These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.
Why We Need to Abandon Multiculturalism ASAP
Anti-Asian racism and xenophobia are on the rise ever since the coronavirus started spreading to North America. This global pandemic is highlighting the cracks within our systems and how we understand our worlds and our various standings within it. One major fissure I want to highlight is the relationship between power and privilege and its relation to identity. Identity is not fixed; it is mutable. It makes us feel good to operate under the assumption that our race, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, etc. are immutable, but identities exist within a context, and contexts are always in flux. For example, living in Canada in a supremely white city like Vancouver has given me a new understanding of my blackness. My blackness physically has not changed, but my knowledge and engagement with it on a sociopolitical level have evolved. The contexts and the relationships you are in changes the dynamics of how your identities get animated and impact how you understand yourself. One such relationship we are watching be reshaped in real-time on a public stage involves East Asians.
Yes, the first cases of COVID-19 came out of China. However, genome scientists have been able to trace that Europeans were the major carriers of COVID-19 that fueled the outbreak in New York. Now, I am not a fan of blaming citizens of other countries for diseases. The United States has a long history of this racist practice, but what is important to note is that it was Western citizens who are usually never denied entry into the United States who were the carriers. We cannot ignore the power of Westerners, and their elite passports who have freedom of movement throughout the globe and the myriad of implications these travelers expose the various nation-states they visit to. It matters very little where the virus started from, but what matters and what has been made clear is that we are globally inextricably tied to one another. What one country fails to do puts everyone at risk. This is what it means to be globally connected. The same way dance crazes, films, and culture gets exported and imported, so does disease. Welcome to the new world!
With that said, Asians as a group, more specifically East Asians have experienced immense privilege. Asians have been allowed into the country club of whiteness. They do not access the full benefits of whiteness, but have been granted the title of “model minority.” Model-minority is a set of beliefs and stereotypes that both benefits and harms East and South Asians. The myth states that Asians are good at math, dominate STEM fields, are academically and financially successful, are polite, docile, work hard, and are apolitical. With that said, many East/South Asians do often buy into this myth and therefore start to act in ways that exhibit anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and settler-colonial logic.
East Asians occupy a complex space in society they are both people of color and allowed to be honorary whites when the context suits white supremacy.
The road to white acceptance has not been easy for East Asians. One of the first racist immigration policies in the United States was The Chinese Exclusions Act of 1882. Japanese Americans were put in internment camps during World War II. Our East Asian comrades know racism, know exclusion, and know intimately how the boot of white supremacy feels on their necks. And they also know a level of white acceptance that evades many other minoritized communities.
However, in the midst of a global pandemic, the relative comfort that East Asians have felt has been violently interrupted. Whiteness is a country club in which membership can be revoked at any moment without notice. East Asians are reporting at an alarming rate that they are being menaced and harassed. East-Asians bodies in public spaces are being treated and seen as a contagion. All of a sudden, the privilege that whiteness had bestowed upon East Asians has now turned into yellow peril.
White supremacy is always ready to turn on its faux object of affection. White supremacy isn’t loyal, not even to itself. COVID-19 has stripped away the thin veneer of racism that was always wound up tightly in the “model minority myth.”
Vancouver, Canada, is a place that has a significant population and diversity of Asians across the diaspora. It is considered socially acceptable in many circles here to deride and say racist things about Chinese people openly. White Canadians call this bonding, and many white Canadians have tried to “bond” with me using racism (talk about not knowing your audience). I bring Canada up because it brings me to my thesis. Canada, as a nation-state, has adopted multiculturalism as a policy. The United States has not adopted multiculturalism as a policy, but we espouse multiculturalism in various political ways. Especially as a tool of diversity and inclusion. The definition of multiculturalism that I am putting forth is one that believes as long as a room, board, organization, or school has different races and ethnicities present that room magically becomes inclusive. The idea is that diversity fixes all things. Nah. A room can only become anti-racist and inclusive if the room consents to working towards this goal. Full disclosure, I HATE MULTICULTURALISM. It took moving to Canada for me to see what a Ponzi scheme that multiculturalism is and how it serves the interest of white supremacy. Multiculturalism is in service to white supremacy, and multiculturalism in and of itself is not an anti-racist tool. Multiculturalism does not threaten white supremacy because it does not promote plurality; it promotes violent assimilation and erasure. Multiculturalism simply makes space for people of different races and ethnicities to proudly align with white dominant culture, norms, and mores, thereby furthering the invisibility of white hegemony.
