On September 29, Grace Kyungwon Hong (UCLA), Lisa Nakamura (UMich) and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (SFU) engaged in a panel discussion on anti-Asian sentiment before Covid-19. Before the event, Lisa Nakamura remarked on Twitter that this was her first all Asian American women panel, and predicted a powerful discussion. She proved to be correct!
Squamish Elder Syexwaliya, a sharer of cultural teachings and protocols within and outside of her community, welcomed us to the event. She sang the Coast Salish anthem and prayed to the creator for spiritual, emotional health and well being for all, and for survivors Indian Residential School, Day Scholars, the 60’s Scoop, and multi-generational impacted people. After this welcome, moderator Kirsten Emiko McAllister introduced the panelists while reiterating Elder Syexwaliya’s message of standing together and holding each other up in dialogue.
The discussion focused on recent developments in social media, through an examination of the longer historical context of anti-Asian violence, interrogating why and how sentiments such as “hate” and acts of violence committed by individuals have become the primary framework for understanding Asian racialization. The panelists all juxtaposed hate with the sentiment of “love” in various ways as Grace problematized it: if hate is the framing of the problem, then love becomes the solution. This notion was explored and critiqued through each panelist’s presentation in overlapping and complementary ways.
Lisa discussed the aftermath of the Atlanta shootings, where 8 people were killed in a shooting spree that targeted Asian women as an opening to discuss Anti-Asian Sentiment, as it could no longer be denied. Within this context, she explored this sentiment online and the “digital labor of repair”, the posting of anti-racist content, free moderation, and bearing witness, as dangerous work of putting oneself out there that cannot be outsourced or automated. Lisa noted that Anti-Asian Sentiment and digital labour of repair are not acknowledged because who is involved, as it is young women of colour and queer people who are most harassed online, with links to the fact that “any device to connect to the internet is made by Asian and Indigenous women”. Her account of this kind of labour was contrasted with the white saviour who receives the majority of attention in anti-racist work, showing this through the example of the white American waitress who received $100,000 on GoFundMe after a video of her defending an Asian American family in a restaurant went viral on social media.
Grace’s presentation focused on questions of affect, sentiment and the human. She explored how “sentiment is not neutral or natural”, and is instead “a defining characteristic of white womanhood to temper the rational male market subject”, observable since the 19th century. With negative sentiment on the other hand, she outlined how a narrow understanding of incidents of “hate” turns them into hate crimes, “render[ing] them the responsibility of policing, activating the carceral state.” According to Grace, these formations create only two options: fear of white hate (and the carceral response) or gratitude for white love. As a response to this, she ended her talk with a question, “what does it look like to listen to Asian feelings?” As a brief answer, she pointed to an Asian American and women of color-led group called the Auntie Sewing Squad as an organization that frames itself against the “appeasement or management of white sentiment”. The group is made up of volunteer mask makers who organized a campaign to distribute PPE to marginalized groups and vulnerable groups in the community.
Wendy began with a short historical overview of Anti-Asian Racism in Canada and the US while noting, “racism and segregation is not behind us.” Her discussion focused on “sentiment and racism that are at play in formation and structure of networks in default assumptions of network infrastructures” that make echo chambers the goal. She highlighted two studies that laid the groundwork for the creation of network science: US post-racial housing projects and Japanese internment camps. First, “social networks and recommendation systems presume homophily”, and Wendy discussed how this idea that similarity breeds connection is based on a study of segregated housing. She pointed out that this study has serious methodological flaws, as the responses of Black residents were discarded and illiberal white responses were overselected. Second, Wendy explained that studies of Japanese Internment camps were crucial for the emergence of sentiment analysis through sociological study of these sites, where a methodology to understand camp sentiment was developed to better manage revolts. Wendy noted that we rely on this methodology for much of our social media analysis today and therefore “unruly women workers and Japanese Internees reside with us”. She left us with the question: ”How do we reside with them?”
Photo credit: Jonathan Gray @jwyg
Respondents Sun-ha Hong and Siyuan Yin each provided enriching comments. Sun-ha highlighted the contradiction between the utopian discourse of smart machines and dystopian discourse of surveillance, and how marginalization and racialization has played a deep role in this disconnect. Siyuan also historicized this discussion on the anti-Asian sentiment across the larger context of white supremacy, and pointed out that resistance requires solidarity across racial minority communities to take action both offline and online to fight racism and intertwined inequalities and justice.
If you missed it or would like to see it once again, you can email ddi_lab@sfu.ca to obtain access to the recording.
The Digital Democracies Institute and Wendy Chun would like to thank the SFU Communications Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) working group, event coordinator Amy Harris, moderator Kirsten McAllister, and the panelists and respondents for organizing and participating in this event.