The Obstacles: A Dialogue

by Dahlia Li

Abigail: If this isn’t my friend Yu Qi! (entering) I see that you have been pacing back and forth on your front lawn for the whole morning. Hasn’t life treated you well? Speak up, my friend, what’s on your mind?

Yu Qi: Oh yes, my dearest neighbor Aby. Doesn’t your presence bring me tremendous delight. Now, please tell me bluntly and honesty, what do you think of my new t-shirt?

Abigail: Then I shall only voice my true opinion. (comes closer) Oh my! If it doesn’t say “Asian Lives Matter”.

Yu Qi: I have made it myself. Isn’t it a better slogan than “Stop Asian Hate”?

Abigail: (with hesitance) Yu Qi, this isn’t exactly the most appropriate slogan for Asian protests, at least in the American political context. “Asian Lives Matter” isn’t just a mere affirmation of Asian value, as its content says, but also functionally a denial of “Black Lives Matter”, as it really just swaps “Asian” for “Black”. Besides, you would want Asian movements to be mostly their own thing, not an attachment to Black movements, correct?

Yu Qi: (frustrated) Ah, I knew I would screw up. “ALM” is just so catchy! I guess, unlike for you restless Americans, politics is not in my Chinese nature.

Abigail: Well, Yu Qi, I shall take that as a compliment. But as Aristotle said, “a human being is by nature a political animal”.

Yu Qi: Oh that Aristotle again! I have grown tired of him being treated as the sole subject to stand in for “ancient philosophy”. But this time I actually don’t disagree with him. When he says men are political animals, he doesn’t mean that people by nature have strong political opinions, but that humans tend to live in a political context. I think that the best scenario for this political context is for it to be invisible. I believe that when politics is needed, that means politics has gone bad, and so more politics only makes it worse. When good politics emerges, politics is in fact not needed anymore, as the state has become truly virtuous, so the ruler can reside in inaction to let the nation and everything else evolve according to their virtuous nature and rules.

Abigail: That sounds like a utopia to me.

Yu Qi: Incorrect. It is beyond democracy, but not a daydream, since the Tang dynasty has proven its feasibility. Well, that was a long time ago. But its success is undeniable—for example, the Chinese name of “Chinatown” is really “Street of Tang people”.

Abigail: How interesting. But if you believe in inexertion, why bother thinking of a new slogan?

Yu Qi: Because we haven’t reached a state where inaction can take place. So I call these movements for equality “corrections”, not “politics”.

 Abigail: Ok, my friend, if you insist. I consider myself a lover of politics and democracy. So, if you bother to enlighten me, what’s wrong with “Stop Asian Hate”? Doesn’t it describe Asian people’s demand in this special situation?

Yu Qi: I’m glad you asked, Aby. Don’t you notice something weak about that slogan?

Abigail: I guess, like you said, it’s not that catchy.

Yu Qi: It’s also obscure due to its grammatical ambiguity. It made me wonder, does it mean Asians doing the hating or Asians being hated? Besides, it expresses a politics of restoration. Unlike BLM, which has an affirmative tone, asserting the positive value of Black lives, SAH sort of has a negative and passive tone. It is trying to neutralize something bad, to restore a certain “normal” order. It’s like we were at point zero, now we are brought to a negative point and we want to come back to “zero”, whereas BLM is trying to bring negative to positive, to positively establishing human rights and flourishing.

Abigail: Right, so you are saying that BLM is continuous with actions like saying “Black is beautiful”, re-affirming the positive value, but SAH is more like a restoration of an imagined balance.

Yu Qi: That is correct. Besides, doesn’t it re-racialize Asians as people who don’t want to seek trouble, who don’t make much noise? SAH is not expressing anger, but a kind of fear.

Abigail: Wait, are you implying that anger is better than fear?

Yu Qi: (Hesitate) I guess not generally. But isn’t anger a more appropriate emotion for this scenario? Anger requires daring to take up more personal space. When one is angry, one imposes one’s existence on others by expanding one’s personal space, to force a demand for attention, to ask for others’ time and energy to care for one’s personal needs and emotion. Being angry means taking up others’ space. But for now, we are reluctant to be angry. We are too…shy to be angry.

Abigail: That sounds legit. But what does it mean to be “too shy to be angry”?

