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Confronting Narratives about AAPI People
34 Plays5 hours ago
Elizabeth Cronlund is joined by Marie Moy to confront some common narratives about Asian American and Pacific Islander populations. They take a look at some of the history of AAPI in the United States, and reflect on the ways that history informs where we find ourselves today. They also share some ways we can build coalitions and stand in solidarity so we are able to move forward together.
Learn more about CCDA’s AAPI Network at ccda.org/aapi. And make plans to join us at the CCDA Conference this November at ccda.org/conference.
Marie Moy serves as the Director of Operations and is a member of the Restorative Practices training and implementation team at Erie County Restorative Justice Coalition (ECRJC). ECRJC’s mission is to promote racial and social justice through Restorative Practices, providing training, coaching, consulting, and restorative responses, including Restorative Justice Conferencing in lieu of traditional punitive measures. Marie grew up in a small town in northern Indiana, where her parents owned a Chinese-American restaurant. As children, she and her sisters attended an independent Baptist church. Marie first learned of Christian Community Development while attending Renovation Church in Buffalo in 2010. She participated in CCDA’s El Camino del Inmigrante in 2016 with approximately 70 others to bring attention to the plight of immigrants. Marie is a graduate of Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY, with an MA in Theology & Social Justice from Indiana University, Bloomington, with a BS in Biochemistry. Marie integrates her background in science and theology to bring just practices to the operations of organizations, and is particularly interested in creating spaces without traditional hierarchy that are inclusive and supportive of marginalized communities. As a second-generation Asian American, Marie is passionate about immigration reform in addition to her work with ECRJC to end mass incarceration and restore relationships and communities. Marie is married with two adult children and a small Cavalier King Charles/poodle mix named Chani. She is a member of the CCDA Board and Leadership Cohort 8, and the John R. Oishei Foundation Karen Lee Spalding Oishei Fellows for Leaders of Color. She is embarking on a sabbatical to spend time with God and an exploration of embodied restorative practices after a long season in nonprofit work.
Based in Orlando, FL, Elizabeth Cronlund is the Partnership Development Manager with UNDIVDED, an organization that is activating communities for racial healing and justice. She has more than 15 years of experience in congregational ministry as a Christian Community Developer. Within CCDA, she helps lead the AAPI Network and is a contributing writer for CCDA’s Education Equity Handbook. Elizabeth is a Certified Nonprofit Professional (CNP) and attends Northern Seminary.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the CCDA podcast. My name is Elizabeth Conlund. I'm the partnership development director for Undivided. I'm a longtime member of CCDA, where I get to help lead the Orlando local network and the AAPIs and CCD affinity network.
00:00:22
Speaker
And I get to be your host for this podcast.
AAPI Narratives in History
00:00:25
Speaker
Today, I'm joined by my dear friend, Marie Moy. She's a fellow AAPI MCCD leader, and we're going to be having a conversation confronting some of the narratives about AAPI populations, both from history through today.
00:00:39
Speaker
And we're also going to reflect on how we think we can meet this moment so that we can all work together to respond and move forward. But first, Marie, would you introduce yourself and share a little bit more about yourself with our audience?
00:00:53
Speaker
Sure. I'm Marie Moy. I've been in CTA for quite a few years now. I'm working with an organization here in Buffalo, New York that does um restorative justice. We do training and facilitation in restorative justice.
00:01:08
Speaker
And so I'm just excited to have this conversation today.
Challenges for AAPI Community
00:01:12
Speaker
So why are we having this conversation? know, talking about the impact of story and narratives is very on point for CCDA in general.
00:01:20
Speaker
But for years, you and I and our whole AAPI and CCD community have been talking about the ways narratives, voice and story affect our community in particular. And so I'm curious, why do you think we need to have this conversation today?
00:01:34
Speaker
partly because it's in the news all the time and there's like a daily challenge of being an embodied person who looks like they're from Asia.
00:01:47
Speaker
Whether you're from, you know, Western part of Asia or the Eastern part of Asia, i think that there is a spotlight on people and it's very easily to target people from our community, whether you've lived in the States and or a long time or not.
00:02:03
Speaker
And I also feel like because there's so much momentum behind some of the things that are happening around immigration and yeah education that myself, and i I think this happens for other people too, is that we feel just like shut down.
Diversity and Representation Issues
00:02:22
Speaker
So part of the reason why I i like the suggestion of talking about this through CCDA networks is that we need to help one another activate.
00:02:32
Speaker
I think that we see it in some other parts of the country and other populations. I have a lot of dear friends in the West and Southwest who are really fighting hard for their communities around immigration, and yet it's very different for Asian American Pacific Islanders to kind of speak into that. We have a much different history, and I think that that's why just unpacking some of those things for ourselves and for people who are wanting to work alongside us would be helpful.
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for kind of grounding us in the moment. And you said it. We're coming from a very different perspective. And I think this is something that we've kind of been confronting over for over a decade in the APIs and CCD group, where depending on your geography,
00:03:24
Speaker
the demographics in your area may mean that you are less than 1% of the population. You just don't see people like yourself. And also, we're such a large group. Asia's huge, you know?
00:03:36
Speaker
ah So people have this sense of what Asian people look like that I think is kind of the larger caricature of us, which is very East Asian. But we've got South Asian folks. We've got Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians. We've got, ah you know,
00:03:52
Speaker
Southeast Asians, and we don't quite look like the ah caricature of Asian folks. And just depending on how the story is being told, depending on how we're being represented in media, whether it's news or entertainment, people don't always realize how we're.
00:04:09
Speaker
the AAPI community is. And also that geography piece, like I'm in Florida, you're in New York, we've got friends out in California where they may have quite a bit of community around them. There's just a larger population of Asian American folks in their areas. But if you're not constantly in
Personal Experiences of Belonging
00:04:28
Speaker
community with one another, you don't always get to talk to others about how you're feeling just very openly or be able to share some of how these things are affecting you because There's a lot of scary stuff right now.
