Angry Asian Activists

This past summer, George Floyd, a Black man from Minneapolis Minnesota, was brutally murdered by three police officers. One of which was a Hmong American man named Tou Thao. Although my experience is different from the Hmong community, as a Vietnamese-Chinese American growing up in predominantly Hmong communities, the incident sparked an internal struggle with my Asian American identity and what it means to be in solidarity with the Black community. As Mia McKenzie says in In The Solidarity Struggle, “Non-Black people of color, when offered a choice between solidarity with Black people and more access to whiteness, choose the latter virtually every time.” I wanted to revisit prominent Asian American rhetoricians of the past who didn’t choose whiteness— they choose the former. In this map, I have highlighted three prominent Asian American womxn activists in the past century, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Helen Zia, who have done incredible advocacy work for human rights and liberation for us all. They were relentless, compassionate, and intelligent people who were grounded in community narratives but also believed in ideas way beyond their time. They understood that our liberations were tied and alongside many others, fought for our collective rights. 

Grace Lee Boggs is the eldest member of the three, born in 1921. In American Revolution: Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, she shares her experience being in higher education as an Asian American womxn in predominantly white spaces. She said that she rarely saw Black people where she grew up before she moved to Detroit, Michigan where she got in close proximity with the Black activists. Her work was consistent throughout the civil rights movement into the end of her life. From my understanding, her work aligned with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with initiatives around the non-violence approach. However, she was also active during the Black Power movement. Her proximity to the Black community informed her activism and her motivation to advocate for the Black community. 

Yuri Kochiyama, spent the majority of her life in California. However, for a large chunk of her life, she was moved with over 100,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps after Pearl Harber. Her political awareness began there. She wanted reparations for the Japanese community and her work aligned with prominently Black activists. Yuri Kochiyama worked closely with Malcolm X and believed in the Black Power movement. She was also pro-communist and believed many of the government theories abroad in Asia and she was not discreet about it. This was less obvious or evident for Grace Lee Boggs. 

Both of these activists work on anti-war and anti-imperialism initiatives and protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The Vietnam war was an attack on Asians abroad and spreading western influences while causing harm and spreading imperialism. At the same time, Black soldiers were put in first-line and killed in war at a significantly higher rate compared to White soldiers. In a sense, people of color were sacrificed to harm other people of color, internationally.  

Helen Zia is a second-generation Chinese American journalist and activist. She was born later in 1952. Similar to the other activists she had done work closely to Black communities. However, in contrast to the other activist, she is better known for her work in the Asian American community, as the spokesperson for Vincent Chin’s death. The development of the Asian American term was coined at this point, which gave language to some of the struggles specifically related to the Asian American community. As a lesbian womxn, she also on LGBTQIA+ issues which the other two activists have not. 

“Personal is political” and the experiences and identities of these womxn influenced the type of activism that they did and depending on the time period, different movements and initiatives were needed. Depending on the need of the community during the time period, that was the role that they played for the movement. 

A key component to all three activists is that they were in support and in solidarity with the Black community and understand the interconnectedness of the oppression system and how it had affected us all across all race, class, and gender. They all advocated issues that were not social accepted in their time whether that was anti-Vietnam war, communism, abolition against prisons, or LGBTQIA+ rights. In addition, they were all near and in proximity to the Black community. I think this is an important aspect to social change. To understand and build compassion for the community, it requires us to be active and apart of the community. I think it would be difficult for people who are in higher positions or in predominantly white spaces to make the change that they need. Sometimes that change can be harmful and the most progressive movements in history are grassroots and not from the top down. For Yuri and Helen, significant events happened in their lives that caused them to demand justice. For Yuri, it was the death of her father and the way the US government injustly gather over 100,000 innocent Japanese Americans and robbed them of their property, livelihood, time, and dignity. For Helen, the unjust murder of Vincent Chin and the lack of accountability for the xenophobia required the Asian American to demand that Justice. 

Drawing the dots between these activists, I noticed that Yuri and Grace really set the foundation for what Helen does later. The efforts that went into the civil rights movement built momentum for Helen to demand justice for the Asian American community. The aftermath of the xenophobia against the Japanese American community also fueled the murder of Vincent Chin. He was mistaken by two white men, before his wedding, to be Japanese and was brutally beat by them. The injustice coupled with the compassion and anger has fuel all three activists to work tireless for the rights they believe that their community deserved.

Through researching these three rhetoricians, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Helen Zia, I learned three important lessons that could be summed up by these three words: proximity, anger, and community. Consistently between the three activists, they did not play a passive role in this movement. They were in work and building on the revolution they believed in. They did not simply study or know about Black communities but they tried to be apart of them. The second part is the refusal to be a bystander. They allowed their anger to fuel them to drive their work for their entire lives. These activists did not “let go” the injustices. They made sure that they would remain angry about it until everyone had their rights they believed they deserved. Last, they had compassion for their community. They were not in top positions they were at the bottom with their people. They went to protests and they risked their lives for the work. This summer was difficult but it was eye opening. I felt like I was in a cross walk with the choice to decide which path I want to take. Despite it being difficult, I hope that when given the option, I will chose to be in solidarity with the Black community and these three rhetorians have set examples of how that has looked like in the past.