes how racism can grow at home, behind closed doors, reinforced in us by those we know (or thought we knew) and those we love (or loved). We have been taught to love our family members, but what is this saying in our journeys as BIPOC and transracial adoptees if our family members continue to have racist viewpoints? The answer is that they don’t see our race.  They don’t see the color of our skin. 

We may be in a moment where racial justice means something to us as Korean adoptees, but if our race is erased or not even recognized by our family members, they certainly cannot be advocates for us.  If I speak up against these racist viewpoints, it might not change the family members’ viewpoint, but there is a slim chance it will.  However, if I don’t say something, they will never change.

5.  In the past, I’ve denied my identity as an Asian, as a Korean, and as an adoptee in order to fit in with the white majority

As I reflect on past friendships, I realize I was the token Asian friend (or the only BIPOC) in many of my former friends’ lives.  I know that until I was a teenager, the majority of my friends (if not all of them) were white.  I admit that I somewhat set myself up.  To fit in, I wanted to be white and in doing so, I surrounded myself with white friends.

When I was little, I remember joining in on a hand-clapping game.  It went like this:

I went to a Chinese restaurant
To buy a loaf of bread, bread, bread.
They wrapped it up in toilet paper
Then asked me what my name was,
And this is what I said, said, said:
I’m Choo Choo Charlie,
I know karate! Oops, I’m sorry.
I’ll call your mommy!
Chinese, Japanese, Indian Chief.

I remember I always wanted to do this game (it also included several racist gestures), not realizing the racist tone of the lyrics.  I would even eagerly ask my friends to say these chants.

I was the first to make an Asian joke with my friends and was uncomfortable with topics about race.  Why?  I did it out of the need to belong.  I wanted to be clear that I was an American, that I had no ties to my birth country and that I was not like the “other” BIPOC.  But what was I doing?  I was denying my true identity as an Asian American.  I was harming only myself.

I acknowledge I have had many opportunities other BIPOC have not had.  Sometimes I feel guilty because of these opportunities, and I admit that I previously was not very outspoken about racism and discrimination.  However, over these past few years, I have found my voice.  As I have observed the recent campaign for greater racial justice, I realize I can use my privilege to help support movements such as Black Lives Matter.  Now that I have found my voice, I must use it to help call for change, to speak out against systemic racism.  I must act, not react.

As a Korean American, transracial adoptee, I didn’t choose to come to America.  I didn’t choose to be adopted.  But what I can choose to do is to stand up and speak out.  I can choose to add my voice to the thousands of others who call for change. I can choose to continue to explore the biases and privileges I absorbed from my white upbringing and decide if I want to hide or confront these biases. I can constantly challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone.

If I refuse to address my privileges and the bigotry that has plagued American society, I then only fulfill the stereotype I have worked so hard to fight against —- the complacent, quiet Asian.  The risk of complacency is allowing more of our Black community members to stand up for racial justice and and to potentially be added to the list of casualties of violence and systemic racism.  I recently heard the phrase “silence is violence.”  That reminds me of the consequences of staying quiet during this movement.

This model minority woman can no longer stay quiet.  I won’t have all of the answers and I won’t always know what to say.  I have made mistakes and I will continue to make mistakes. I am human. But if I behave as an obedient model minority, I will only help to reinforce the silence that the majority culture has maintained for hundreds of years. While I didn’t have a choice to be adopted, I can choose to elevate my voice and not be silent anymore.  

Christine Heimann has worked with children, youth and adults in the field of post-adoption services. In 2017, she founded the service and education organization AdopteeBridge, which provides post-adoption support services to transracial/transnational adoptees and their families (website: adopteebridge.org)

A hurricane, followed by a tornado

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The double whammy of pandemic and racial justice riots made for a long hot Minnesota summer | Editor’s Note by Martha Vickery (Summer 2020 issue)

Photo by Tiffany Pauling

Last time we published was after we were well into the reality of the pandemic, which is now a bit worse in Minnesota compared with three months ago.  The additional event in Minnesota that has shocked and then galvanized the Twin Cities community, not to mention the entire world, is the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath of looting and rioting that left the Uptown area and  reportedly 1500 locations in St. Paul, Minneapolis and a few suburbs damaged to the tune of as-yet-unknown millions of dollars. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit retail businesses the hardest. Many restaurants and stores that were unable to refinance or adapt to social distancing requirements closed, probably for good. Then came the riots.  The two together were like having a hurricane followed by a tornado. 