00:04:41
Speaker
so yeah, this, that, I mean, that idea of being seen. Why do you think it's so difficult ah for us as AAPI folks to to feel seen? I mean, there's the geography piece, but there's there's so much more to...
00:04:57
Speaker
It's such a tension between two things.
Leadership and Cultural Pressures
00:05:00
Speaker
We're seen because we stand out, right? When I was growing up, and I know it's sad that it's going away for of the population, but like watching Sesame Street, there was always these things how you're trying to teach kids how to match these things.
00:05:14
Speaker
And there was always like four things and one of these things don't belong. And I didn't realize for a really, really long time how that struck me. Because sure, it's trying to help kids like organize and categorize things, but I was the thing that didn't belong.
00:05:32
Speaker
I grew up in Indiana in a small town. My dad relocated there from Chicago because it was an easy and good business opportunity. And so myself and my cousins were pretty much the only non-white children at school because there was a ah college, a few professors. Like I can remember one Indian family because their dad was a professor at the college.
00:05:55
Speaker
There was a growing Mexican population because we had a lot of Arby industry. But like we stood out. We stood out. And from a very young age, I was like the one thing out of the four, or actually the one thing out of the 20 in my kindergarten classroom that didn't belong. Because they say it not just who's different, but who didn't belong, right?
00:06:15
Speaker
So we already stand out. It's very easy on the street for people to like say something to somebody who is Asian looking. We always stand out. My ethnicity is Chinese. The way that that people say the word China is sort of like a swear word.
00:06:32
Speaker
It literally comes out of people's mouths that way. And so I'm super sensitive to the way that the people are portrayed, right? The unfortunate part is is that it's not it's it's rare that people are speaking up that that look like me.
00:06:49
Speaker
Like there is representation in the photographs, but there's no actual words or power. if you When you look at demographics, there's definitely a ceiling to where people advance in organizations that A lot of Asian Americans end up in like middle management and don't go beyond that.
00:07:07
Speaker
And so they don't ever have any real power or decision making. And so when it comes to even like voting or being a leader in their communities, unless it's they're in a somewhat homogenous community, because that's why we bring up, you know, Southern California or even like in the Bay Area is much different than the where California the most of us live.
00:07:29
Speaker
And so we're often just feel not able to represent a population and and it looks like representing ourselves. And so that's why we have a tendency not to speak because we don't just want to have our own
Model Minority Myth
00:07:43
Speaker
opinion.
00:07:43
Speaker
And because we don't have a coalition around us, it's difficult to speak up. But it's very harmful. It hurts us and it mentally and like shapes our ourselves and our spirituality because of how we are seeing ourselves through this other lens or dominant culture lens.
00:08:01
Speaker
You touch on quite a few things that I think kind of put guardrails or boundaries around the ways that we're willing to put ourselves out there, allow for ah API folks to even speak. I know probably in the last decade, I've just started saying yes to things that would put me on a stage and let me talk. And it's really, really hard. I think the first couple of years in particular, I after every single time I got to speak at an event or do a workshop or something, people would always say, oh, I've never seen and you know Asian American woman teach like this or speak like this. They were surprised, I guess, that I had a voice or a story and they are just always surprised by my perspective and how quote unquote American I was, which, yeah, I am.
00:08:48
Speaker
You also touched on ah few things that I know are impact my story as well and like my experience where We are worried about kind of being pushed into the spotlight in a way where we are speaking for everybody because we can't. We're such a large and diverse community, AAPI. It's not like a specific ethnic group that is homogenous, looks the same, is exactly the same, lives in the same place.
00:09:14
Speaker
like API, that that was a political identity so that we had any form of power as disjointed as we are. And so there's the cultural pressure where we do not want to rock the boat. We don't want to go out there and cause a scene. That's pretty common across most API api cultures.
00:09:34
Speaker
And also, we're just worried that we have to speak for everybody. We're not used to putting ourselves out there. And even that, what you had mentioned earlier, just didn't see ourselves growing up. I think there was like this one one horrifying thing with Connie Chung on like, ah like oh goodness, like a piano at one point in time. Like my first Asian American person that I saw was on Ally McBeal.
00:10:04
Speaker
That was the first time I ever saw an Asian person that sounded American, was American, absolutely caricatures all over her, very much the dragon lady and all these other things. But that was the first time I ever saw and Asian American woman that sounded like me, that even looked a little bit like me. And it was amazing.
00:10:23
Speaker
It really stuck with me. I was probably too young to be watching it, but I just I wanted to see more of her because I'm like, oh, she looks like me there. I'm like a real person in that space.
00:10:33
Speaker
So, yeah, so cultural pressures not to kind of shine a light on us. the The fear of kind of becoming a target in some ways and trying to speak for everyone when we know we can't speak for everybody.
00:10:47
Speaker
But there's also that fear that maybe I don't know enough about what's going
Historical Erasure and Systemic Racism
00:10:52
Speaker
on. i don't want my story to be everyone's story because my experience is different than other folks. And ah just makes it so hard to hear different AAPI voices and to find them. I don't think that we get signal boosted anywhere. think we don't get platformed very often. And so wouldn't when there is AAPI person, no matter what they're saying, and sometimes folks are saying some real wild stuff out there,
00:11:17
Speaker
they'll They'll get into the spotlight if they are kind of dramatic and extreme, but the everyday voices of api folks who care about issues, our stories aren't often told.
00:11:28
Speaker
And sometimes they're they're written for us and scripted in a very specific way. And so I want to kind of talk about the model minority myth. And this is a theme over and over again in our conversations, but it's one that we have to address constantly.
00:11:45
Speaker
And some of that is we are not taught API history. And even conference to conference, as we meet, as we do our networking sessions, yeah we have people who are engaging with a large group of AAPI folks for the very first time. And they're surprised and they don't know our history. They don't know what the model minority myth. They are just surprised by the diversity and like the ways that the AAPI community is engaged and has been involved.
