#黑人的命也是命: Asian Pacific Americans are Breaking Down Language Barriers on Racial Justice (& Why It’s So Critical)

Current EventsRaceAsian Americans
Written By Tiffany Weitien
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In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers, our country has been faced with an unprecedented call to action: to root out anti-Blackness from every corner of our cities, institutions, and selves. For many Americans, this has come to mean not only exhorting government leaders to enact sweeping reform when it comes to police accountability and criminal justice policy, but also confronting the internalized racism within our intimate circles, over dinner tables and in WhatsApp and WeChat groups. 

Protests have taken place in every major city and have already brought about change: the firing and arrest of all four officers involved in Floyd’s death; a nationwide call to defund the police and outlaw chokeholds; the introduction of a House bill to end qualified immunity; the repeal in New York State of 50-a (the law that helped kept records of police misconduct from being disclosed); and the adoption of a “Duty to

Intervene” policy by Dallas PD which would require officers to intervene in cases where use of force becomes unnecessary or excessive. Most astoundingly, the unrest brought on by Floyd’s tragic death has also precipitated a vote by the Minneapolis City Council to disband the Minneapolis Police Department outright. 

But the Movement for Black Lives has also been a war in which language (with a lowercase “l”) has served as an important weapon unto itself. On one side, people are shouting, displaying, and hashtagging their support for “Black Lives Matter”, while others rally behind the reactionary derivations “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter”. Beyond the use of these slogans, individuals who have not been steeped in the language of activism are now seeking to acquire even a modest fluency in the conversation about racial justice, sharing articles and seeking guidance from others in the movement. 

The multiracial coalition in support of Black Lives Matter includes Asian Americans, who have lately been the target of racist violence themselves due to anxieties around the COVID-19 pandemic, albeit to a lesser degree. I’ve seen this heightened awareness within my personal circles: for weeks, friends and family members of mine have been expressing outrage over George Floyd’s death, starting vulnerable conversations, and committing to taking action against police brutality and systemic anti-Blackness for the first time in their lives. 

But among Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) activist circles, efforts to combat anti-Blackness are also taking place through a multi-ethnic campaign to translate resources, news articles, and terminology on issues of racial justice into over a dozen languages (with a capital “L”) and counting. 

The groundwork for creating multilingual materials to bridge racial and generational divisions in the Asian American community had already begun in 2016, following the back-to-back police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Chinese American ethnographer Christina Xu started Letters for Black Lives, an open letter addressed to Asian parents explaining the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement from the personal perspective of their kids. The project used crowdsourcing to translate the letter into more than a dozen Asian languages, from Chinese to Nepali to Telugu. “You may not have grown up around Black people, but I have,” it began. “Black people are a fundamental part of my life: they are my friends, my classmates and teammates, my roommates, my family. Today, I’m scared for them.” 

After the death of George Floyd, Letters for Black Lives was updated and has since been translated into a battery of Asian languages. Meanwhile, a number of other resources have sprung up: bilingual glossaries filled with terms meant to address anti-Blackness; Traditional and Simplified Chinese explainers about what happened to Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT who was shot twenty times in her sleep in Louisville; and videos explaining anti-racism in Gujurati, Punjabi, Vietnamese, and many languages. Lizzy, a model of mixed Black/Japanese heritage raised in Japan and known as @cocoalizzy on Instagram, has been posting videos explaining the importance of the movement in Japanese (with English subtitles) and sharing about her own difficult experiences of facing racism. 

The list goes on. The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)’s New York City chapter is actively compiling these and other Asian language resources for explaining facts about George Floyd’s murder, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the ways anti-Blackness underlies many of our institutions and cultures. 

This decentralized, pan-Asian translation movement is especially impressive given that the AANHPI community lacks a lingua franca for community education and mobilization. Unlike the Latinx community who are largely Spanish- and/or English-speaking, the Asian immigrant community speaks more than two dozen languages collectively (Pacific Islanders have many hundreds more on top of that) and have widely varying levels of English proficiency, which makes even intra-Asian organizing a challenge. Whether you’re talking about the Census or healthcare enrollment, it often takes translators of every stripe to ensure inclusive outreach to the AANHPI community. The fact that a new generation of activists is now coalescing around the issue of dismantling anti-Blackness and creating content in multiple languages, for multiple generations, and with culturally specific messaging, is nothing short of remarkable. 

