From colonialism to Covid: Viet Thanh Nguyen on the rise of anti-Asian violence
American exceptionalism pretends that it has nothing to do with European-style colonialism. But the US is a colonising country. The difference is that Americans call their colonialism “the American Dream”. American mythology casts white settler violence as “regenerative”, versus the “degenerative” violence of Native peoples, enslaved black people, and their descendants. In this mythology, a black man with a gun is a threat, even if it is only a 12-year-old black boy with a toy gun, as in the case of Tamir Rice, killed by police. A white man with a gun – coloniser, settler, cowboy, soldier, or cop – is a hero.
On 16 March eight people were killed in Atlanta, Georgia, by a 21-year-old white man: all but one were women, and six were Asian. The shootings take their place in a much longer story of anti-Asian violence. The Covid pandemic has given us a particular insight into this phenomenon: verbal and physical assaults against Asians have accelerated in the US over the last year, with 3,800 documented incidents involving spitting, knifings, beatings, acid attacks – and murder. The majority of the victims have been women.
Though the
Atlanta killings took place in Asian massage parlours, the shooter has
said he did
not target the women because of their race. Instead, he claimed to be
a sex addict bent on “removing temptation”. Regardless of his denial – whether
it is a lie or self-deception – it is obvious that he targeted these women
because they were Asian. “Racism and sexism intersect,” says
Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociology professor. This intersection has been a
driving force in western attitudes towards Asia and Asian women, who are
routinely hypersexualised and objectified in popular culture….
Book
Review: A Satirical and Political Indictment of the Vietnam War
Remembering the Fall of
Saigon, 45 years on
An era passes: legendary
Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap Dies at 102
Pentagon Papers and time
when media was trusted
