The #AndrewYang situation is resonating with me while I finish a book about being both African American and an American Jew.
Please don't hate us and let us live in peace and not make out life harder...has had two very different responses with the two communities&Yang's piece
Really shows how that divide is refracted through another marginalized and oppressed people who also have been described as a "model minority" that has complicated perceptions of "race" and ethnicity with both African Americans and American Jews.
The model minority stereotype made American Jews question their assumed exceptionalism and the meaning of the American Jewish experience and was used to reinforce horrific anti-Blackness leading to the birth of the white nationalist re-embrace of eugenics and racist policies
African Americans are right to say, u can be as respectable as u please& do the right things and still the crazy racists are just that and will hurt you.
American Jews are also right to say, use your influence and collective community to restructure the narrative in your favor.
Of course who is white adjacent or passing or identified matters in all of this and so do unique community factors. Asian American history is not African American or American Jewish history even with significant parallels to both experiences. So we need to check our responses.
His argument is not unusual. During World War II Chinese Americans used enthusiastic participation in the war effort to demonstrate loyalty that Japanese Americans were presumed not to have to counteract decades of anti-Chinese sentiment.
At the same time Japanese Americans fought valiantly to prove they were on the side of the same country that had their relatives in internment camps. Ultimately it was their placement between Black White and Brown and the war on global communism that changed the white gaze.
Muslim Americans....esp read South Asian and Middle Eastern as well as Black...have been consistent and open about being publicly visible during times of public crisis and need since 9/11.
There is no masterclass on dealing with white supremacy and racism in America. History, personal experience, class, phenotype, gender and sexuality, as well as political power and group advocacy and activism have had surprisingly different forms from group to group.
*our
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