Yu Qi: I respect your eagerness to sweep out any confusions left in the corner, my dear friend and neighbor. However, the problem of “shyness” is such complex issue, both psychologically and politically. To hear the end of the story, one needs to possess patience and passion. But lucky for me to be accompanied by such an intelligent audience. Now, since I defined anger in terms of expanding personal space, “too shy to be angry” can be translated into “too shy to demand extra space”. By space I mean public space—getting on the news, drawing attention and concern, using public resources and decisions to satisfy one’s demand.

Abigail: That is a very specific definition, and I think it fits your demonstrative purpose well. When you say, “too shy to be angry”, do you mean something more like, “too shy to express anger”, since anger actually happens more immediately and doesn’t really involve decisions?

Yu Qi: Isn’t that specification as fine as gold?            

Abigail: Those are very kind words, Yu Qi. Now, I’m wondering if the weak slogan and the unwillingness to be angry are the two main obstacles to a national-scale Asian protest.

Yu Qi: That is indeed a thoughtful question. We shall immediately put the talk of anger and shyness on hold to address the more urgent question. And I believe this will provide a good background for my further analysis of shyness as well.

Abigail: Then we shall speak as freely as we wish.

Yu Qi: I have observed an obvious setback for Asian protest, which is the solidarity among different Asian groups. This can partly be due to the infamously problematic category, “Asian American”: there is not really a significant historical experience to address and unite all Asians together as one identity, at least not before Covid-19. It’s kind of like forcing different races into one. Haven’t you seen one of those Amazon t-shirts, those that say, “I’m not Chinese. Don’t shoot”.

Abigail: That is terrible. But by races do you mean ethnic groups? Separating Asian people into different races can be reasonable in some aspects, but it comes with danger too, like bringing more racial conflicts.

Yu Qi: Or, making existing “racial” conflicts more comprehensible. And clarity is exactly what we need right now. But you are right, if race itself is a problematic concept, then adding more of it won’t make things better. It’s like trying to solve the problem with more problems.

Abigail: I’m happy to have your agreement. You shall explain your point about “lacking clarity” now. Is that another obstacle?

Yu Qi: Sure. Yes, good notice. What I mean is that it’s hard to tell the story of Asians. Let me ask you, my dear neighbor, do you know that the victims in the shooting in Georgia were in normal spa places, not any sites for prostitution as the killer claimed?

Abigail: I might have come across that on the news somewhere.

Yu Qi: That is the problem. Such a big clarification on the Asian victim’s part is not even largely covered by the news. The public is not following our tragedy. Asians don’t get to have a complete story. Our story is never evolving. It just comes and goes. This is another obstacle I wish to bring to the table: public indifference. And I think there should be two reasons for…

Abigail: Wait, wait, wait. Yu Qi, you are throwing many different obstacles to my face at the same time. I thought we were talking about clarity.

Yu Qi: Oh, my deep apology. You must forgive my unorganized ways of speaking. My little trains of thoughts tend to run into each other from time to time. Let me see…how about this: the lack of clarity means there’s a narrative difficulty in telling a comprehensible story of Asian suffering, which then could trigger public indifference.

Abigail: Now please hesitate no more in explaining what such narrative difficulty is.

Yu Qi: I mean it in two ways: difficulty in telling Asians’ story with regard to Covid, and in general as people of color. Let me begin with the most urgent one. Don’t the attacks on Asian seem random? I mean, what are the consistent reasons these attacks have in common? They are isolated attacks. We know that the subject of hate, Asians, is certain, but who is hating us? We are now put into an ocean of hatred. Our enemy is without a face in the imagination. There is a pattern indeed, but what is the pattern exactly? Asian elders? Asians who walk alone? How should we explain this? Some people just hate other people? Those Asian victims are not seen to be attacked for their Asian-ness, but as isolated individuals, who happens to be Asian. Whereas in the case of Black people, we can see that the victims are bound together in a sense insofar as they are Black. What I am saying is, attacks on Asians are hard to attribute a continuous reason to since it is not clear how they are connected to historical atrocities and struggles, and the perpetrators are not…tied to an institution.

Abigail: Yu Qi my friend, you never spell out what exactly you have in mind till the last sentences of your speech. So, you are saying that this is unlike a policeman killing innocent people, because we understand the police to be a part of trackable institution, which has a historical trajectory comprehensible to the public. In that case, even when a Black policeman hurts a Black person, the nature of the injustice is still clear, since we can still think of the policeman less as an individual but more as a part of a white supremacist institution. There is a certain moral and political clarity in Black victim’s story, as least in some sense. However, in Asian victims’ case, the offenders are of all different races and backgrounds, which only complicates the narrative.

