Acknowledging Intra-Minority Conflict: Anti-Asian Hate Crimes and the Intersectionality of Race and Class

Introduction

In light of the recent reports of increased rates of hate crimes, especially violent hate crimes, against Asian Americans, I am motivated to think about intra-minority conflict. I focus on intra-minority conflict because the videos that dominate incidences of violence against Asian Americans feature a young black male. White men still perpetuate the majority of the violence against Asian Americans, about 75%. Yet, there is a tendency in the United States to focus on intra-minority conflict.

This focus coheres with the history in the west of promoting images of African American men as violent. I focus on this intra-minority conflict because 25% of Anti-Asian hate crimes constitute intra-minority violence. I aim for more solidarity among minority groups to countering such strategies of divide and conquer.

Preliminary Thoughts: Some Context

Let me begin with a broader picture of hate crimes in the United States. As much as the current focus is on anti-Asian American hate crimes in the wake of COVID-19 and the horrible naming and handling of the pandemic by the former president of the United States, I recognize that Asian Americans do not represent the predominant recipients of hate crimes. In 2019, “58% of reported hate crimes were motivated by anti-Black bias, while… 4%, were motivated by anti-Asian bias. About 14% were motivated by anti-Latino bias.” And although Stop AAPI Hate’s numbers indicate that in 2020 the number of self-reported incidents of racially motivated attacks stood at 9081, these numbers were from 2019-2020, and comprised 16.6% of the physical assaults for this time period. Asian Americans are still not the primary targets of hate crimes in the United States. Again, I note this—not to diminish the significance of the increased number of anti-Asian hate crimes—but to provide perspective, especially since within this talk, I focus on intra-minority conflict.

Second, let me say that I agree with Korean American poet, Cathy Park Hong; I am ashamed of Soon Ja Du’s shooting of fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins—what most people attribute as the final spark for the LA riots of 1992. I grew up cashiering at small Korean grocery stores in predominantly Black neighborhoods in New York City, so I can claim some awareness of Ms. Du’s circumstances. I am sure Ms. Du experienced much stress with financial and safety concerns. But I am still ashamed. As Hong writes, “I am ashamed that Du got off with a light sentence of community service. I am ashamed of the store clerks who followed black customers around, expecting they’d steal, for not trying harder to engage with their adopted neighborhood” (61). Daniel Haggerty describes shame as about the self. He writes, “[w]ith shame, we experience… an evaluation of our character… in the eyes of our community,” (306). David Kim firmly establishes the possibility of feeling shame—not because of any act committed by the self—but because of a pre-existing suppressive social order about one’s identity group. Shame intricately links with one’s community’s standing in the greater society. Minority existence is representative existence. Group identity overdetermines individual identity; or minority identities share a linked fate. Hence the actions of another Korean American woman represent me. To be clear, I am not concerned that I might have behaved similarly to Ms. Du; I never owned a gun, nor do I have any intentions of owning a gun. Nevertheless, Ms. Du’s action represents me. I am distinctly aware that because Ms. Du is an Asian American, she received such a light sentence; an African American woman or man would not have gotten off so lightly. I am not saying that I wish Ms. Du received a harsher sentence. This is to admit the social structural inequities of this country’s legal system.

Keeping these two preliminary contexts in mind, intra-minority conflict, specifically between Asian Americans and African Americans, or between Asian Americans and Latin Americans, exist. Minorities enact 25% of anti-Asian hate crimes. Focusing on this 25%, I begin by recognizing this tension, perhaps even aggression, felt from one minority about another.

I have felt intra-minority conflict. As earlier noted, I grew up working in small grocery stores in predominantly poor black neighborhoods; I distinctly felt the tension from the African Americans. My experiences with this population group have not been entirely tense, but there have always been some aggressive tones. Currently, I feel tension from some of my Latin American male students. Again, not all, but a few every year while teaching at my current institution, a Hispanic Serving Institution, I sense the questioning of my ability to know, especially philosophical knowledge, or perhaps just my position of authority. What myriad of stereotypes about Asian Americans as recent immigrants, as foreigners, the economic desert of minority populations, and the proper roles of women encircle and motivate these tensions?