00:12:15
Speaker
So let's talk about the model minority myth. How do you feel? it is impacting things today and, you know, how is it affecting the way that our voices are kind of being perceived or if they're being perceived right now?
00:12:29
Speaker
This idea stems back like civil rights in the 60s of how people were trying to push back against like the narrative dominant culture.
00:12:40
Speaker
And there's been times where what happens is that groups get pitted against one another, right? And so we hold up this this group of of people as ah ah monolith of Asian, which we already said is not imaginous across the spectrum. A lot of different cultural histories, a lot of very long, rich histories, and we're trying to put them in this box and in the United States.
00:13:06
Speaker
right? There is a tendency, and I think somewhat commonality of our different cultures to speak in a certain way and have and and respect people in a certain way.
00:13:19
Speaker
And when you come to the United States, the whole goal is to make a better life, right? Otherwise, we wouldn't leave a culture. And in order to do that, and the easiest path is was to behave in a certain way that you didn't get squashed by what was happening in Dalma culture, right?
00:13:40
Speaker
So a lot of times, especially because there's often layer language barriers, so you don't speak very much, you just work really hard, it's head down, and um a lot of sacrifices, right?
00:13:52
Speaker
It's very hard-working sacrifices. feeds into this like whole conversation idea and And I experienced that myself. You know, my father immigrated when he was a teenager, and a lot of his family around him already tried to, like, control him because he was sort of ah rebellious child.
00:14:13
Speaker
ah So they're already trying to, like, form him so that he can survive, right? It's a survival technique. And so he just became very quiet. He was also already, ah you know, tendency to be introverted and just like worked hard.
00:14:29
Speaker
Like my my father, his whole life worked about 80 hours a week. We owned our own business, which is also common just because then you don't have to go through these other channels of learning languages or going to school or meeting other people's expectations.
00:14:46
Speaker
And you're providing a service. People love that. You want to provide me with a service? you can be in my my community, right? And not rock the boat. You know, that's what I'm constantly, when I'm under pressure, I feel that same pressure to like head down, don't rock the boat, just do what you're supposed to do and work as hard as you can. And so I think it's partly cultural, partly just a survival technique, but then it's held up in this mirror against other communities that have a different cultural background.
00:15:19
Speaker
And, you know, they want to measure it as ah proximity to whiteness because we're trying to fit in And when the majority of people in their own selves or in their own communities in their own spaces, when they're their best selves, that's not who they are, right?
00:15:36
Speaker
Like i ah often... people find a very dissonance with myself because they're expecting what you brought up, this whole Connie Chung effect of being the non-threatening Asian female, right?
00:15:50
Speaker
We see this in broadcasting a lot. That's where it came from. You want to have somebody who has has an ethnic look. You put in this Asian woman because she's non-threatening and expect her just to like placate and go along with whatever that person says.
00:16:07
Speaker
And people who meet me don't find that that matches up with what they think. People don't know what to do with me because I have this one expectation that I should be demure and just, you know, appeasing.
00:16:21
Speaker
And I have a lot of opinions. And so really people don't know what to do, right? And so they shut down and it's hard to engage because I don't look like what they think a leader should look like.
00:16:33
Speaker
i I love when I get to see that moment when people are confronted with just the power of your presence and it makes me so happy because you're such a wonderful leader. And I definitely feel that that moment of realization I've had that happen where someone's like, oh, a cute little Asian lady. And then, oh, she's here to talk about justice.
00:16:53
Speaker
no no No, no, no, Like back off, to like be comforting. Like you're supposed to like make this place safe. But that That's not what I'm here to do most of the time.
00:17:05
Speaker
And you talk about the model minority myth. There's this belief that we will be kind of here for your service, here to comfort you, here to make life easier.
00:17:16
Speaker
I think it's creation. You had brought up the civil rights movement was... Well, look at these great Asian American folks. Look at these Asian people. They're so quiet. They've acclimated. They have this proximity to whiteness. They're behaving the way that you should as a minority group in America.
00:17:34
Speaker
and our whole caricaturized identity was weaponized to say, well, black people, brown people, look at the Asian people. yeah Like what you're doing, the way that you're doing it just isn't necessary.
00:17:48
Speaker
You're being dramatic. And so I think that was some of the start. I mean, so much more than that, but that the actual danger of the model minority myth.
Asian Immigration History
00:17:58
Speaker
I am actually good at math, but sometimes I wish I wasn't because I think it kind of feeds into that like, oh, they're good at math. They're they're sweet and hospitable. And sometimes I very much align to that.
00:18:08
Speaker
But it's It's not actually a helpful thing. More often than not, it creates these these very narrow lanes for us to exist in.
00:18:19
Speaker
And then when we bump up against the the edges and the lines and we get into this liminal space where we exist as a person, all of a sudden our existence is ah is a threat and they don't know what to do with us.
00:18:31
Speaker
Even if we are doing good work for communities, even if our work is meant to advance everybody and and care for folks, the moment that you're outside of the lines, you get ah light shown on you, you become a threat.
00:18:44
Speaker
I think this is Jan always says like pet or threat. You can be the the comforting trophy or token Asian pet. But the moment that you start to speak up, the moment that you push to be recognized as a full person or your existence as a person becomes complicated, now you're a threat.
00:19:03
Speaker
And part of that upkeep of the model minority myth is this ah type of mass erasure of the narrative and the stories of AAPI folks.
00:19:14
Speaker
And you talked about that that pressure not to to not rock the boat, to stay quiet, to not disrupt what's there. And there absolutely very good reasons why our parents and a lot of immigrants come in and they They are trying to succeed in a new life and everything's scary. So they look at what's there and they realize, you know, well, maybe proximity to whiteness is the way that I succeed. Because that's that's where the power is. That's where the privilege is That's where opportunity is. And so oftentimes, especially my my mom's generation and new immigrants, they start to assimilate.