Yu Qi: That is very nice, Aby. There is no such thing as a continuously existing structure to account for Asian people’s deaths.

Abigail: But how can there not be a structure? You mean, Asian victims’ deaths are not considered as part of structural injustice and violence.

Yu Qi: (Thinking) I’m afraid yes. It’s like Asians suffer structurally without a structure.

Abigail: How nicely put. What do you mean exactly?

Yu Qi: I mean, like you just suggested, Asians’ story in terms of structural injustice is invisible, erased, untold, and incomprehensible. How do you tell the story of Asians, beyond Covid, in general, if there is no mark in the history we can point to that operates as a paradigm for our suffering? By paradigm I mean, for instance, slavery and Jim Crow laws for African Americans, the genocide and displacement of Native Americans, the Holocaust for Jewish people, un-documentation and border crises for Latinx people. These all seem like clear and distinctive paradigms.

Abigail: Oh dear, what an optimistic mindset you must have to see a redemptive side of horrible things!

Yu Qi: I’m not claiming any redemptive value. I’m saying, or maybe this is what I’m saying, that knowing the pain is the lesser evil than not knowing it. We are to suffer either way, right? Living in the West, Asians are like people without a history, with only scattered fragments of histories that cannot be deployed. We are disappeared, just like the first group of Chinese railroad builders who are literally erased from the group picture. We do have a history. The story of Asians are fine pieces of jewelry hidden in the deep sea, not easily accessible, vivid, or broadly comprehensible to people. It seems like you want to say something, Aby.

Abigail: Yes, thank you. I am thinking, would it be more precise to say, that it is not that there is no visible narrative, but that there is no visible narrative for a white society. After all, that is all it means to have a narrative, right? To have a white narrative. Asians’ story also doesn’t seem to concern white people, or even, America. What has happened to Asians is not considered part of a national trauma. It hasn’t participated at the foundation of the country. The foundation of the country rests on slavery, policing of the southern border, etc. Other POC movements are opposing a whitened understanding of the country, building the identity of the country through a critique. It is hard to imagine a nationhood, even a white version, without them. Anti-Asian sentiment is not explicitly part of white American identity, which, ironically, has seemed to become the most relevant. In other words, white Americans imagine themselves and their country by othering other POC. They don’t seem to have an urgent need to, um, other Asians. But well, doesn’t Covid bring a new complete story, a visible and intellectual narrative, which also gives a unity to Asian sufferings?

Yu Qi: I couldn’t agree more with you, Aby. The violence against Asians incited by Covid-19 has made people see more clearly and made them more comfortable talking about Asians’ status as POC. But the problem with that narrative is that is doesn’t include or acknowledge history.

Abigail: It does in my opinion. Doesn’t “Asian” have the history of being considered a disease-carrier, as in the word, yellow fever?

Yu Qi: I guess. But…well…

Abigail: One exercises one’s rationality in eloquent speech. Speak up, my good friend and neighbor, and I shan’t hold anything against you.

Yu Qi: Aren’t I lucky to have company with whom I can exercise my reason? Look, it is a sweet Saturday morning, how unappreciative we will look if we keep standing here on the lawn, a small and tamed part of nature? The smell of the pink roses down the street is suffused with their delightful colors in the air, inviting us to be immersed in their silent beauty. Come, let us go for a stroll. But before that, let me quickly change my t-shirt.

(Abigail waits. Yu Qi comes out in a different shirt. Walks together)

Abigail: The roses are a delight! Now, my friend, you will need to tell me everything you were thinking.

Yu Qi: I’d be happy to. I wanted to say that you were right about the similar history. But my worry is that such a history is not distinctive of Asians. Almost every type of immigrant was considered as disease-carrier, with the exception of the first Europeans, of course. This brings in what I want to suggest: Asians has a sort of generic minority status. They are the most generic kind of POC. This makes it…just a little unworthy to tell Asians’ story.

Abigail: I see that we are moving on to a new subject now. Now what do you mean by generic?

Yu Qi: I’m getting the idea from the recent novel, Interior Chinatown. “Generic” is synonymous for “general”. Asians have the most generalized minority position. They blend in with all other minorities. Just as Charles Yu wrote in the novel, Asians had been forbidden to testify against white people, which had happened to Black people as well. They were forbidden to enter into the country, which has happened to Latinx people as well. They were put in reservations, which has happened to Native Americans as well. Asians share similar experience with other minorities, but at the same time Asians are not seen as exemplary of minority experience. Asian’s position is without distinctiveness.