To be clear, this sort of intra-minority tension exists even within a minority group, among African Americans, as pointed out by Audre Lorde, and among Asian Americans. As José Medina makes clear, sensitivity to the functioning of one marginality does not provide any insight into the functioning of other marginal experiences (201). Is the tension a result of the social structural situation where tokenism prevails, competitively positioning one minority against another? I do not know.

With these preliminary thoughts, I do not mean to de-emphasize the unacceptable numbers of anti-Asian hate crimes or provide excuses for the anti-Asian hate crimes. But I do not sweepingly and easily vilify those who have committed anti-Asian hate crimes. Rather, I consider the constraints of the current social structural situation, the history and consequent positioning of the various minority groups with and against each other. In other words, I focus on the suppressive social order that positions Asian Americans as the scapegoats.

Intersectionality:

Anti-Asian violence may be about xenophobia (140-141). In our historical times, in metropolitan areas, along with xenophobia, there is also xenophilia, as an exhibition of cosmopolitanism in all its capitalistic and cultural sense. But in considering intra-minority conflict, rather than fear of or desire of the foreign, I consider intra-minority conflict as an intersectional conflict between race and class.

Most of the analysis on intersectionality centers on the intersections between race and sex. Focusing on the recent episodes of intra-minority hate crimes targeting Asian Americans calls for attending to the intersections between race and class. For at the heart of the aggression on Asian Americans from other minorities lies the achievement of a certain class status by Asian Americans in the United States.

This intersectionality involves the visibility of race, the visibility of Asian American embodiment—still predominantly associating with the foreign. This foreignness does not only circumscribe an association with evil, or a fear of difference, but about who is deserving, who has a right to the benefits of this country. Reading about the recent refugee crisis, Hannah Arendt’s work on the importance of citizenship for recognition as human, and George Takei’s biography during the Japanese Internment, the condition of statelessness leaves me with existential fear. So challenging perceptions of Asian Americans as foreigners loom exigent.

The intersectionality encircling anti-Asian hate crimes also hinges on a perception that all Asian Americans occupy a certain class status. The model minority myth promotes the stereotype that all Asian Americans fare well economically. This perception does not accurately depict all Asian Americans, especially considering the breadth of the identity group Asian Pacific Islander, where at least three specific identity groups, the Hmong, the Cambodians, and the Lao populations’ household incomes average the worst in this country, worse than Latin Americans and African Americans average household income (151-152). These statistics do not deny that some Asian Americans enjoy economic comfort. But positioning all Asian Americans as economically successful is essentialistic. So Asian American movements challenges the model minority myth, that all Asian Americans fare well economically.

Looking more closely at the intersection between race and class, consider that for Black Americans, their hyper-visible embodied identity leads to a ready association with the lower economic classes, a view that the African American community aims to dispel. Whereas the visible embodied identity of Asian Americans leads to ready associations with the higher classes. Both close associations essentialistically lead to unhelpful and even to dangerous overdeterminations and stereotypes. Intersectional focus questions assumptions of oppressions as similar. We need to challenge conceptually collapsing a particular race with a particular class.

With this pandemic’s nickname as the Chinese flu, these two misguided perceptions—the race-based positioning of all Asian Americans as foreigners (and undeserving) and the class-based myth of the model minority that all Asian Americans hold economically advantageous positions—these intersections of race and class are at the heart of anti-Asian violence. Contra the slogan that “we are all in it together,” some of us fared better than others during this pandemic, widening the gap between the rich and the poor, and decreasing the middle class. These two misguided perceptions serve as the social structural lens for blaming Asian Americans for the pandemic.

Emily S. Lee

Emily S. Lee is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at California State University at Fullerton.  Her research interests include feminist philosophy, philosophy of race and phenomenology, especially the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.  She has published articles on phenomenology and epistemology in regard to the embodiment and the subjectivity of women of color.  She is editor of Living Alterities:  Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race (2014) and Race as Phenomena: Between Phenomenology and Philosophy of Race (2019).  She is currently working on revisions to her book, A Phenomenology for Women of Color.