00:19:57
Speaker
into kind of white culture. And i mean, my name's Elizabeth and it's a very Anglicized name. The rest of my mom's family were Filipino. Like we sound like a telenovel, you know, at my grandma's name is Pilar.
00:20:12
Speaker
i have a Tia Juanita. We have a Basente. Like, we have very Filipino names, but in the eighty s we did not want to stand out.
00:20:23
Speaker
During that time, it was just a few years before my parents got married that they actually had reversed a lot of the bans on interracial marriage. So their marriage was very fresh.
00:20:36
Speaker
A fresh idea in a lot of the state on the East Coast and in the South where they were moving and living and doing things. And so trying to assimilate and give my sister and I and my generation, the next generation of API kiddos, the best shot, you know, they're thinking, well, let's make them as American as possible.
00:20:59
Speaker
so that they don't have to deal with the types of things that we dealt with. And it's tough because, like you said, your dad was working 80 hours a week. We had our parents coming in, even those who are newly immigrants here, struggling against a lot of prejudices and barriers, language barriers, cultural barriers.
00:21:17
Speaker
And that struggle also weighs on this generation, the next generation of ah us. And we feel some of that pressure to be quiet and not rock the boat is that we don't want to disrespect the sacrifices of our family, the sacrifices of our our parents and our elders, because it's It's almost treated that way by some parents. If your kid's causing a ruckus doing something that you don't want them to do, there is nothing more deeply soul crushing than a disappointed Asian parent.
00:21:54
Speaker
And it sticks with us forever. and so thinking about erasure. Right now in America, there's a lot of erasure happening and a lot of kind of cultivating of ah the media.
00:22:09
Speaker
But these are kind of tale as old of time as time for us. Like these are reiterations of existing narratives. And so... I want kind of go back, take it way back, back into time to Chinese Immigration Act. And I'd love to talk about the ways that Asian folks have kind of been portrayed over time and how our identity has been formed and malformed and transformed over time through now. And that's a lot of history, so we'll probably jump through a few places. So
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah. In your perspective, what does the history of Asian folks looks like look like in America? Absolutely. and that and And that's partly like my story. For people who know me and know or been around CCDA, 2016, we did a ah Camino de la Mangrante to try to highlight like immigration. And we went from Tijuana to L.A., right? So that's when c when the conference was in L.A. and we planned this whole big thing.
00:23:13
Speaker
Shout out to all the people who organized that. It was incredible. And part the reason why I was intrigued when that was brought up in 2015 was because that's my story, too.
00:23:24
Speaker
Some of my family also came through that southern border, but they first immigrated during the gold rush. to you know Northern California and my, get this right, great-great-grandfather worked on the railroad.
00:23:38
Speaker
After the railroad was done, well, for one, when it was complete, they took this picture where not a single Asian was in the picture for the completion of the railroad.
00:23:50
Speaker
They hired a lot of people coming from the East, from Irish background to work on it, and then um from the West going East, ah mostly Chinese workers.
00:24:01
Speaker
And a lot of people gave their lives to building the railroad. And it was interesting because I went to Southwest Border Retreat two years ago, and they actually, ah Chinese workers also built the railroad from l L.A. to El Paso.
00:24:17
Speaker
So I thought that was really interesting. But after that was done, there was not work for them to do, and they basically sent people home. So my great-great-grandfather got deported back to China,
00:24:31
Speaker
And there was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment. the The cartoons at the time are just horrific. It was really the very first immigration act in the United States ah ah holding a a people group out of the country.
00:24:50
Speaker
And so it led to a lot of violence. My daughter and I, two years ago, went on this like Northwest Chinatown tour. Tacoma, Washington, there's only a monument because really what they did is in the middle of of the night, they built burnt down their Chinatown and forced everybody to leave in the middle of the night.
00:25:08
Speaker
And it's a very common thing up in the Northwest. But in the largest or one of the largest lynchings occurred in l L.A., and you can hear a lot of people who are doing immigration now, as it's right there and in the oldest part of town of like lynching, i think, 19 Chinese men all in the same day.
00:25:30
Speaker
So there's a lot of this anti-Chinese in particular sentiment that started from then. And so other Asian countries were the same, were not allowed to immigrate, only 102 Chinese per year from 1892 all the way up 1965. So this whole period of time, why the population so low. They say,
00:25:50
Speaker
nineteen sixty five so this whole period of time this is why the population is so low they say oh do we really care about this people group? They're only about...
00:26:03
Speaker
you know, five to 6% of the population? Why should they be driving this narrative? And it's because it's the limitation that has kept it from growing, right?
00:26:16
Speaker
And also what you talk about is this modern minority myth and it's coming up during civil rights is that the people who are allowed to immigrate then and in the 60s were people who were already educated and wealthy, right?
00:26:31
Speaker
sort of how the immigration ah primarily goes to Canada, is that they already could, you know, had had skills and and could come to the United States and really fit in very well until we started doing some refugee resettlement, right?
00:26:47
Speaker
So now we have a really very a wide distribution economically of of Asians coming into the States, right? um A lot of Korean immigration started in the 60s and they were educated, yeah spoke eagle English, you know, they were able to like have that before they even came. My father spoke English before he came. Like he grew up in Hong Kong.
00:27:11
Speaker
He came under ah British passport, right? But ah very Chinese. But that's how that whole idea of like, oh, They are closer proximity to whiteness because of their level education.
00:27:25
Speaker
Then there's a whole other group of mostly Southeast Asian folks who came because of resettlement, right? And they're fleeing from persecution, um from violence.
00:27:40
Speaker
heavy military influences, and in all honesty, too, they didn't choose to come here. They just had to leave where they're coming from, right? So to to accuse them of being a negative influence on the population of the United States, that's They're like, I wasn't concerned about that. I was just trying not to get killed.