Abigail: That is a difficult position to describe. One might even say … that Asians are generic but not exemplary.

Yu Qi: You are a compassionate listener, Aby. It seems like Asians don’t really actively contribute to the larger story of minority. We are sort of mentioned for the sake of rounding out the category of “minority”. Not to mention that many people and powerful institutions are not even considering Asians people of color anymore. The reason for it is quite clear, I think, which is the in-between state of Asians. We simultaneously don’t share the white status, yet we resist the common imagining of a minority, ending up in an unspeakable category. This is why when you read stuff about Asians, there is always an “extra parenthesis”.

Abigail: Extra parenthesis?

Yu Qi: Yes, a parenthesis that contains “(not just Asians, but also other people of color)”, or “(this is not limited to Chinese, but other people of color as well)”, etc. I call it extra because it usually doesn’t add any more inclusiveness to the original context, it is really just there to make it “not just about Asians.” There seems to an urge to be inclusive. Other POC, on the other hand, seem be more comfortable being their own thing without needing the help of Asians to re-confirm their positions as POC. Our “generic” status doesn’t give anyone the appearance of exemplarity. For example, I haven’t really come across an extra parenthesis saying “(not just X, but also Asians as well)”. I think this is why some people say that Asian experience is that “you are thinking of everyone while no one thinks about you.” It’s almost like we need to be bonded with other groups of POC to relate more to a universal and representative narrative of being minorities, or even to re-affirm our status as POC, since we are not “minority enough” on our own. Or that we need to be bonded with other groups to ensure a kind of universal value. We are not worthy to be mentioned alone. We are generic, but not representative.

Abigail: Hmm, you are saying that Asians are thought to be too specific, too narrowed an experience to be an exemplar of anything universal.  

Yu Qi: That is exactly right. Asians have become highly particularized insofar as they aren’t a standard victim of white supremacist oppression. Our problems only concern ourselves, as if our struggle is not made by the same structure.

Abigail: It’s interesting, because to be minority is already to be particularized. All minority groups sort of deal with this problem. Toni Morrison was once asked when she is going to start writing about white people, to make her work more universal. But it seems like particularization is more intensified for Asians. It’s like they are seen to be in a little Asian bubble, speaking their own language.

Yu Qi: That is why one can feel comfortable demanding other’s correct pronunciation of, say, Spanish and French, but never Chinese, which would sound like too absurd a request, at least in popular culture. Because Chinese has never penetrated to the center of American culture, but is only a limited tool. Maybe that is why a lot of us feel weird or even shy speaking Chinese or talking about our culture in public.

Abigail: Is it time for us to bring back the topic of shyness again?

Yu Qi: I would think so, Aby. As I said, our “shyness” is closely related to the idea of space. There is a pre-assigned space for Asians, and if we break out of the allocated space, there comes a sense of exposure. The actions of expanding beyond limited space—becoming visible for the invisible, becoming relevant for the irrelevant—are out of place, and thus when we appear, we are examined by the gazes. Such actions—for example, speaking Chinese in front of English speakers, drawing attention to Chinese culture and Chinese culture alone, expressing non-stereotypical Asian-ness—are met by the gazes of discipline. The intangible gazes don’t judge vocally, but they are a reminder of inappropriate behaviors. It’s kind of like when you are living under someone else’s roof, it’s a natural tendency to want to shrink yourself, to not take up extra space, to cause as little trouble as possible.

Abigail: Right, since whatever Asians have to say is presumed to not have a lot of applicability to others’ situations, as they speak from a highly particularized point of view.

Yu Qi: Just adding on to that, the shyness also comes from the restricted expression of “Asian-ness”. For example, wouldn’t it be more comfortable for a Chinese from China to confirm their status as diligent students, than, say, fashionable persons?

Abigail: Interesting…What you are saying brings back a childhood memory for me. Do you guys have something called a “diversity day”?

Yu Qi: No. But that already sounds terrible. Please tell me more.

Abigail: When I was a kid, we would have this diversity day in which we will learn about different cultures. We would travel between different minority groups, dressing up in their outfits and cooking their “cultural” cuisines.

