Doing some listening?

I’ve received several requests to facilitate “sharing/support sessions” with employees, families, students – more than usual, probably because I’m not just a DEI facilitator: I’m Asian-American. And the recent, broader recognition of anti-Asian racism in predominantly white – and actually in most non-predominantly Asian – communities (although anti-Asian racism is, I repeat, just slightly younger than Europe discovering the rest of its continent) means: more APIA* affinity occasions and spaces [see end of post re: this acronym].

Because I’m not able to say yes to many of these requests, I’ve put together a few notes on facilitating these sessions. Just some basics that I’m sharing here. I advise:

• Clarity about purpose and any expectations re: confidentiality (for example) that may impact participation. People should know what, why, who and what they can expect to happen once they’ve shared/you’ve listened. Does support extend after this session? Is this session part of an organizational strategy to advance DEI by design, and realize dignity, belonging and justice within the community? Or is support in the session the purpose and end goal?
  • Especially if leadership is in the room, clarifying how leadership will show up and what will stay in the room will be essential.
• Regarding for whom the session is happening: if this is an affinity space, inclusion based on self-identification is essential. Sometimes these groups are by invitation, which depends on the organizer(s) knowing/thinking they know who identifies as APIA. And, of course, the idea that we can tell who is APIA based on how they look is… racial profiling. Of course, your organization may have already asked employees/other community members to self-identify, and thus you may already have this information as the basis for invitations.
  • “For whom” also invites: what the internal (for the group), and – if any – external (for your greater organization/community) functions of this session are. It’s different to provide a space for a group of people to serve them, and to provide a space for a group of people because you’re asking for their service (i.e. please share so that we may learn...)
• Paired with the previous bullet, you should be clear if this is an affinity space, and not an ally space. (That is, people who support APIA colleagues can do so, outside of this occasion, which is for APIA employees/families/students.)
• Don’t presume the space you’re creating will be safe.
  • Establish your group agreements at the top of your session. I reinforce:
    • confidentiality (for self and others),
    • ask people to use “yes, and…” thinking (we don’t all have to agree: just accept the inevitable diversity of our perspectives), and
    • ask that we all strive to make our time worthwhile.
  • I also note that sometimes hurtful things can happen in spaces that are supposed to be just and safe, so let’s all share responsibility for stewarding mutual safety and well-being. If we need to pause and talk about what just happened in here/what’s happening with us, let’s do that, engaging as we are safe and able, even if it is uncomfortable.
• It’s also helpful to plan time to check in before you adjourn to:
  • reinforce confidentiality (giving an example of what people can say from this experience – ex. “I felt it was helpful just to get to talk” – and what not to say – ex. repeating someone else’s story, even if anonymously),
  • ask about action items/next steps (maybe there are none, or perhaps the group identified things they’d like to think more about communicating formally with leadership and/or how they might want to meet again, or engage their colleagues).
• You may also want to think ahead to reasonably anticipatable challenges like: someone dominating air time, an ally showing up anyway… (not all possible “what ifs…” but the examples I gave are, in my experience, reasonable to anticipate and plan for)

Again, just a starter in thinking about listening/sharing/supporting sessions.

On a larger note, I typically ask about the context for these sessions, and how they connect to a larger plan to support and design for dignity, belonging and thriving. An action is good; within a strategy is even more impactful.

* APIA is my way of referring to Asian and Pacific Islander Americans. Here’s me explaining more fully why I don’t use AAPI.

“The world cannot go on without you.”

So many reasons to take 8-1/2 mins to watch this.

1. Margaret’s “It gets better” video (played within this interview). A beautiful, vital message for today.
2. The “throwback” photos. (I identify with the “Asian success perm” look. And no, I didn’t know what was going on with that at the time.)
3. The very real example of acceptance with limits: even in LGBTQ+ communities and ally communities, the “noooo” (see video to hear intonation) when it comes to bisexuality and, by extension, pan-gender and sexual orientation and fluidity. This “yes [to gay], but [not to bisexual]…” holds a mirror up for me: as an ally and as member of my own communities, which identities, experiences and cultures do I center? whom do I accept unreservedly? who challenges my unnamed but inevitably still-there limits of acceptance – who elicits my “noooo” because I am reinforcing made-up boundaries of what, and who, can be?

