NOA Episode 3 Coronavirus and Racism: the Asian American Narrative
Image Source: Chinese American Voices/Instagram
Host: Angela Zhou
Interviewee: Max Leung, Founder of San Francisco Peace Collective
What is the San Francisco Peace Collective? And how did you come to find such a group?
A few years ago I had the idea of starting a community patrol group or a neighbourhood watch group for Chinatown but I couldn’t find people who were interested. And of course, recently, within the past couple of months, coinciding not just with a stream of violent robberies within Chinatown but also with all the xenophobia that arose as a result of coronavirus; about a month ago, a handful of us who actually met on social media, we were like, hey we’ve got to do something about this ourselves because the police, the local government and the community itself are not proactively doing anything about this situation and it keeps happening. We basically started talking and we met up to start patrolling Chinatown the very next day.
What we do is that we regularly patrol Chinatown on foot and in vehicles. We have relationships with the community and with the merchant associations here. Aside from us just patrolling, we are working with the community and listening to their needs and what their concerns are.
The police have said that the crime rates have gone down, but people have been saying that these attacks are still happening and that no one has really been reporting them.
That’s always been the case with these types of attacks. Which is yet another reason why the Asian American community is targeted because most of the time the Asian American community will not go to the police to report these things when they happen.
Why is that?
There are a number of reasons, one of which is for cultural reasons. There tends to be a mistrust towards the police within the Asian community. There is often a language barrier as well. It’s often the case that those who are targeted are monolingual. These are Asian Americans who can’t even speak English and so they don’t feel comfortable talking with the police and reporting it. They often don’t have anyone who would do it for them. So these attacks, although the news spreads within the community, often don’t make mainstream media news, nor are they reported to the police. Those statistics are kind of skewed because the statistics that the police and the media have are only the reported incidences.
What kind of advice can you give people who don’t live in communities with this sort of collective, communal response?
My first piece of advice would be to stay vigilant, to be careful, be safe and take every precaution possible; know the social climate out there and what could possibly happen. Try not to go out alone, try to have a friend with you and don’t put yourself in situations where you might be victimised. It’s unfortunate that we’re the ones being targeted and victimised yet we were also the ones that have to lose certain freedoms to feel safe. That’s unfortunate but that’s the reality.
In areas where people don’t have a community organisation such as ours, they can be the ones to start one. Because originally, we didn’t have that either and all it took was a handful of concerned citizens who decided to be proactive and take action. One of my inspirations is Grace Lee Boggs. One of her quotes that stuck with me was, ‘we are the leaders that we are looking for.’ Rather than waiting or expecting other people to help us and if that help isn’t available, we need to be the ones to help and create the organisations that don’t exist. We need to be the ones to create community. Community is created by the people, for the people, and if it’s not there in your area, reach out to your network, reach out on social media. However you do it, find your community to protect the community.
Why, in your opinion, has there been a lack of communal response in particular Asian American communities? Is it due to there being a difference in attitudes between those of the older generation and those of younger; those who represent the second generation?
Traditionally and culturally, it’s in our culture to ‘mind our own business’ to ‘remain humble’, ‘keep our head down’, ‘move forward and work hard’, to not speak up and ‘stir the pot’, so to speak. And so that’s why it was difficult to get the older generations in the community to do something like this. Whereas us, the younger generation, those of us who grew up here, who are the second generation, we are bicultural and we see the world through a different lens. We’re a little bit more active in our approach.
And hopefully, with what we are doing, the generations moving forward are further inspired to speak up and fight back, to defend itself and more importantly, one another.
Editor and transcriptor: Angela Zhou