Asian and Black Americans share a long history of solidarity. In the mid-1960s, at the height of the Black liberation movement, Asian American civil rights activists like Yuri Kochiyama allied with Black leaders like Malcolm X to fight for the rights of both communities. Around the same time, Japanese and Black Americans jointly protested for the revocation of the Emergency Detention Act, which allowed the United States government to detain suspected communist or fascist sympathizers without trial. More recently, the #StopAsianHate and #BlackLivesMatter movements have supported each other, with COVID-era protests in Los Angeles and Chicago drawing ethnically diverse groups of protesters lobbying for the end of discrimination against people of color.
Despite this, factions of the Asian American community have been plagued by anti-Black rhetoric. The 1992 Los Angeles race riots, a response to the police assault of a Black motorist named Rodney King, led to the widespread destruction of Korean-owned homes and businesses that fueled resentment against Black residents. In 2014, the shooting of Akai Gurley by Chinese American Officer Peter Liang deepened the divide, as many Chinese Americans portrayed Liang as a scapegoat, arguing that his conviction was harsher than those of white officers involved in similar crimes. However, for Black activists, Liang’s lenient sentence showed a lack of accountability for police violence against Black Americans. Divisive moments such as these continue to underscore strained Black-Asian relations.
The model minority ideology, which traces back to the post-World War II era, has been another ongoing source of anti-Black hate within Asian American communities. This narrative may appear to be a “positive stereotype” by portraying Asian Americans as success stories. However, it simultaneously oversimplifies the Asian American experience and downplays the achievements of other minority groups. While Asian Americans are stereotyped as hardworking, disciplined, and successful, other minorities, including Black people, are unfairly characterized as lazy or prone to failure. Thus, this myth celebrates personal work ethic rather than recognizing systemic inequalities as the root of racial disparities.
Stereotypes such as these inadvertently pit Black and Asian Americans against each other. In another example, Asians are seen as tame and docile; Black Americans are, by comparison, characterized as defiant and disruptive. Asian Americans, now praised for their compliance, feel more inclined to comply, even if it means setbacks for their Black peers. The fostering of this racial competition limits minority communities from working in solidarity toward achieving justice and equality.
Armed with a false sense of pride, some Asian Americans mimic white oppressors in their search for dominance. Take affirmative action, for example: Asian American plaintiffs in the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard case were instrumental in overturning affirmative action in higher education. Many adopted animosity towards Black admits to top universities under the pretense that Black acceptance was synonymous with Asian rejection. Deeming Black students less qualified, these disgruntled plaintiffs and their supporters were willing to lobby at the expense of diverse campus communities. Rather than working in solidarity with other minorities, Asian Americans led the fight for a warped vision of “justice” because, to the leaders of the movement, anti-Asian racism was the only racism that mattered.
Many Asian Americans continue to display the hallmarks of anti-Black sentiment. Some Asian American store owners unfairly follow and profile their Black customers. Older Asian Americans have internalized anti-Blackness and colorism from their mother countries. Young Asian Americans have adopted and appropriated AAVE, slang, and other core aspects of Black culture. Even well-intentioned Asian American activists have made the mistake of creating a monolith of minority experiences, further diminishing the unique perspectives of Black Americans.
To rebuild solidarity with Black Americans, we, as a community, must reject the model minority myth and stop striving for white acceptance. We must make ourselves uncomfortable by educating ourselves about the anti-Blackness within our country and our communities. We must invite Black Americans into our spaces to listen to and amplify their voices. We must actively support Black-led initiatives like Black Lives Matter, invest in Black-owned businesses, and create platforms for dialogue between Asian and Black Americans. We must understand the importance of intersectionality in our struggles for equality and ensure that our allyship is rooted in empathy and inclusion. We must continue to fight deliberately for the rights of poor Black people, Black women and girls, Black people with disabilities, queer Black people, and Black children.
Although not all Asian Americans subscribe to anti-Blackness—or will ever admit that they do—we must collectively confront the reality that such sentiments persist within the Asian American community. As uncomfortable as it may be, only by confronting anti-Blackness within our own ranks can we help shatter the systems that have held us all back.