Asian American / The Next Picasso - Oh Brother III
The more things happen the more I realize how little I know.
Been catching up these past few weeks on all the Asian hate crimes that have been happening in America.
The first instinct is outrage. Elderly Asians shoved in the streets. An Asian man slashed in the face with a box cutter in the middle of a full subway car begging for help with no one else lifting a finger to help. A man stabbed in the back with a knife in the streets of Chinatown simply because the suspect “didn’t like the way“ the victim looked at him.
It’s easy to get mad about this kind of stuff. It’s hard to actually figure out how to help the problem. As of now I don’t know what to do besides donate to the orgs that are dedicated to fighting this (e.g. Asian American Federation and Stop AAPI Hate) and sign up for some community watch/elderly chaperone programs, which I’ve done/will do but even then I wonder how much that actually helps.
Been seeing a lot of stuff on Tiktok/reddit/twitter related to these recent attacks and it’s clear that there’s so much ignorance surrounding Asian Americans. A lot of perception that we’re this monolithic group—not only across the different Asian ethnicities but encompassing all Asians globally.
E.g. a common response I saw in response against Asian support was “this [group of Asians] or this [generation of Asians] or this [country of Asians] did something bad and that is how I perceive the rest of the group so all Asians deserve what’s going on.”
So obviously ridiculous but a number of people really seemed to believe this.
Where does this ignorance stem from?
I think a big part of it is the lack of history. White and black history is so integral to the story of America. But what’s the story of Asians in America? Growing up in Ohio and California I don’t think I was ever taught—beyond a few minor snippets—what that story was. You hear about the Chinese railroad workers and the Japanese internment camps just barely and then BAM that’s the book on Asian American history.
Even at this point I don’t know much beyond that. I’d guess unless you went out of your way to study Asian American Studies in college you wouldn’t know much beyond that either.
On a tangent—I think this lack of history also results in a lack of a shared culture. Might just be my perception but it seems like so much of Asian American culture is centered around trivial things. Do you like anime? Do you like kpop? Do you like boba? Do you watch kdramas?
Does that cover the extent who we are as Asian Americans? Do we ourselves know what it means to be Asian American?
I mean yeah, obviously I think we do. If you live the experience you must innately understand what it means to be Asian American right? Whether we talk about these things or not is a different matter.
Anyways I don’t know. Just know there’s a lot of stuff to learn. On that note I’m reading through The Making of Asian America: A History to learn more.
Painting #1
Painting #2
Oh brother
Harry came into town. We went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, binged Wandavision and walked around a bunch.
And finally, for our weekly recap:
Wasn’t as accurate at logging my hours so this may not be the most accurate graph.
That said, I did end up painting a lot. Also watched more movies than expected with Harry coming to visit. Compared to my last update I really cut down on the tiktok 😂.
For this upcoming week I’m thinking of imposing a light media purge where I try to avoid too much tv/youtube/movies during the weekdays and doing that all on the weekend. I think this will result in more time spent on music and reading.
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