Anti-blackness in Asia wouldn't surprise you in the slightest, if you grew up as one of the few Black students in an academic track/school with a high proportion of AAPI students, like @BellaireHigh. #COVID19 #COVID #CoronaVirus https://twitter.com/ceewinniexo/status/1250449398947033099

In HS, I was told I didn't pick enough cotton, asked if my parents "speak ghetto", was shut down in a debate with "well, at least I'm not Brown", heard endless affirmative action jokes, and an utter lack of sociohistorical awareness about Black folks––all by Asian American peers.

The worst instance was when, in AP Psych, a Chinese American guy and an Indian American guy––both of whom worked at the same gelato shop part-time––joked about trashing Black people's job applications. Yes, intercepting the applications before their boss could consider them.

(There was also that time during our newspaper staff class, when a white Jewish boy called the school police officer on me, after I told him I'd get to his request in a minute. How dare I defy the Business Manager? So he defied the teacher, and paged the school officer.)

To be sure, this wasn't everyone; but those who weren't overtly anti-Black certainly enabled a culture of anti-Blackness. So many of my peers found a sense of identity and solidarity by juxtaposing model minority stereotypes against anti-Black stereotypes.

HS radicalized me very early on. So, it's weird to see folks just now catching on to how "of color" solidarity often obfuscates/subsumes anti-Blackness.

I found this out in the early 2000s, at one of the nation's most "diverse" high schools, in a city ranked the most diverse.

Footage of anti-Blackness in China, or the anti-Blackness of Chinese folks in Africa––throw in anti-Blackness in Israel, too––I find it all so predictable, even amidst a pandemic.

My jaw isn't on the floor. I'd be more shocked if Black folks got treated like human beings.

Anti-Blackness is global.

Without critical conversations that contextualize inequity and revisionist history, unpack internalized oppression and social power dynamics, and that explicitly name white supremacy, diversity will definitely just mask anti-Blackness. Always.