A news article. A headline. Breaking news. Ethnic violence is what it takes for the public to wake up and understand ongoing anti-Asian rhetoric that has been present for centuries. It is not the Asian-American community’s obligation to educate the uneducated. It is not the responsibility of any BIPOC to educate either. It is so easy to become knowledgeable and better oneself about the injustices that are going on in the BIPOC community. It is impossible to go a day without seeing resources and news about oppressed victims. In the past year, almost 4000 anti-Asian hate crimes have taken place. It could’ve been my mother, urinated on in the new york city subway. It could have been my father, violently slashed across the head in broad daylight. This is not anything new. The people that turn a blind eye, the people that actively choose to ignore my sorrow are the issue; the root of these crimes, yet as a person of color I am tasked with resolving the prejudice I represent.

You can not ask the people who are being oppressed to solve their own oppression. You can NOT ask the people who are being oppressed to solve their own oppression.

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As a young Chinese woman, I am taught to be submissive, to keep my head down, and to take injustices that I face on a daily basis and brush them off. Toss them into the back of my mind so much so that the microaggressions become numb. This is when the oppressors take advantage of my meekness. So when I do speak up, when I do use my voice, when I am standing up and telling you that I am in pain, I am ignored, invisible, and wrongly interpreted. I feel as though no one’s listening. But right now, in this moment, my voice is heard.

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DO YOU HEAR ME?

 

I have been silenced, I have been fragile, and I have been malleable for far too
long. I am not the token docile, submissive, exotic Chinese girl. I am a voice, I am a woman with power, a force to be reckoned with, I speak for my Asian brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers who were taught to be mute, and I stand in accordance with the hurting Asian Americans across the country.

Thank you.