Still, what’s most ambitious about this project is that it’s essentially an all-hands-on-deck community education campaign created for the most stubborn and intimidating audience possible: our families. It’s true that many of our parents and relatives hold problematic views of Black people that are deeply entrenched. Most don’t have a clear understanding of the history of slavery and its through-lines to present-day racial inequities (though to be fair, that’s also true of many of us born in the U.S.). And despite the post-1965 immigration policy that was made possible by a Civil Rights Movement during which many Black people suffered violence at the hands of the government, many Asian immigrants don’t understand how the Black struggle for human rights connects to movements for migrant justice and equal opportunity all over the world. On the contrary, many of our relatives “know” instinctively even before they arrive that Black people are not the example to follow if you want to make it in America. 

Challenging deep-seated prejudice among an older generation of immigrants to whom you’ve been taught to act deferentially, and in a language you barely know, can seem like a fool’s errand at best, and unsafe at worst. But during a watershed moment like this one, it feels like a moral imperative to try. Asian Americans are learning that being allies in the struggle for racial equity and Black liberation requires a different curriculum for decolonizing our minds, one that rejects the doctrine of white supremacy but challenges us to confront our own role in perpetuating it. This process requires a rapprochement with parts of our history and heritage that can seem unfamiliar, inaccessible, or even painful. Of these, decoding our parents’ languages (with a capital “L” ) can be one of the most daunting steps. 

This is a journey I’m very familiar with. I was a Chinese school dropout. When I was twelve, my parents decided to pull me and my brother out of the Saturday Chinese classes we had been enrolled in for 7 years (alongside all of the other Chinese and Taiwanese kids our age). By my parents’ recollection, I was a decent Mandarin speaker, but whenever my aunts, uncles, and family friends came around, I was crippled with shyness. I was afraid that if the words didn’t come out perfectly, that I would embarrass my parents, or that my parents would embarrass me preemptively to save face. 

I also observed the way kids treated other kids who spoke non-English languages at school. As early as kindergarten, bullies would yell “We’re in America, speak English!” to classmates, even if their mothers spoke Spanish or Korean to them when they came to pick them up. To my childhood self, this was a clear signal that despite our town’s diversity, English was nevertheless privileged as the language of whiteness and was therefore considered superior. Speaking it perfectly was our way of ensuring our American-ness would never be questioned. 

Years later, I would come to understand that even my parents’ decision to teach me and my brothers Mandarin was borne of pragmatism rather than preference. Both my father and mother come from Taiwanese families with centuries-old history on the island, raised speaking fluent Taiwanese. Mandarin Chinese, now the official language of Taiwan, was only declared as such by the Chinese government that occupied Taiwan after World War II. My parents were forced to speak Mandarin in school and were punished for speaking Taiwanese. But instead of reverting to Taiwanese with their children, they taught us Mandarin to help us gain entry to a larger diasporic network in America based not on country of origin, but by a common language.

To my childhood self, even learning Mandarin felt like too much of an imposition. I sabotaged my own progress in Chinese school, playing pranks on my teachers, cheating on quizzes, and almost never doing homework. My parents thought it was a waste of money to keep sending us to class, so they resolved to teach me and my brother themselves, a plan that ultimately became impracticable. And just like that, we had fallen through the cracks between cultures and ended up in an existential “nowhere.”

This feeling of alienation, called “racial dissociation” by psychologist Shinhee Lee and critic David Eng, is one of the race-related stresses that many Asian Americans experience. We realize that we can never truly be seen as “white” in America, yet we strive for acceptance as “model minorities”; we feel ill-equipped to carry out the social ethics of our parents’ generation, yet we long for some anchor to which to gently tether our sense of self. These inner conflicts cause a pervasive anxiety that we deal with in different ways. My way of coping was to rebel, and in so doing I abandoned the first language I knew, the language in which my parents first offered me guidance and affection. 

