Interview with activist jeung
Russell Jeung, phd
He/Him/His
Occupation: Chair of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State
Location: Oakland, California
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“Last year we were often considered the model minority, we were crazy rich Asians, and accepted. But in one year, we’ve now become crazy infected Asians, and instead of being model minorities, we are perceived as perpetual foreigners."
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July 25, 2020, 3:00 PM PDT
By Anoop Kaur
Dr. Russell Jeung serves as the Chair of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and currently resides in Oakland, California.
Interview Highlights
Dr. Jeung worked with two agencies Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Asian Pacific Policy Planning Council, to set up Stop AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Hate Asian Hate, a reporting center to deal with the rise of anti-Asian sentiment. Jeung reported that once the site was published with over 10 Asian languages, they were flooded with hundreds of responses, ranging from verbal harassment to outright physical assaults which qualify as hate crimes. Jeung joined two students and mentor intern Anoop Kaur to share his narrative as an activist during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jeung specified that he is determined to engage a governmental action and societal change to and develop an America that's multiracial, democratic, and accepts the voices of everyone.
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Knowledge is our community power.
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“So, we have multiple reasons for creating the reporting center: One, it's just to give people a place to air their grievances and to express what's going on. I think people have been traumatized by these events and by externalizing it and sharing it, it helps them gain some resilience...Secondly, we wanted to provide resources for the community. Thirdly, we want to create policies to address this racism. There are hate crime laws, but they're not enforced. There are civil rights laws, but they're not enforced. So, tracking all this racism we could go to the government say—look, there's all this harassment, there are all these hate attacks, and there's all this mistreatment of Asians; what are you [the government] going to do about it to fill the gap between what we're seeing in our reporting center and what your own agencies are doing.”
When asked, “why is this moment so important for Asian Americans?”. Jeung replied, “This moment is really important for Asian Americans because US China Relations has become a central campaign theme. The Republican Party is making China the enemy and engaging in China bashing. By doing so they deflect attention away from how badly they're doing with the pandemic. It deflects attention away from Black Lives Matter and police brutality that's so pervasive. Instead, focusing attention on a new enemy, China. By creating a Cold War against China and by China bashing, what happens is that Asians in the US get bashed too. We are faced with the side effects, the unintended consequences of bashing China, leads anti-Asian violence and racism.”
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75% of Asian Americans fear racial bias and one in three Asian Americans have already experienced or witnessed it.
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Dr. Jeung mentioned the importance of ethnic studies and its critical role in improving race relations in the United States. Jeung later mentions the long legacy of activism in Asian American history, stating, “history's repeating itself, that in the 19th century when diseases came that became the basis for the Chinese Exclusion Act. People don't know that in the 1800s, hundreds of thousands of Chinese engaged in civil disobedience, protesting the Exclusion Act, they filed thousands of court cases appealing it, and they did a mass boycott of American goods. So, Asians have always been active and resisting racism.” Thus iterating the importance of working across generations, to both engage with the younger generation that in light of this moment in time has become more socially aware and with older generations who have fought against systemic inequalities before to make change.
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During the interview, Dr. Jeung elaborates on his thoughts regarding the current state of the United States and race relations “racism is institutionalized and so intertwined in the foundations of our country, with slavery and the stealing of indigenous lands. That foundation has had long term and continuing implications, so we need to unpack the role of race in the US, if we're going to try to improve on race relations.”
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With the recent social awakening sparked by pandemic highlighting key societal pitfalls, when asked, “what response you would like to see from our society, as in everyday citizens” to counter systemic and normalized hate, Jeung replied:
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“From everyday citizens, what we've noticed is that a lot of people when they harass attack Asians, they use a lot of racial epithets and slurs. They also use a lot of anti-immigrant, xenophobic language to they say things like: “go back to China or “you effing chink.” We would want from the general public a greater sense of welcome and inclusiveness. We also want the general public to be good bystanders. if you witness someone harassing another person that you would actually be an upstander, intervene, say, “that's not appropriate,” and check in on the person being targeted to make sure they're safe. We want a more civil society, we want a more respectful society, and we want a more welcoming society.”
Dr. Jeung believes that both the broader society and Asian Americans need to fight for belonging in a new American that doesn’t tolerate racism or injustice. That what society needs to do is disrupt the Black-White or Outsider-Insider binaries. Jeung states that his hope is that as Asian Americans recognize racism against themselves, they build solidarity with other communities of color to dismantle white supremacy.
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“I want us to be able to imagine a new America that we want to belong to and then strive to develop it.”