Buildings along a five-mile stretch of Lake Street in Minneapolis and a 3.5-mile stretch of University Avenue in St. Paul’s Midway area experienced some of the heaviest damage, according to the Star Tribune. Those are also some of the areas with many unique and vulnerable small retailers.  The Twin Cities has gone through an economic shock, followed by the destruction of riots, as well as a crisis of conscience that the epicenter of the violence happened here. 

So far, our local elected officials have been slow to respond to the sea change happening on the ground in the Twin Cities.  The Minneapolis City Council voted to defund the police, but then was slow on proposing an initiative to replace it — there is apparently a year-long study process planned.  The legislature had a police reform bill in front of them, and finally passed a very limited version of it July 21, nearly two months after George Floyd’s death.  The problems are many, but so far, the solutions are few.  I fear that Minnesota has lost the moment it could have grasped to be a national leader on this reform issue.

Several of our essayists in the summer issue are also Minneapolis residents; the church that our board chair Phil Lee attends was on the front lines of providing groceries to residents whose grocery stores were either burned out closed after the initial riots. Another longtime Korean Quarterly writer and copy editor, Tiffany Pauling, wrote about hearing the glass break at the store across the street, and deciding it was time to leave for awhile.  Part of the privilege of being middle class in Minneapolis is that you can jump in your car and go stay someplace else.  The call to represent can fight with self-preservation sometimes, and our writers talk about that too. 

Local thought leader and founder of the Twin Cities organization AdopteeBridge, Christine Heimann, also wrote about a list of issues for Korean Americans to consider in how to represent as a Korean adoptee, within one’s family and out in the community.  Thanks to all our local correspondents for providing a needed airing of these emerging topics.

At the same time as this racial justice moment is sweeping the country, there is a more international justice moment to recognize — that 70 years have passed since the beginning of the Korean War, and there is a growing push by peace advocates and elected officials in this country to move the country toward a peace treaty with North Korea, which would be agreed-upon by the governments involved. What is in place right now is an armistice — an agreement to stop shooting at each other.  The temporary nature of the armistice is at the core of many unresolved issues between the U.S. and North Korea, and indeed the security of the whole northeast Asia region.

But it is not just politics involved. It is people’s lives.  Interestingly, one of the three forums held recently (all online of course) to discuss the history of U.S. involvement and prospects for a peace treaty was one about women’s stories — how their families became Korean American, and how the Korean War profoundly affected their lives. 

We have premiered the new Korean Quarterly online edition for a few months now.  It looks great,  functions well, and positive reviews have poured in. 

For me, after seeing color photos be converted to black-and-white for print for so many years, it is surprising to see them in bright color next to the story on the screen.  Not being a techie person, I love the logic of the layout and the easy way it operates.  There are two words that characterize the last two months for me: Learning curve.  You think it looks easy, and then you end up doing the same thing over again a few times.  Next time, I may remember how to do it, or I may have forgotten and have to flounder around again. That is the essence of a learning curve.  It’s long.  It doesn’t happen in one afternoon.

But we are trying, and thanks for being patient with us.  It is a big process.  I view the website with a strange mixture of delight and anxiety.  Overall, it is so worth the work, and it is great to have an online presence.  I google my favorite column or story, and there it is!  I love it.

So many thanks go out to our webmaster Jason Patocka, who is skilled and fast to notice things that need doing, and also patient in working with all of us.  Our organization has always had the right people arrive at the right time.  You know who you are, guys.

I’m so done with pandemic well wishes like “stay safe and wash your hands” that I will just say “Have a good rest of  the summer!”  

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