This disturbingly echoes the 1875 Page Act and foreshadows the recent shooting of Asian women migrant spa workers in Atlanta, in which police initially defended the shooter, saying he had a “sex addiction.” This excuse ignored the fact that 90% of hate crimes toward Asian-Americans in 2020 involved white perpetrators.
The policing of Chinese-owned massage parlors is mirrored and reinforced by the way in which the New York City Police Department has exploited the “Walking While Trans” ban to violently oppress Black and Latina trans women. Between 2012 and 2015, 85% of those arrested under the law were Black and Latinx, several of whom were undocumented or asylum seekers, on the mere basis that officers perceived them as sex workers. It is abundantly clear that policing exists at the intersection of ableist and sexualized racism.
That’s why I and my fellow organizers oppose calls for more policing in response to the Atlanta shootings. On April 22, the Senate passed an anti-Asian hate crime bill in a 94-1 vote. If signed into law, it would allow for the Department of Justice to expedite hate crime reviews, provide guidance to local law enforcement, and permit interagency collaborations on this data.
But choosing heightened policing at this moment would further accelerate anti-Blackness and promote the false truth that the model minority myth — another white invention — is beneficial for Asian Americans. This bill is perhaps the ultimate proof of Claire Jean Kim’s theory of racial triangulation, which stipulates that white society tries to leverage Asian Americans against Black people by pretending that white systems work for the former group, but not the latter.
Especially when examined alongside the George Floyd and anti-lynching bills, this anti-Asian hate bill’s ratification will help police avoid accountability by falsely proclaiming that they serve Asian communities.
Despite these attempts to systemically divide our communities, Asian and Black Americans will continue to march together without question. We are aware of the tactics that have been used to try to wedge us apart, and we will settle for nothing less than abolition.
February 20 remains a snapshot of the post-abolition world that Black, Asian, Latinx, Native, disabled, immigrant and anti-racist communities hope to build — a brief glimpse at a plausible and imminent reality. Instead of policing, we need non-violent community-based solutions like Mia Mingus’ pod mapping, universal housing, healthcare, and food security, alongside other measures that prevent harm from happening in the first place. To build sustainable Black Asian solidarity, we must forge systems that uplift everyone. We must demand education for us and by us.
To quote Grace Lee Boggs, “Another world is necessary. Another world is possible. Another world is happening.” We are the stems of that world, and we are building it now.
Rohan Zhou-Lee They/Siya/祂 (Tā) is dancer, writer, and organizer and founder of the Blasian March, a solidarity movement for Black, Asian and Blasian communities through education on parallel struggles with white colonial settler violence and mutual celebration.
Zhou-Lee invites the community to the upcoming Blasian March: Pride Rally on June 5th at 3 PM in New York City, celebrating Black, Asian and Blasian LGBT communities. For more details, follow on Instagram @blasianmarch, Twitter, and Facebook.
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