Racial dissociation is the reason why some children of immigrants bristle at the topic of learning the languages of their parents. It can trigger feelings of inadequacy, guilt, or obligation, or even resentment towards parents for withholding such knowledge. For others, dissociation can take the form of apathy or resignation. I see this in friends of mine who would likely shrug and say, “I just don’t care that much about knowing the language.”

This phenomenon isn’t uncommon among second and third generation immigrants of all backgrounds. Former presidential candidate Julián Castro famously talked about the reason he doesn’t speak fluent Spanish: the “internalized oppression” his grandmother passed on to his mother, brother and him after being discouraged from speaking Spanish as a child. “In my grandparents’ time, in my mom’s time, Spanish was looked down upon” he explained. “You were punished in school if you spoke Spanish. You were not allowed to speak it.” Those words really resonated with me, because it happened to my parents too. Our inability to fully master the languages of our forebears is less an individual failure, but rather a widespread and authentic conundrum of the immigrant experience. We could even go further in thinking about this cultural displacement as a byproduct of American and European imperialism, forced migration, and assimilation that caught up to us long before any of us could make decisions on how we would identify as individuals. Most of us manage to learn, and even master, the English language. Yet we recognize that with the loss of our ancestral languages comes a narrowing of the channels through which we can understand our culture and history, and to some extent, ourselves. 

It doesn’t help that the American school system doesn't prioritize the teaching of non-English languages. According to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), only 20% of K-12 students and 7.5% of college students study a foreign language in the United States. ESL classes are treated as a form of remediation, not a bridge to a bilingual education. There’s a shortage of foreign language instructors nationwide. The classes we do have are not effective and start too late in childrens’ development; as a result, few students who take advanced-level French or Spanish in school ever attain working fluency in those languages. Foreign languages are also among the first subjects to get cut when school budgets dry up, which they do all too often. 

In the U.S., we lack the kind of global education that prepares our workforce to compete and collaborate with people from other countries and in other languages. Our public schools don’t promote the cultural competencies that lead to greater empathy and interest in those who are different from or less privileged than ourselves. Yet these are precisely the skills that are essential for social justice work, and for de-centering whiteness and Western hegemony in our history, literature, media, and politics. Instead, we make foreign languages a bottom-tier elective and recruit overseas and immigrant workers to provide the labor of translating, interpreting, and serving as cultural go-betweens at a fraction of the cost if not for free. Meanwhile, people with limited English proficiency are at a disadvantage in many areas of their lives, whether at the employment office or in the voting booth, since the majority of the American workforce is not equipped to accommodate their needs. 

When I traveled to Taiwan during college with my mother and my brother, I realized just how much I was missing out on on account of my limited Mandarin skills. Luckily, the freelance nature of my work as a musician allowed me to relocate to Taipei a few years later after getting my ESOL teaching certificate and spending a year teaching and learning French and Arabic in Tunisia. In Taiwan, I felt at once a primordial sense of belonging and a stark clarity on what it meant to be an American, with all the privileges that entailed. Relearning Mandarin was hard, humbling work, but the more I practiced, the more I understood the nuances of the language and culture my parents had tried to instill in me and my brothers. I also grew closer to my family in Taiwan, some of whom I’d seen only a handful of times in my life, whose humor, gripes, and quirks I could now discern with greater clarity. 

My time abroad also revealed to me the ways in which anti-Blackness is propaganda that exists on a global scale. While Taiwan is famous for its progressiveness and friendliness to foreigners, Black people in Taiwan are still often shunned on public transportation, barred from certain teaching jobs, and generally regarded as the antithesis of the “fair-skinned” ideal of Taiwanese beauty. Recent coverage in Taiwanese media has also tended to emphasize the violence taking place during some Black Lives Matter protests, rather than the sociohistorical factors that led to these uprisings.