Yu Qi: Wow! So it’s like every culture has its own tiny little place, and their whole existence is meant for Americans to access them and get a sense of “diversity” through them.

Abigail: I guess that is more or less right. Anyways, what you were saying seems to match with this kind of highlighted expression of certain cultural aspects, as if Asians are re-living “diversity day” every day. Their expressions are only considered relevant if they can fit into a corner of diversity day.

Yu Qi: I think it is a great idea to bring in the concept of “diversity day”. Another way to phrase it, I think, is to look at the similar idea, Chinatown, as the name is suggesting “this is the street for you Chinese and no more”. The funny thing about Chinatown, is that it couldn’t exist in China. Just like there is no Chinatown in China, there is no “Asian” in Asia.

Abigail: There is no Asian in Asia? But after what we have talked about, I thought you identified with being part of the political group as, well, labeled as “Asian”.

Yu Qi: It’s not really that, Aby. It’s not about identification. “Asian” is a non-Asian term, do you not agree? I am a Chinese in China, but I cannot continue to just be a Chinese in America. The white gaze has added a new name to me, “Asian”, at least when I’m in America. I actually want to say that the political status of Asians in America is affected by Asians in Asia.

Abigail: That’s a bold move. But it somehow feels intuitively right. Then, we shall examine this aspect like peeling off the skin of a silkworm, leaving no details behind.

Yu Qi: For sure. To take Chinese Americans as an example, I think that their status as political agents is lumped into China’s appearance in today’s world, as seen through the western perspective. It feels as if Chinese Americans can’t really gain a complete separation from China as a modern state. Although they are physically separated from the original land, they are not politically, whereas other minorities are normally not affiliated with a particular contemporary country. So with Asians you can always ask “where are you really from”, since their identities are assumed to also be located in other countries. There is always the question for them whether they are really Americans or they are just in the wrong country. Asian politics is an ongoing construction and never seems to be finished, in that it is influenced by the changing status of modern states. It seems kind of impossible for them to entirely be regarded as only Americans, at least right now. This is how in the American imagination, TV shows or movies, Asian characters are always somehow still linked to their original country, or are spies, since they bear a culturally salient double-ness.

Abigail: What you are saying is an interesting phenomenon. Fredrick Douglass converted the idea of being without a nation into a powerful political concept, since it opened up a distinctive modern identity. But now in this scenario, it seems quite the opposite, since being seen with more than one nation fragments power.

Yu Qi: Thanks for mentioning that, Aby. Have you seen those videos on YouTube in which some Asian Americans re-claim their status as Americans? I remember in one of them, there is this a Japanese American soldier who fought in the WWII. She says that they had been “loyal” to the United States by bombing the Japanese in Japan.

Abigail: Affirming Americanness through claiming the role of a perpetrator of imperial violence? I am so surprised.

Yu Qi: I appreciate your spirit of criticism, Aby. But my focus is less about what she said, but how she seemed to have an urge, or a need, to say such a thing. It is almost like she must feel that way in order for her to be recognized as American – she must violently and explicitly cut off her connection with Asian countries. To be indifferent is not enough, one must hate them. But this shouldn’t be a requirement, right? Asians should reserve the liberty to be attached or to be detached from Asian cultures as they wish, instead of being presented with limited choices.

Abigail: I agree with your insights, Yu Qi. Look, we have migrated back to where we started. Just like you said, more politics is eventually working towards the goal of less politics and will be back to an original state.

Yu Qi: Thank you, my friend. But the original state must have become virtuous, otherwise there would be no point of turning back to it. Oh well, but luckily my mind is definitely in a better state now. This talk has done me well. I shan’t be frustrated with my t-shirt anymore. It was a delight exchanging thoughts with you, Aby. I feel like our discussion hasn’t really finished, and we could keep talking. But unfortunately, I am feeling hungry right now, so why don’t we resume our discussion later?

Abigail: I agree. We shall go on separate ways now. But I will come over tonight with some nice wine, and we could exchange thoughts on other topics of life, too, good friend!

Bibliography

Hong, Cathy Park. Minor Feelings: an Asian American Reckoning. New York: One World, 2021.

Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020.

W. Blight, David. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

NowThis News, “Asian Americans Have Always Fought for Their Place in the U.S.” Youtube, May 18 2020. Video, 2:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZxFLvNLyOY&list=PLnh27W41jjWYUJzR3oXBZ3tLc6f3K_EBZ&index=2.