00:27:59
Speaker
Right. Literally trying not to get killed. I was floored a couple months ago in Michigan when they arrested some Hmong and Burmese refugees and tried to deport them. And I'm like, just thinking about their history, what they came from, and just the trauma that that they were they were going through because of looking different than the population around them.
00:28:26
Speaker
But there's been quotas, you know, in the beginning, and then, you know, moving along to a Japanese internment during World War II. It should be mind-boggling.
00:28:38
Speaker
Unfortunately, it's happening. We're so familiar with this way of treating people who live in the States because you don't look like a dominant culture, that you you could be rounded up.
00:28:51
Speaker
My mentor has passed away since, but he was interned. He was had just started seminary, so he's like 21 years old, and he and his whole family in California were interned.
00:29:04
Speaker
His parents were farmers in Imperial Valley, so he learned how to farm. And they did okay there, but it also just causes so much like shame, which really taps in and triggers people from the Asian dysphora of the idea of shaming your community, shaming your ancestors because of who you are and what you look like. And they couldn't go back to where they came from.
00:29:40
Speaker
They literally, after the war, were dispersed all over the United States because of the negative connotations and the shame they experienced by being forced to leave their community.
Resilience and Modern Challenges
00:29:55
Speaker
Thank you fair kind of taking us through the larger narrative of just some of the history. There's so much more that we don't hear about, that we don't learn. Even thinking about what's happening now and some of the touch points like with immigration have happened.
00:30:12
Speaker
I think about my city. I'm in Orlando and there's this portion of our city. It's called Little Vietnam because a lot of Vietnamese refugees came here and started businesses.
00:30:25
Speaker
Ironically, it's in an area of town also known as Colonial Town on Colonial Drive. So that's very interesting and very special. But the fact that they that that part of our city is thriving economically and is one of the most...
00:30:42
Speaker
it was Like Nat Geo did this whole, like one of the most interesting neighborhoods in the world. And it was like this area, we we call it Mills 50, just in 50 is Colonial Drive.
00:30:53
Speaker
But it's all primarily AAPI-owned businesses, and especially multiple generations are there with thriving businesses. And it's one of the places where I feel the most safe in my city.
00:31:08
Speaker
and But also, we still have people driving through with like Confederate flags on Colonial Drive, and they're stopping to get Banh Mi. And I'm like... How does this work for you? But it's the Asian-American, Asian immigrants that came in really created something from nothing.
00:31:26
Speaker
And there's this great investment into the economic diversity and thriving of communities that immigrants bring that when we need a scapegoat, the Asian-American population is small enough that it's easy to turn us into that threat.
00:31:44
Speaker
And not even just a threat, this existential threat, the way it's portrayed as like an infestation. You know, they talk about us in terms of disease, like Kung flu, yellow fever, and whether they're trying to to tease or kind of scare people, it's always this idea of like infestation, just minimizing us and removing our humanity.
00:32:09
Speaker
And he brought up Japanese internment. One of my mentors, Jack Ong, he was interned as a child as well. I think they ended up getting incarcerated and Arizona. He passed away not too long ago.
00:32:20
Speaker
And like this is living history. Thankfully, Alligator Alcatraz just got shut down. Thank you, Muscogee Nation. They work with environmental groups to shut that atrocity down.
00:32:32
Speaker
But we have mentors. We have families. We have people who were interned during World War two This is not some super far in the past reality.
00:32:43
Speaker
This is living memory. These are things that some of us heard around kitchen tables, family dinners, family gatherings. like It's not ancient history. ah It's still very much living history. And so I kind of get upset when i read when people are saying, well, where are the Asian people?
00:33:00
Speaker
why aren't they showing up now? Why aren't they active? And I'm like, it's it's the erasure piece. If you actually look at videos of what was happening in l LA, there were tons of Asian folks that were part of that coalition.
00:33:13
Speaker
i saw one Filipino creator was like, maybe you can't tell that we're Asian just because we have TANS, but you know we're Asian American, proudly so, like and we're here.
00:33:24
Speaker
Even though it's not today, it's not Filipinos. Today, it's not Japanese people or Chinese people or Vietnamese people, although right now it is. But in that moment, the creator was saying like, it's not me yet, yet.
00:33:39
Speaker
Because as long as one group is available or allowed to be disappeared, in the middle of the night with no other reason than they're considered less than human. It's very easy to choose the next group, the next, but the next, the next, the next.
00:33:56
Speaker
And i mean, I know there were Filipinos that worked on cruise ships. They were rounding them up and detaining them and deporting them. Even i think it was just a few days ago in in Georgia,
00:34:07
Speaker
At the Hyundai plant, they ended up detaining 300 South Korean folks. And i mean, my goodness, it's there are so many layers to what's happening right now within immigration and with the AAPI community.
Regional Experiences and Coalition Building
00:34:22
Speaker
Remember, you were describing some of the things that were happening up in your neck of the woods. I'm in the southern corner. You're in one of the northern corners. youre So what's happening in your community that that you've been noticing and experiencing? like how How is the community doing where you are?
00:34:37
Speaker
Here in this region, because we have so many academic institutions, we do have those people who are professors and they live in the suburbs. But we also have a large Burmese population in Buffalo because of resettlement.
00:34:53
Speaker
And so there's this split. We recently, you know, had this raid on our Asian market. They did it both here in Rochester, which is about, you know, an hour away.
00:35:05
Speaker
The big impact is my partner is professor at the university, and he's we're here because it's a doctoral program. The number of foreign students the r is almost zero.
00:35:19
Speaker
Like, they can't get visas to come and study, which is a huge impact for two reasons. One, it's on science. Like, we just don't have the same pool of people doing research in science, partly because our country is weak in in STEM.
00:35:40
Speaker
And it's also a huge economic impact because those students pay tuition. And it's a state school where he works.
00:35:51
Speaker
And so um that too all the students for other countries are paying out-of-state tuition. They're paying into the local economy, renting apartments. And it's so it's a huge impact.
