On Anti-Asian Racism. . .

Anti-Asian racism and hate-crime is on the rise.  Across North America and Europe, there are reports of racially-motivated assault.  These reports make for grievous reading, and those who scans this litany of egregious offences must brace themselves for waves of outrage and sorrow.

It is presumptuous of me to diagnose this malignancy, but here I go: perhaps we habitually construct a story of causes and consequences, actors and actions.  Perhaps people need to assign blame to furnish a narrative, even against the counsel of reason and evidence.  Perhaps the aggregate effects of quarantine and lockdown, with its concatenation of economic consequences, spill over into the unexamined corners of consciousness, filling every crack with vexation, stoking destructive fires of bigotry.  Certainly, it is not love or wisdom that animate these behaviours, but the frightened and confused reaction to turmoil.

And this brings me to the racism as a feature of modern life.  The pervasive tendency to target a racial/ethnic group is persistent and tenacious.  It reared its head in the aftermath of 9/11 in the form of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination.  Racism persists in attitudes against Indigenous peoples, with state-sponsored violence and cultural assault.  Anti-Black racism is rampant, locked into the function of systems and institutions.  Anti-Chinese sentiment has a long history in North America, tracing back to a host of policies that restricted Chinese immigrants and oppressed Chinese workers.  The internment of Japanese citizens is another stain on Canadian history.  Irish and Italian immigrants also faced discrimination in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  These racist tendencies are the plagues that continue to afflict us, and unlike the SARS-CoV-2, its eradication lies not in vaccines, but continuous vigilance, dialogue and examination, both personal and collective.

Let’s remain with the notion of “contagion” as a metaphor for racism.  The conventional narrative of racist persecution of minorities too often casts people into the discrete roles of oppressor and oppressed, abuser and victim.  Once a crime comes to light, consternation and sympathy play out in predictable ways.  However, if we see racism as an affliction, those who hold prejudice is degraded by the hatred they harbour. Captive to bias and ruled by the baser motives of fear, they are trapped in a world where others — by the fact of their existence — pose a threat to safety and identity.  For those who see diversity as an offense, the world cannot but appear hostile.  Judgement, intolerance and discrimination are the children of a consciousness ruled by the same.

I am not trying to rationalize the abhorrent actions of racist perpetrators.  Rather, I suggest that there is another way of understanding racism and violence.  If racism is an affliction and a contagion, society as a whole has a duty to oppose and contain its spread where ever it arises. The offender needs help in the form of decisive intervention.  Swift and unambiguous legal consequences is one vital intervention, but not the only thing to be done.  Opposition to racist acts is crucial — for this, we need courageous citizens who will stand against the behaviours they see.  Everyone can serve as the “medicine” in this case – when these acts occur, we need to find ways to resist and oppose, to declare in no uncertain terms that such abuses have no place in society.  We are called on the muster courage, to speak clearly against bigotry, and to act with intelligence and resourcefulness to foil acts of discrimination.  It is in this way that racist attitudes and biases are “contained” and the contagion arrested.

In the work against gang violence, the Cure Violence Initiative is an example of innovative thinking that moves beyond the established models of criminalization and incarceration.  Violence, according to Gary Slutkin, is like an epidemic disease and can be prevented with health methods.  The idea is to identify the principals involved in violence, quickly trace those who are most likely to perpetuate violence through cycles of retribution, and thus interrupt the spread through workers trained to deescalate, persuade and reframe.  Cure Violence is the social work equivalent of “contact tracing” in epidemiology.  This model does not criminalize or villainize the perpetrators (though it does not replace law and law-enforcement), but seeks to provide help to those affected by violence in order to stop its spread.

I realize that that gang violence cannot be so easily equated with racism – but the parallels are striking.  Mis-informed views, unexamined bias can circulate within society.  Abrasive attitudes uttered through causal comments, like the vapours dispersed by coughs and sneezes, can breed misconception and prejudice.  Acts of discrimination that go unaddressed and unopposed can establish itself in culture.  Just as in the COVID-19 pandemic, we all have a responsibility to stop the contagion by opposing racism where it arises.  Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”  The responsibility to stand against anti-Asian racism is the same responsibility that stands against anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish, anti-black, anti-Indigenous, and anti-LGBTQ violence.  On the other side of this token, we must not perpetuate hatred and ignorance by heaping vitriol on perpetrators – they also suffer under the weight of their own intolerance.  As Dr. King has said, we must “overcome brute force with soul force”.

 Recently, a man accused of a racially-motivated attack was found dead from an apparent drug over-dose.  I do not know the man’s story, neither can I surmise the circumstances of his life. What we know of him — both his egregious behaviour and his demise — speak of something lamentable, a human tragedy.  Brokenness cannot be healed with brokenness — only wholeness can dress the wounds of brokenness.  The coronavirus is a sickness of one form – there are other afflictions that we are all called on to contain and heal.