Unoppressed, until you prove otherwise (again)

We keep requiring proof.

When oppression is not aimed at us directly, we demand that those who are already unsafe, show us. Lee Wong, Chair of the board of West Chester Township, OH, literally had to strip, in order to be seen.

https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1375557530399739906?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1375557530399739906%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fpolitics%2F2021%2F03%2F27%2Flee-wong-military-patriot-video%2F

This is not how communities should work.

You should not have to bear alone, what is ours to bear together. And, you should not have to bare yourself – reliving your trauma and this ongoing indignity of having to prove your story, your worth – for your humanity to matter. Having to prove that you didn’t just make up discrimination (or are being too sensitive).

Only for the next person to have to show their receipts.

And yet. That’s how systemic oppression survives: make it personal. keep it personal.

Works by design. Until we change the design.

I’ve heard educators say, with the best of intentions: If only we knew… as in, if only we knew which students are receiving financial assistance/reduced-price lunch… if only we knew that their father was just deported… if only we knew their family was going through a divorce… if only we knew that they’re gender nonbinary…

I think the idea is that if we know, then we can treat people as they’d like and need to be treated.

Which makes sense. But knowing requires that everyone around us feels safe enough, able enough (to communicate with us) and that is worth it (to make the effort to be heard because they have enough faith that we will then recognize them), to tell us.

That’s a lot to ask of people. To disclose what isn’t their fault, but may still feel unsafe to share, because, after all, their status isn’t just the product of an aberrational situation: it’s the intentional, predictable result of systemic (not individual or happenstance) oppression, the same system of oppression that asks them to let us know that the system isn’t working for them.

We need to flip the script. Beginning with accepting that we’re not entitled to the disclosure of anyone else’s lived harm, hurt or vulnerability. Yet, if we care, we are still responsible for realizing each other’s full humanity. This requires more risk-taking, more growth mindset in practice and more of my own vulnerability in how I show up with you.

Protect trans youth

Everything you need to know about anti-trans sports bills in 40 seconds. pic.twitter.com/EwVfpcnWeX

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) March 25, 2021

I might only disagree with the statement that this is “shocking.”

Thank you, June

I wrote a post about acronymizing Asian – by which I mean to indicate East, South and Southeast Asian – and Pacific Islander Americans, which I also shared on LinkedIn.

Then, my colleague Dr. June Christian commented:

Invading powers (during war and throughout history) would create dehumanizing names for the people they were killing. There were many reasons for this, among them: it’s easier to kill a [insert derogatory name here].

Your post reminded me that, hopefully, taking the time to specify who we are referring to, either by name, nationality or other important community, places us squarely in our humanity.

Those nifty acronyms, for ease or what other justification, are…

…dehumanizing.

Thank you for sharing this. It’s really inspired some deep thinking for me.

Thank you, June. You’re inspiring deep thinking for me, too. About how dehumanizing happens by and among “the invaded” too.

I just have to trace my reactions through…

… Learning about the mass shootings in the Atlanta…

… Then learning that most of the victims were Asian women working at the massage parlors….

… Then, filtering this specific hate crime through calls to end all anti-APIA violence…

… Then learning that all of the Atlanta spa hate crime victims were Korean women. While this does not make them more important: it does make their deaths more proximate for me, as I see in them my mom and my aunts, my cousins, my sister, my friends and me…

… And then in learning and reading aloud their names:

… Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Yong Ae Yue, 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; and Paul Andre Michels, 54. Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30…

… Seeing their faces, in pictures with their loved ones (that is, as people, not just victims)…

… And all over again when I read about the mass shooting in Boulder, CO…

… And learned and read aloud their names:

… Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65…

I’m seeing how I oscillate in the degree to which I recognize the people (not just “the victims”) killed by hate and hurt, in part because of my training and habituation to white supremacist patriarchal filters of “us” and “them” that are more reflexive than I would like to admit. Calling it a coping mechanism (to deal with the overwhelming, seemingly unrelenting hate and hurt) papers over what it also is, which is a permission mechanism. Othering permits us not to take dehumanization personally, even as the illusory distance we perceive between “us” and “them” vanishes.

What gives me hope is that this is permission that I – that we – can deny.

