Dear White Liberals: Asians Aren’t Your Pawns

 
By K. Lee

I had a conversation with my brother in Oregon, last night. Besides the usual family matters, he brought up a call he received from a ‘friend.’ The friend wanted to check on my brother and the family amidst rising violence toward Asian Americans. While my brother appreciated the gesture, he told his friend that it wasn’t necessary. The friend said he had been concerned about all the anti-Asian violence ever since Trump and the “China” virus rhetoric.

The friend knows my brother is a staunch conservative, so my brother got irritated. He asked the dude, what’s Trump got to do with the Georgia shootings and where was his phone call last year? The friend said he didn’t get what my brother was getting at. My brother replied that there were over 3,800 incidents of anti-Asian violence last year, yet you didn’t check on us. The friend said he didn’t know. My brother said, of course not—because no one besides us Asians cared. But now that you see a perp is a white male from the South, you start to care. You have to make this about YOU making a political statement rather than really caring about us, the Asian Americans.

My brother is correct. How can we trust and believe your sentiments when you didn’t care last year when we pleaded for assistance? The district attorneys in the Bay area and NYC acted blind to our plight. The national mainstream media didn’t lend us their ear nor their voice because the narrative didn’t fit.

But, now, you care.

You use our victimhood, turning it into your political gains—whether to infringe on the 2A or keep portraying Trump as that boogeyman. You sided with the rich NBA players over the freedom fighters of Hong Kong. You sided with Disney and NIKE over the lives and the dignity of the Uighurs in western China. You praised Antifa while they harassed and doxxed a gay Asian journalist. You sided with the rioters and looters that stole, robbed, and burned down our shops and businesses all last summer.

Yesterday, we found out the killer in the Georgia shooting rampage is a disturbed young man who is an Asian fetishist. Not exactly the perp that my brother’s friend wished for. I find it twisted and sick that there are a lot of white folks who get a ‘hard on’ for minorities’ victimhood. It’s as reprehensible as someone who has an Asian sexual fetish. Which is confusing—because one moment we are categorized with the ‘Whites’ when we are applying for colleges and universities and we don’t get the same affirmative action benefits of other POC when applying for a job— yet we are marginalized victims again, to serve your political purpose.

So we are just pawns.

My brother told his ‘friend,’ or his ‘ally,’ to snap out of trying to be the white savior.

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