00:36:05
Speaker
um My daughter lives in New York, closer down to the Albany region and her boyfriend's from India. He's studying computer science and she literally, if they go out in public, like scopes the area for ice before they go.
00:36:21
Speaker
People are on high alert. Like we are constantly feeling that adrenaline that at any time somebody around you is going to get picked up. And it's not healthy. It's impacting our bodies. and It's some impacting our minds. I think that's what I had said at the beginning. It's hard to activate and really get involved when you're constantly feeling this nervous tension and literally embodied nausea because you're afraid something's going to happen when you're out in public.
00:36:52
Speaker
You know, I'm just thinking about what's happening in D.C., what's happening in Chicago, what's happening in New York City, and let alone anywhere on the West Coast of populations of not just Asian Americans or Asians. you don't fit into dominant culture, you then you feel afraid that you're going to be penalized or punished because you don't look a certain way.
00:37:15
Speaker
And we work so hard to get to this place where, like you said, feel safe. And it just in a matter of months has been taken away.
00:37:27
Speaker
And it's really hard for people, young people to think like, what is the future going to be like? Well, my kids are in their 20s and it's it's very difficult for them to think about what's the future going to be like? How are we going to recover from this? How long is this going to go on My son literally is in in politics, his degree is in political science.
00:37:46
Speaker
And what is it going to take for us to build up the trust in our whole country to want to work together to create a country that is peaceful and safe for the whole population because at this moment, it's very divided.
00:38:04
Speaker
My kiddos are very little, but I try in general not to think too much about when they're they're super grown because I like them little. But I mean, it's terrifying. The way that I felt about the potential for their future like five or six years ago is so different today.
00:38:21
Speaker
the The ways that I have to prepare my son to go to school because other kids' parents are talking to them and politics and mindsets and narratives are making it into his elementary school.
00:38:33
Speaker
You had talked about family migration, chain migration versus merit-based migration or immigration. And so, so many of us came, like so many of our family members, our families were reunited through family reunification and migration, things like that. But were being told a narrative of it's human trafficking, it's this, it's stealing jobs, it's stealing that.
00:38:55
Speaker
And it has overtones of what happened with like the PAGE Act. You know, there was the Chinese Exclusion Act, but there were still some Chinese men that were here and working and they wanted their wives to join them from China. And the PAGE Act was said to be about prostitution and sex trafficking, and it was considered a win.
00:39:12
Speaker
But the target was Chinese women trying to reunify because if your family's here, you're going to grow a family. You know, the unraveling of the story from like this human instinct and human story of connection of bringing family together is turning into, well, it's a power grab, it's a money grab, it's something else. And the instinct to reunify your family is being kind of erased from the actual narrative.
00:39:40
Speaker
And the story instead is, well, they're criminals. Yeah. They weren't criminals until the moment you decided that their very legal process of coming here, working the system, trying for years and years, sometimes decades, after an invitation through refugee resettlement or through years and years of work through family immigration and reunification.
00:40:04
Speaker
But the narrative changed so quickly. And it's ah just overwhelming. And we know that depending on how the narrative is being told from, from the top down,
00:40:16
Speaker
what is allowed in media, what but gets to everybody else, it's such a huge and powerful force that you know with us, the Asian diaspora and AAPI community being so spread out, it's so hard to push back against that that narrative because silence doesn't stop narratives.
00:40:38
Speaker
A story using your voice is ah the way that you counter a very strong narrative. But it's so hard when you know you're a target, when you know that very quickly your humanity will be tossed into this caricature and that violence against black, brown and bodies and AAPI folks, like not only will violence potentially be enacted upon your body, but you'll be blamed for it too.
00:41:06
Speaker
I think about the Atlanta shootings where like these ladies, they're in their forties, fifties, even sixties, like their, their moms and grandmas, their aunties, they were murdered doing nails and like providing services, being the type of model minority, uh, white supremacy loves.
00:41:25
Speaker
And then they were murdered, but in less than 24 hours, and I think you and I had talked about this when it was happening immediately. oh no, it's some sort of like sex trafficking ring or they are this caricature of a hyper-sexualized Asian American woman or Asian woman.
00:41:44
Speaker
And so they got erased in less than 24 hours. And unfortunately, none of us were surprised. Even those of us who follow this, we were like, I feel like my stomach was in knots just waiting for the that narrative to draw. I was like, when will these women lose their humanity?
00:42:02
Speaker
It's coming. Because it always does. And, you know, if we want to reclaim the dignity of folks who are harmed in this, get caught up in the violence and the just dehumanization that happens within white supremacy, within just what's happening today, we have to know how to counter the narrative and we have to do it.
00:42:25
Speaker
together because alone, like absolutely you're a target. You will become a target. Like it's, it's just inevitable. But just thinking about, you know, responses that people have earlier, I think both us brought up how assimilation was kind of the way that immigrants, Asian American immigrants especially, kind of responded to the pressure of being the outsider.
00:42:52
Speaker
How are you seeing that today, that kind of ah fawning? like How are you seeing that happening today and you how is it harming us? I appreciate that CCDA has really lifted up the trauma and the need for better mental health, right?
00:43:11
Speaker
And partly because it's not my own nature fawn, but I was thinking through why are so many people quiet, right? And especially in what I...
00:43:23
Speaker
i been teaching for several years now and restorative practices, just this trauma response is often ah fight or flight. People think of those first, right?
00:43:34
Speaker
Or it's a flea. a lot of people just run away. Or the other thing is appease or what we call is fawn. And I think that it's so ah just a a natural tendency, right? It goes along with that survival that need to just survive, to get by, to just appease what's going wrong on, which means you don't speak up when you think things are wrong because your need for your basic things of food and shelter are ah higher priority, right?
00:44:12
Speaker
so and that So the other things are not even options. You can't just fight because you're not going to win. you can't just flee because like, where are you going to go? You've already, you know, run from other hard situations.
00:44:31
Speaker
ah Running away is not going to help you. And so there's a real tendency to fawn and try to just keep the peace. It's not real peace.