Multiculturalism gives the allusion that an organization, group, a nation-state is engaging in anti-racism simply by having people of different races, ethnicities, gender expressions, and sexual orientations present. For example, I have frequented many spaces where one is asked to state your pronouns, but that same space will still have binary restrooms and adhere to the binary through their policies, language, and beliefs. Just having queer people in a space and using queer-friendly language does not make a space inherently queer affirming. What multiculturalism does well is it plays up ethnicity while obscuring and erasing race and racism, and that is dangerous. Therefore, in the quest to be multicultural systemic and structural racism ceases to exist. In a multicultural model, the only kind of racism that is allowed to exist is interpersonal. Meaning if no one refers to you as a nigger/nigga to your face (if you are NOT Black it’s never okay to use this word no matter the spelling unless you don’t mind catching some hands), or tells you to go back to your country, or doesn’t call you Chung-Lee to your face then racism does not happen. Which is convenient if you are trying to maintain white supremacy in a rapidly Browning world.
Multiculturalism is so not a threat Nazis have embraced it.
Even neo-Nazi groups have a multicultural agenda (el. oh. el). Many men of color are part of Neo-Nazi groups, and they are welcomed with open arms. The reason these Asian, mixed-race, and Latinx men are part of these white supremacist projects is because centering whiteness and upholding white normativity is something one can do all while holding on to your ethnicity. Meaning you can have a racially diverse room that aligns with racism and white supremacy. Put differently; you can have racial inclusion without social justice. Black bodies, Asian bodies, Brown bodies, queer bodies, trans bodies, disabled bodies, etc. can be agents of white supremacy. This reality is something that those of us who espouse social justice, feminism, and anti-racism are often reluctant to wrestle with and name. We tend to want to turn specific identities into deities or shields, which is both unethical and a dehumanizing tactic.
Neo-nazis understand that racialized bodies can become foot-soldiers of whiteness. In my research, I have found that white supremacists have a far more complex and nuanced understanding of race and race relations than white people who identify as liberal and progressive. Neo-Nazi’s see race and often do not underplay the role that race and racism play in our society. For example, Dylan Roof, the white domestic terrorist who murdered the Black parishioners at Emmanuel A.M.E church in South Carolina in his manifesto he described a rather sophisticated racial stratification and on the top of his list were East Asians. All this to say is that if neo-Nazi makes space for diversity and inclusion, we (the ‘we’ who believe in anti-racism) should, therefore, interrogate the utility of this intervention.
Multiculturalism has a lobotomizing effect. It puts all people of color into the sunken place. It convinces you that you are “just like white people” until the fatal day you are reminded by those very same white people that you are not. This cold truth is the sad and realization that many Asians have to contend with. As a Black person, I know how it feels for your body to be considered a problem, a menace, and a thing that needs to be controlled, surveilled, or worse.
Anti-racism does not ask people to mute themselves to become white or to deny the historical and present-day context of race and racism. Anti-racism does not turn people into ornaments or tokens. Anti-racism does not shy away from racial or ethnic differences and doesn’t require one to worship at the altar of white supremacy. Anti-racism is about disrupting, dismantling, and divesting from white supremacy; no one should be comfortable in a room whose agenda is anti-racist.
VIEWINGS AND READINGS
Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman- I am revisiting this book because I need to constantly remind myself that confronting conflict skillfully is an ethic and practice that I am serious about mastering.
The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde- This book is all about survival and a great book to revisit during a pandemic.
“How The Creator of #BlackGirlMagic Got Erased from the Movement She Started”- [LINK] I feel like a founder of #BlackTwitter especially Black feminist Twitter. I was online when the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic was birthed. I have been following Cashawn for years and I am shocked by the amount of people who do not know her and why she created the hashtag.