But at the very least, studying Mandarin in Taiwan gave me a medium through which to engage in conversations about race and culture with my family. While my Mandarin still isn’t perfect, it has served me in both my personal and professional life. I still talk to my parents mostly in Mandarin, and my relationship with them has never been closer. I’ve also had the opportunity to use it in my advocacy work, and am slowly but surely learning Taiwanese with the help of my best friend. Learning a language takes consistency and vulnerability, but rewards you in the relationships and trust you are able to build with others as a result. Over time, I’ve become a fervent advocate for language learning, always ready to trade tips, practice, and resources with anyone who decides to make it a priority in their lives. 

As a member of NAPAWF*NYC, I’ve also been delighted at the small steps our chapter has taken to center non-English languages within our circle. Earlier this year, our chapter leadership began inviting members to host “Language Liberation” segments during our monthly meetings. During these segments, a member teaches the group a few basic phrases in a language they know, whether it’s Burmese, Tagalog, or Hindi. The lessons are a reminder of the many skills and stories we possess individually and as a group, and forges a stronger sense of reciprocity and closeness between members. 

I’m also encouraged by the story of how the Native Hawaiian language nearly disappeared, only to be revived into widespread practice through the concerted efforts of activists, students, and linguists. It was also an intergenerational effort between elders who spoke Native Hawaiian fluently, and younger generations who were learning it from scratch. It goes to show how important language is to the social cohesion of marginalized communities surviving force assimilation; and that it’s possible to get back what was once lost as a result of colonization and forced assimilation. 

I realize I come to this conversation with an idealism that’s rooted in my privilege: many children raised in immigrant families have no choice but to learn their parents’ language. These are the incredible kids who interpret for their mothers and fathers at parent-teacher conferences, doctors’ offices, and DMV appointments. For them, there’s no “dropping out” from the school of filial duty. And not everyone has had the opportunity, as I did, to “go back” to the country of their parents. As of now, Taiwan is not in the midst of military conflict or famine. It is a country of relative prosperity and stability, which boasts universal healthcare and marriage equality. That’s not the case for every country the AANHPI community has ties to; we don’t all have somewhere safe to “go back” to. 

I also recognize that as the children of immigrants, our relationship with our parents’ generation can be as fraught as the histories they’ve lived through, as perplexing and full of nuance as the tones and inflections that mark meaning and feeling in their native tongues. Talking to our parents about oppression is hard, especially if our parents have themselves lived through hardships we cannot comprehend so that we could have more advantages in life than they had. 

But breaking the language barrier and intergenerational silence to talk about racial injustice is not just about helping our parents gain more compassion for other communities of color and recognize the gradients of privilege we hold vis-a-vis our Black brothers and sisters; it’s about our own self-liberation and sense of agency in starting conversations that matter within a society that has at times rejected us -- ALL of us. As we grow older and have children ourselves, this work also becomes about righting historical wrongs and rewriting white-centered narratives for the empowerment of future generations. 

I’m not saying anyone should feel obligated to pursue projects that may provoke shame and feelings of cultural alienation. We are fortunate that there is so much more to cultural citizenship than language: music, art, dance, religion, literature, and of course, food. We have every right to create communities, practice culture, and relate to history in any way we feel. We can also choose, with the greatest of deference and humility, to attempt to learn the languages of other communities who experience systemic exclusion due to language barriers. 

But speaking as a former Chinese school dropout, I want to tell my sisters and brothers that reclaiming our languages, however clumsily, however belatedly, can also be a tremendous source of healing. Choosing to learn a language out of love is a radical act. And for Asian Americans committing in this moment to working towards a more just future, making this part of our resistance strategy has the potential to create a vehicle for real allyship across the AANHPI community, as well as deeper solidarity with Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. We contain multitudes, and from these multitudes, so much can be done.

For those of you who want to begin learning Mandarin Chinese terms for social justice, I’ve created a few Quizlet flashcard sets of “Mandarin Woke-abulary” that will have you learning new words, impressing your parents, and fighting white supremacy in no time.

Special shoutout to Chander Kuo-Yi Tseng and Rita Lo for helping copy-edit these terms! <3

External Resources:

Tiffany Weitien
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