00:44:44
Speaker
it's It's a temporary thing to get by, but there's never then a change. So like I said, you know, in 2016, with all the rhetoric before that and during that election was super, you know, disorienting and maddening.
00:45:03
Speaker
Super harmful. We saw a huge increase in violence against, you know, Asian Americans and Asians in this country. And then we see this repeat, right?
00:45:14
Speaker
So I think that what we're seeing now is like, we don't want to repeat that. The same rhetoric has come back and with even, you know, ah stronger, right? They got the military behind them. Like the military is being used against u s citizens now. Right?
00:45:30
Speaker
Then it was just be basically people out of frustration stirred up by hate language, right? But now there's a huge force behind it. So what do you do?
00:45:41
Speaker
And I feel like we we need to support one another. I've been taking notes, too, of what we can do moving forward because we need to find a way to build coalitions with folks to have our voice heard, right?
00:46:00
Speaker
This is the same practice that's happened over over and again. It's like civil rights, that we need to go back to that. Our fight is the same fight as what many of the Latine folks are going through.
00:46:13
Speaker
We need to band together, as opposed to being quiet and just trying to get by, that we need to really allow ourselves to think about this country as our country, because we are feeding into this false narrative. We've accepted it.
00:46:29
Speaker
Like, this is not our country, and we don't have to speak up. We don't have to vote. We can just go along and get by. And we need to shift. People always hate like these disruptions, disorders that happen in our society.
00:46:45
Speaker
And i look at it as an opportunity to do something different, right? We went through COVID, this huge pandemic, was a huge disruption across every sector of our country. And what did we do after we came out of our houses? We went back to doing the same things.
00:46:59
Speaker
That to me is just lunacy. We have this opportunity now to to do something different, to build something different that works for our whole country. And so it's easy to fall into those old habits, buy into that narrative, but it's a false narrative.
00:47:22
Speaker
It's a facade. It's not a lasting peace, which is what we want to do. for ourselves and those people around us. The narratives that are going around right now, they seem, they they are overwhelming.
00:47:35
Speaker
They don't just seem overwhelming. They are overwhelming. And and the fear so big right now. And I don't and don't fault anyone for being afraid. I'm afraid.
00:47:46
Speaker
I'm like, I get followed in stores and I like don't want to go places without my like really big husband. But ah love that you kind of called us toward one another.
00:47:59
Speaker
the ah the power of coalition building, where alone, we we definitely can do it. And we were never meant to do it alone.
Role of Faith and Community
00:48:09
Speaker
This idea of coalition building for folks feeling overwhelmed right now, I think not just trying to build an AAPI coalition, which I think it's helpful to be connected, like the AAPI affinity group. I know we're going to have a check-in and we'll talk a little bit more about that opportunity.
00:48:25
Speaker
a little bit later, but you want to connect with people who may have similar experiences to you, but these coalitions, the more diverse they are, the more strength that they have and resilience, because it's exhausting. Let's be honest, like black, brown folks, we've, it's just exhausting when there's this onslaught of awfulness and violence and erasure kind of flung at us, uh,
00:48:53
Speaker
It's not even a 24-hour news cycle. It's like a 30-minute news cycle. It's ridiculous. And we're exhausted. And so instead of trying to do it alone or do it in one kind of singular type of coalition, I think that diversity of coalition, which is how the civil rights movement, you know, kind of filled its ranks, it was a very diverse coalition. And even seeing out what was what was happening in L.A., it was such a diverse coalition.
00:49:21
Speaker
That's what we're seeing in D.C. and Chicago. I mean, one salt truck by itself is not going to block nothing, but if you bring dozens of them, you can block a lot of things. You know, this idea of the strength of a community, especially diverse communities.
00:49:36
Speaker
We're seeing that here in Orlando, the local CCDA Network here is partnering with a large coalition of cross-sector folks doing work with the Immigrants Are Welcome Here Coalition and ah the faith leader side of that, just working together across our strengths and our different sectors. And we have you know really diverse population of folks within that group too.
00:50:03
Speaker
And we all bring different information depending on our circles, depending on i mean the algorithms for some of it, but We are all bringing very different information that's vital and helpful. And so I can talk about what's happening in AAPI world that none of them are seeing.
00:50:22
Speaker
So many of them didn't have l LA in their news feeds, but I did because of CCDA. And so I was able to tell them. about some of the things that i were seeing I was seeing, sharing with my friends, like, this is what's happening. So many people told me, nothing, they're doing nothing. There's absolutely nothing. Because they saw the, like, four Waymo cars on fire, like, constantly, but they didn't see the masses of people. They didn't see the faith leaders. And I think some of the faith leaders were CCDA members there helping to quell the potential conflict.
00:50:54
Speaker
No one in my group was seeing any of it. And so, but my connection to CCDA allowed me to see what was actually happening. And some of the folks that I follow because of CCDA were allowing me a glimpse into work that's happening in other places. Because right now,
00:51:13
Speaker
that erasure we talked about, if I didn't have these connections already embedded in the way that I live within my community, I could very easily fall into the belief that nothing is happening when in reality there's so much work being done.
00:51:28
Speaker
and I'd love to kind of start landing the plane here and even thinking about work locally and especially the CCD philosophy, and bringing it to the way that we work, the way that we build, the way that we strengthen communities. How do you see CCD philosophy in your community or another community if you prefer to talk about it?
00:51:53
Speaker
at work kind of pushing against this narrative? I think that we feel tired, like across the board, and we are exhausted because we fall into this trap of trying to do things out of our own power.
00:52:11
Speaker
And We do need to work with other communities, like you said there and in Orlando, because I truly believe that like ecumenical spaces ah is the way to really make change.
00:52:27
Speaker
But for Christians, we don't have to rely on our own power. And we can see this in all these spaces, too. I'm sure if you ask anybody else who's working with DACA recipients or immigration or um thing working day and night, where do you get the energy to do that? And it's we have the Holy Spirit.