June brought me back to Audre Lorde’s wisdom: “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

While we are not equally responsible for the building and maintenance of the master’s house, if we’re going to dismantle it, each of us needs to own how we have wielded and still wield the master’s tools, in our own way. And create the tools not just to renovate but to design anew a space for humanity.

Oh, acronyms

My general rule when I encounter an acronym: ask “what do you mean?”

In the current focus on violence against Asian-Americans, acronyms are being more broadly adopted, so I just wanted to take a moment with a couple because, like BIPOC, they are helpful and unclear, and while seen in predominantly white communities as the “correct” way to refer to groups of people, they are not actually absolutely “right” but rather help us continue to discover how to name accurately whom we mean:

• AAPI: stands for Asian-American and Pacific Islander, which, you may notice, subtly reinforces an “always foreign” status for Pacific Islanders (note the placement of “American”). So, if institutions and organizations really want to stand in solidarity with “AAPI” communities, they could begin by acknowledging that Pacific Islanders can be – and are – US Americans, too. (APIA, anyone?)
• APIDA: stands for Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi (South Asian)-American. In recognizing that “Asian” is all too frequently used in the US to mean exclusively people of East Asian descent, this acronym actually perpetuates that very misunderstanding, in leaving that first “A” unqualified. (Either “A” stands for East, Southeast and South Asian collectively – and we’re back to APIA – or we need to specify all the Asians: EASEAPIDA).

Which leaves me thinking that while acronyms can be convenient, at a certain point, it’s clearer to name whom you mean – maybe in entire words.

Do we have to make a statement of solidarity with Asian-Americans? (Do we have to make a statement about EVERYTHING?)

Yes. No. Maybe not always. Maybe for now.

If it feels overwhelming, discerning whether you need to say something, hearing from others that you need to say something, trying to find the words…

It is.

Unfortunately, there is so much that has to be said in response to what is being said so loudly and clearly through reported and amplified hate speech and physical violence.

Especially if what we’ve said in existing policy or other statements hasn’t been clear. Because, it turns out, many statements about “valuing diversity” aren’t cutting it.

And there are all too many experiences of neglect, exclusion and marginalization in our communities that pre-date the hate that’s being acted out right now. That haven’t been acknowledged, and that haven’t healed.

So, like many other aspects of the work of DEI, this is going to be inconvenient and hard for a while. Because we are not here, playing injustice whack-a-mole, by accident. We are here by design. White supremacist patriarchy has rigged the system to win by making solidarity a reactive stance, thereby overwhelming and exhausting us with the need to build – in moments and waves of crisis – relationships and trust that actually require space, attention and priority to develop.

And so, it will require redesign, with DEI at our core (not replacing mission, but as the means to unleash and deliver on the promises of our mission) for this exhaustion and overwhelmedness to become the default setting not just of how we respond, but how we plan and practice every day (which includes iterating, learning through feedback and reiterating). It will require each of us “tending to our own patch of sky” (Kaur) and being grateful when someone prods us to consider what we have not.

As we redesign, we will have to undertake what has historically “not been our job.” And as we redefine our responsibilities we shouldn’t – and can’t afford to – enact the very injustice we have to find the words to speak about in our statements of solidarity.

This is actually great news.

White supremacist patriarchal culture demands that our statements be perfect: we have to “get it right” in words and tone, and be unassailable. That is, we should issue the final word. No need to say more, because, after all, we’ve demonstrated that we’ve “got this.” Right?

Wrong.

If you are struggling to say what you have to say, you can always start with (and these examples are inspired from what I’ve heard from leaders, not just now, but also after the lynchings of Black US Americans over this past summer, during the MeToo movement, after the mass murder at Tree of Life synagogue, during the ongoing border crisis, in the ongoing Islamaracist violence in the wake of 9/11…)

I’m at a loss for words…

I don’t know what to say…

I’m embarrassed that I had to be asked to write this…

I’m still wondering why I didn’t think to say something…

I am so tired of having to write these letters because there is so much inhumanity…

I am so sorry.

I can’t imagine…

And, maybe you can say, not write, what you have to say. Sometimes the medium of an e-mail or a post conveys what we have to say. Sometimes a video. Writing can provide a space for revision that can be helpful, and may mask the basicness or rawness of what we have to say.

