On Marion Barry's Dirty Asian Problem

In response to Marion Barry's racist statement and subsequent justifications: “We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” Barry said. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.” (more here)

shorter version posted on 8asians

Dear Council Member Marion Barry,

Let me begin by telling you that I think you’re right… sort of. You are right to want healthy food for your community. You are right to have a problem with Plexiglass walls in stores. You are right to be concerned that there are not more businesses owned by African American residents in an African American community. However, your string of hateful remarks about Asian storeowners was based on nothing more than your own racism, and you have yet to identify the real problems affecting your community.

It is an uncomfortable thing to see Asian-owned stores in low-income African American communities. We easily picture this situation as one of exploitation, and start thinking that the problems in the area must be caused by the most visible “other.” Without some critical thinking, it’s easy to assume that this “other” must be the one siphoning all the wealth away from the community. The visibility of the Asian “other” in a poor community makes them easy targets and convenient explanations for all economic problems, and the visible disconnect between these "others" and the rest of the community makes them the clearest enemy.

These Asian storeowners are an especially easy target for you as a politician because you recognize they are immigrants without much of a political voice, and you understand what you can gain by igniting racial tensions between African American and Asian American communities. This is a tension that has been happily exploited by the white mainstream for decades, and has created a division that has damaged us both.

So let’s take a closer look at your proposed solution: if you go ahead and evict all these Asian businesses from your community, would life for your constituents actually get better? Would an organic fruit market rush in to fill the void left by the Chinese take-out joint? Would Whole Foods eagerly heed the call to come save your district? If these dirty Asian businesses left your ward, would this magically give the people from the community the resources to start their own businesses in their place? After all, the only thing in their way must have been that the prime real estate was being occupied by these dirty Asian stores. And if none of these things happened as you imagined they would, would you then be appeased if a McDonald’s came in to provide your community with other forms of cheap shit? Never mind the fact that McDonald’s makes billions of dollars of profit each year, special thanks to poor communities everywhere.

Now, let’s talk about the Plexiglass. You retweeted one person’s comment to the effect that Asian business owners put up Plexiglass because they’re scared that all these “animals” will rob and kill them. That’s really inflammatory, and I’m sure great politics. I would love to live in a world without Plexiglass, locks and gates. Plexiglass is a very obvious statement that the person behind it is trying not to get robbed, and I’m really sorry that the people in your community have to deal with that. But does that mean that the storeowners are fundamentally racist and scared of every person who comes through their doors? Or are they just aware that they are a place of business in a place where robberies happen, and if there’s just one person out there looking to rob them, they can lose everything, even their lives.

As an Asian American, I can’t help but feel deeply pained by all the stories of loss in my community, as I’m sure you feel for the losses in yours. And I become more frustrated and angry every time I see yet another story about an Asian storeowner or delivery man who was senselessly murdered on the job. These are just people with families working hard for a fair shot at life. There is a troubling pattern of violence against Asian Americans, and when the perpetrators are African American as they often are, many express their inability to see these Asian bodies as fully human. And it’s our youth who are suffering the most, stories like South Philadelphia high school come to mind.

I’ve stayed silent on this issue too often, and I see other Asian Americans doing the same. Our community is the last to make waves about the injustices we face. In our country’s black-white dichotomy, many Asian Americans don’t feel entitled enough to even enter the conversation, and racism against our community is never taken very seriously, even when it results in lost lives. Also, Asian Americans like myself often seek to be allies before all else in conversations about racial justice, so we hesitate to talk about the racism and violence against us by other people of color. But will we ever change anything by remaining silent? Or will the void of understanding between these two communities continue to be filled by simmering resentments that eventually explode?

It's interesting how you continue to refer to these wok and deli owners as “businessmen.” You are projecting onto them privilege and opportunity that they do not have. If they had more options in life, would they have chosen to work in these stores? How much money do you think these people actually make? They are doing the best they can to support themselves, with the cards that this world has dealt them. They are not cheating your community or brainwashing you to buy their products, they are working in Plexiglass boxes selling things like really cheap Chinese food to people who want to buy cheap Chinese food.