00:52:51
Speaker
We have God. And so i think, look, i what you say too is really true. It's that it's about community. Like, I think people sometimes read the Bible and think this is like for me, but and it is, but what it really is is for you in community with others.
Intergenerational Leadership and Closing Remarks
00:53:12
Speaker
And it's meant to be doing something with God's power with other people. And so I'm looking forward to just hearing people's stories at conference because that's always a great time for us to be reminded.
00:53:30
Speaker
And i think we also should not only be focused on doing things that are big. Big things are awesome. but also just that the the caring that we need to be doing for one another um in those small ways to help get through the the next battle that we have. Because every day does feel a bit like a battle.
00:53:52
Speaker
And if you don't have other people who have the same calling as you, the same passion as you, then you can easily get down.
00:54:03
Speaker
And so I think that for people to come alongside AAPI and CCDA help us feel like we're supported, have safe spaces, because trust me, we don't have a lot of safe spaces.
00:54:17
Speaker
we do not. And is to like, help yourself help us. There's lots of resources on the website, things to read about the history that we've talked about.
00:54:30
Speaker
I think that we're also going to like work on this is one of the things I wrote down. We're just going to probably come together and maybe instead of doing a networking session or ah doing a workshop every year, maybe we'll do something for CCDA that's written that people can just use as a resource so that you can help yourself understand. Because it it does get exhausting when you're sitting in trauma, try to explain to somebody why you feel traumatized.
00:54:58
Speaker
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. the The trauma of the type of work that many of us in CCDA do, but also just in general, being IPOC in America is exhausting right now.
00:55:12
Speaker
Being AAPI in America is exhausting right now. and the the strength of community. You talked about, you know, we're we're fueled by the Holy Spirit, but sometimes it can even feel so difficult to kind of reach and tap into the reserve and feel connected to the Holy Spirit when you are so traumatized and overwhelmed by the world. And that's when you can reach for others who still have the energy and the hope, and they can extend that that hope to you when you can't carry it.
00:55:43
Speaker
And I think about You know, sometimes people say, Justice, it's it's not a sprint. It's a marathon. And I can't remember who said it, but I heard someone else describe it. No, it's not a marathon. It's a relay.
00:55:55
Speaker
Because i am not going to be the one to finish this race. I need to hand off, you know, in times when I'm overwhelmed or my leg of the race for this moment is done and just be willing to ask for help, be willing to share.
00:56:10
Speaker
And especially bringing up younger generations, we need to be raising up and inviting Gen Z and very soon Gen Alpha into into leadership, letting them help us guide and shape the story of our future.
00:56:26
Speaker
And i am We would love, love, love to have more intergenerational work because that's also part of the power of a diverse community. It's not just, you know, race and ethnicity, geography, socioeconomic status, but even generationally, those perspectives, how people are seeing and viewing right now and how they see and view the future may be very different depending on their generation, where they're located generationally.
00:56:54
Speaker
When you go back to the philosophy, the the one thing that keeps coming up to me is the whole opportunity we have to do leadership development. Our group is ah very multi-generational and from all over the country, from all over like different, ah you know, ethnic backgrounds.
00:57:15
Speaker
And it's an opportunity to learn and raise up leaders inside of CCDA. I know a lot of the work that people do, they're trying to do it in your community, but there's a real opportunity for you to gain knowledge and and experience within the association.
00:57:35
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think the focus that CCDA has on raising up young leaders and the next generation, it's not just this like side ministry, like that is the future and CCDA. That is the, just an important piece of how our stories continue to be written and the ways that our communities will be cared for, will be served by, will be uplifted CCDA moving forward.
00:58:04
Speaker
Well, Marie, are there any any last words or thoughts that you would like to share before we make our way to a close here? One of the things that I had to tackle and nonprofit work and church work is things seem overwhelming and to just take it one step at a time, right?
00:58:24
Speaker
It's like we always have this joke about how do you eat an elephant, which we're not going to do, but you do it one bite at a time. And, you know, start where you are.
00:58:35
Speaker
This is the whole idea behind CCD2 is that start with your assets, start with what you have, and then, you know, reach out and become part of this this family.
00:58:49
Speaker
And I'm looking forward to seeing everybody upcoming conference. If you can't make it, make plans because they're doing a great job of of letting people know where we're going to be in the the next few years.
00:59:04
Speaker
Get connected because it's a really special time to see people in person. And so reach out, come up to us. Liz and I will, you know, love to talk to you, anybody who's listening and and really start building those relationships that we need in order to ah become strong.
00:59:26
Speaker
Yeah, I know we have ah check-in coming up. Do you have the, what are the dates and how do people get connected to join us? Sure. The AAPI and CCDA check-in is going to be on October 1st at noon Eastern time on Zoom.
00:59:42
Speaker
You can easily access that link either on the website, on the CCDA website, or through the AAPI network. So that's coming up. We usually do it about quarterly, and then we have a networking session at conference.
01:00:00
Speaker
And forgive me, you'll have to look at your... out So that's the other thing. The app is live. Check out your CCDA app for a conference. And you can see when our networking session is. I'm pretty sure it's on Thursday at lunchtime.
01:00:15
Speaker
so we'll have some light snacks. Come and join us there. It's always fun. We're not going to inundate you with a bunch of stuff. We're just going to try to get you to connect be connected to somebody else in the network.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah. And I know quite a few of our folks have some workshops that'll be coming up. and if you're If you join our check-in or you sign up for our our emails, you will get to see all the amazing things that our folks are doing. It's not just AAPI specific, but just across the breadth of CCD practitioner expertise for the conference.
01:00:50
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast. If you want to learn more about CCDA's AAPI Network or CCDA's Immigration Network, check out the show notes of the episode.
01:01:02
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Sarah Callen in association with Christina Foer.
01:01:13
Speaker
We will be back soon with another episode during the CCDA practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's Shalom. We'll see you