This is all to say: there is no right way. Only striving for better than what we’ve been prepared for. Owning the need to fill a void that will be filled, if not by us, then by others.

“Fear in the Asian-American community”

Anderson Cooper is covering the anti-Asian female violence tonight on CNN. He keeps referring to the “fear in the Asian-American community,” which I find striking, because, while there is fear, there is also plenty of outrage, grief, fatigue, despair, fury, hopelessness, “not taking any more of this,” and “go ahead and try me” going around, too. But I guess only Black people are angry (and can only be scary), and Asians are only scared, easy targets.

These racist portrayals of communities being attacked is not surprising. It’s disheartening that predominantly white media coverage of anti-Asian and anti-Black violence (the purpose of which I hope is to educate the public in an effort to end racist violence) is itself (un)consciously anti-Asian and anti-Black.

And it’s consequential. That we are perceived as meek, quiet victims – especially us women – and Black people are perceived as a danger fuels the violence against us. And not just anti-Black and anti-Asian violence: the victimization of Muslim, Latine and Asian people is less relevant because we are “foreign”; the myth of privilege minimizes (and even sanctions) anti-Semitic and anti-Asian violence; the archetype of the tempter justifies violence against women; the suggestion of needing to being “fixed” emboldens attackers to “teach” queer folx “a lesson.”

So when the media perpetuates stereotypes – when we do – how are we surprised that the attacks continue?

8

The number, at least today, is 8. So long as they are a collective, instead of 8 spread out too far geographically or temporally.

I’m referring to the mass shootings in Atlanta.

While authorities are still debating “whether” these shootings were an anti-Asian hate crime (as if hate crimes against Asian women employed/indentured at massage parlors has to be a competing, not intersectional motive), I’m not surprised, but struggling anyway, with the fact that violence against people of color still has to escalate to multiple murders for predominantly white leadership and communities to be “horrified,” to “deplore hate” and to finally “stand with” communities. Especially when the attacks are not just preceded by, but seeded with hate language.

Let’s be clear: this pandemic didn’t invent anti-Asian slurs and violence. Anti-Asian racism is centuries old. Just slightly younger than Europe’s discovery that Asia exists (as the continent in which Europe plays a minor landmass role). Also centuries old: diminishing and rationalizing anti-Asian hate: it’s not so bad, don’t be sensitive – Asians are privileged anyway, right?

Wrong. The myth of Asian privilege is a function of white supremacy. While some Asians (and by “Asian,” I mean East, South and Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders) are privileged in socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, abilities and other non-racial aspects of their identities, Asianness is not privileged by white supremacy: it’s just that anti-Asian racism is ancillary to white supremacy’s principal, brutal anti-Indigenous and anti-Black agenda.

Anti-Asian racism works like this: even Asian people may downplay “how bad” we have it, as my colleague Dot Kowal writes. Because we’re not getting assaulted or killed… as much or as badly as Black or Indigenous people… right? As if all racist violence isn’t connected. As if we have to choose, because to stand against anti-Asian racism too soon, too much or too specifically somehow means not standing against anti-Black or anti-Indigenous racism. As if human lives only matter if enough are threatened. (And if an elderly Asian person dies after an assault on them, that’s just one data point. Let’s not blow things out of proportion.)

Look, we know this pattern of escalation: hate speech precedes and seeds hate action. And yet.

Our lives must really not matter because the overwhelming sentiment is “don’t be so sensitive. why do you always have to make everything about race? they’re just words. this is political correctness run amok” – and, for Asians, “be grateful for what you have. it could be worse”… until it’s time to be “horrified” once again.

“Works by design” indeed (Oluo).

Instead of downplaying or rationalizing hate speech (“but was their intent racist?”), why can’t we recognize hate speech – all hate speech – for what it is: the less (immediately) mortal manifestation of hate, the training wheels for hate-fueled action, that if we don’t stand together against now, makes us complicit in the horror that finally dawns on us when “enough” people of color, queer people, immigrants, women, Jewish people, trans people, homeless people (because we can’t play social justice whack-a-mole, and keep being surprised by the fact that hate for some is connected to hate for others in a white supremacist patriarchal system)… are killed, in a deplorable “enough” way. How many more – of each of us, and all of us – will it take?

Quote of the day

“If you have a brain, you have bias!” – Steven Jones, CEO , JONES