They are often immigrants, not by choice, but economic necessity. The causes of all the injustices in our world are wrapped up into many of the same root causes, from slavery and colonialism to the global capitalism of today. The fact that immigrants come to the United States, leaving behind their lives and all they know, to work in places where they are disrespected, unwanted, and targeted, should signal a much larger problem in this world that has hurt both your community and mine. As a self-proclaimed civil rights activist, you should understand that there is always so much more going on than what others, bent on hating you, will recognize.

As someone with options in life, I promise to you I will never come to your ward to make money off of your constituents. I’m privileged and educated and enfranchised enough to make my money elsewhere. I can choose a career that I love, in a great neighborhood to which I can also belong. I can choose a job in which I go around “helping” people, even though the reality is that my non-profit job is more complicit in the capitalist system, which continues to impoverish your community, than those Chinese takeout owners will ever be.

The real enforcers and beneficiaries of institutionalized racism and systemic poverty in this country will probably never step foot in your ward. They have created a world in which they never actually have to interact with poor people, or black people for that matter, and they can simply forget that you even exist. They can continue to exploit poor communities en masse and watch from above as the poor fight for crumbs. They never have to deal with the hard work and small change of running a takeout business. They sit in skyscrapers and in our government, enriching themselves off of poor communities of color by making our laws and our prisons, creating our debt, producing our music and movies, owning our big food corporations, and determining our fashions. Why don’t you take issue with them, and not the people who are struggling to eke out a living in this world?

I’m a Korean American and when I go to a Chinese-owned restaurant, I’m not shocked when the person behind the counter is curt with me, and I don’t expect much communication beyond placing my order because we don’t speak the same language. When I’m not given any fake smiles or small talk, I don’t take it as a sign of disrespect – I take it as the reality of living in a world of many different cultures and ways of being and people who are just trying to get by. And I even feel a little guilty for existing in a world in which these people have to sit in their “dirty” stores and make cheap food for me because the money in my pocket commands that they do so.

In your attempts to villainize these Asian storeowners, you contrast them against a picture of your community that appears to be a lot like Mister Roger’s neighborhood, where everyone loves each other and is working together to build the community, except for the Asian exploiters. What would you like these storeowners to do to participate in a way you find appropriate? Come to a block party? And since we live in a country in which English is not the official language, should this friendly engagement have to take place in a language that these immigrants do not speak?

I’m tired of Asian American communities constantly being scapegoated for problems that are so much larger than ourselves, problems from which our communities suffer as well. I’m tired of people wanting to heap our nation’s injustices onto my struggling immigrant parents and the hardworking, resilient, struggling community in which I was raised.

My parents came here with absolutely nothing. My dad worked at a gas station attendant and both my parents worked and saved until they were able to open their own auto repair shop in Koreatown, Los Angeles, home of the LA Riots. Now that my father has passed away, my mother works 60+ hours per week at a clothes store and doesn’t have health insurance, which is taking a harsh toll on her body. My parents were always largely unaware of our country’s toxic race relations (one thing about them that might be considered un-American). They were too focused on making sure that I had a chance to make it in this world, and too good of people to treat anyone with anything less than kindness and respect. I’m tired of having people project their own racist upbringing onto others and forcing us into a broken narrative that is not ours, though we do have a responsibility to make it better.

I’m tired of politicians like you who do not help marginalized communities to build and heal, but exploit your own people and gain reelection by stirring up hate and misunderstanding against other marginalized groups. This will only hurt the people you claim to be advocating for. The person who is truly exploiting these people is you.

And please don’t say one more word about your “track record” with the Asian American community if, at the end of the day, you will throw us all under a bus and resort to hateful, exploitative race-baiting to take care of yourself.

As an elected official who claims to be representing the best interests of his people, I ask that YOU “do better,” and actually do some critical thinking to come up with some solutions that will create real opportunities for your community, rather than resorting to hateful memes that will inevitably lead to more violence and misunderstanding and no solutions. And lastly, I ask that you extend your noble desire for the African American community to be understood and justly treated to other communities as well.

Sincerely,

Esther