1. If these shirts are actually being created by non-Chinese Asian Americans then I’m embarrassed for y’all but this is hardly the first time there was a lack of inter-ethnic Asian solidarity in this country. https://twitter.com/ursulaliang/status/1247367738475061248

2. During WWII, Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans wanted white folks to know they weren’t Japanese. They wore signs and pins with messages like this.

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll44/id/54535

Photo credit: Los Angeles Examiner, January 26, 1942

3.

“Helen Chan and Sun Lum demonstrate the lapel buttons issued to Chinese Americans, used to distinquish Chinese peoples from Japanese"

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb1g5003tx/?layout=metadata

Photo credit: @latimes via
UCLA

http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=13030/hb1g5003tx

4. From LA Weekly. This photo was taken on December 22, 1941.

"Helen Chan pins Sun Lum with lapel badge identifying him as “Chinese,” to avoid being rounded up with Japanese Americans who were being interred following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. “ https://www.laweekly.com/today-in-photographs-december-22-1941-more/

5. During WWII, Chinese Americans were the model minority (before this term was coined), unlike Japanese Americans, who were seen as the enemy.

http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Chinese_Americans_in_San_Francisco_during_World_War_II

6. While I agree that these t-shirts are bullshit, they’re the unsurprising outcome of Asian minorities trying to survive in the US. But it’s shortsighted.

7. The kind of person who would attack a random person of Asian appearance over COVID-19 is not the kind of person who knows/cares enough to differentiate between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Singaporean, Burmese… doubtful a t-shirt will protect you.