“The F-Word: Jane Elliott needs to modify her “anti-racism’-[LINK] (context this article is old it’s from 2018. I recently stumbled upon a spicy comment section where Black women were calling out Jane Elliot and someone shared this article and points were made!) “I want to be fair. Perhaps 50 years ago, Jane Elliott’s ideas were groundbreaking for her small white town. And for 50 years, Elliott has been playing and replaying the same exact script. And we have loved her for it. Elliott stayed in the safety of her privilege, while getting immense recognition for doing way less than many leaders and educators of color did way before her. Jane Elliott is the embodiment of white people getting praised for doing the bare minimum rather terribly.”
“How A Vegan TikTok Star Became A Daily Pick-Me-Up For Millions of People”- [LINK] “You need a hug?” asks Tabitha Brown at the start of one of her most popular TikTok videos. Her voice is warm, disarming, and unmistakably Southern. “Well, sometimes potato wedges make you feel like they hugging you, at least that's how I feel. Let's make some,” she says, her eyes sparkling with joy. In a matter of seconds — 60, to be exact — she details all the ingredients you’ll need to turn your day around by creating a delicious starchy snack with a dip to accompany it. “Life is always better with a potato, honey. See that dip? When I dip, you dip, we dip, oooh!” she says at the end, by which point I was mentally rummaging through the ingredients in my cabinets to see if I could concoct my own version of the dish.”
“Caster Semenya and the cruel history of contested black femininity”- [LINK]- “In the 10 years since Caster Semenya won the 2009 World Championships at just 18 years old, the sports world has whittled her story down to one thing: her body. Narrow hips. Wide shoulders. Pronounced jawline. Manly.”
“These Three Activists Are Bringing Overdue Attention To Childhood Sexual Abuse” [LINK]- “Amita Swadhin is the founder of Mirror Memoirs, a project that intervenes in rape culture by uplifting the stories, healing, and leadership of LGBTQI+ people of color who survived childhood sexual abuse. Through the creation of educational multimedia tools, including healing circles and theater projects, Mirror Memoirs is helping everyone invested in ending sexual violence strategize together about how to build the world they need.”
“My PTSD can be a weight. But in this pandemic, it feels like a superpower”[LINK]- “My therapist used to tell me that PTSD is only a mental illness in times of peace. Our bodies and brains are consistently attuned to war, so we look paranoid or hypervigilant in peacetime. But in times of crisis, PTSD is an incredible survival mechanism that our genius bodies created to help us adapt.”
“Love: A Dish Unpleasant Without All The Ingredients” [LINK] – “According to bell hooks, Love is comprised of several different ingredients: “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.” She offers that one of these ingredients can be present without the others, but for it to be Love—real and true—they must all be present at once.”
LISTENING
Verzuz: Babyface vs.Teddy Riley playlist – [LINK]-Black history was recently made on IGlive when Babyface and Teddy Riley battled each other. Four million people logged on to bask in the glory that is Black American culture. This is the playlist from the night you can find the playlist on Spotify or Tidal. The link provided leads to Spotify.
South by Southwest SXSW playlist [LINK]- SXSW was one of the first major festivals to cancel because of the pandemic. This playlist is comprised of all the music acts around the world that were going to be at the festival. Here’s hoping you find new music to add to your playlist. The link provided leads to Spotify.
Dissect Season 6 Beyonce: Lemonade- [LINK] Every season this music podcast does a deep dive into an iconic album and this season is about the album Lemonade. I am so impressed by the level of research and care that was put into this season. If you listen to it on Spotify there are no commercials.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
If you like, love, and or support my work please consider giving. I will be moving back to the United States soon and if you want to donate to that as well you can do so the following ways:
Cashapp: $LutzeB
PayPal: thefeministgriote@gmail.com
Zelle: lutzesegu@gmail.com
Black Feminist Future is hiring a Program Coordinator [LINK]
I will be offering one of my very popular trainings via a webinar in late May early June. People who are subscribed to my newsletter will know about it first. Make sure you are subscribed!