by L. Nelson Leonard & Aixin Dunn
L. Nelson Leonard: As an Asian American adoptee whose entire family is white, my family’s intentional colorblind means that my race is pretty invisible. When COVID-19 brought the world to a screeching halt, I was once again reminded that—even though my family insists they “don’t see race”—other people certainly do, and they make a point of my Asian-ness. Overnight, I went from being invisible to being completely vulnerable. I know I am not alone.
Aixin Dunn: I am a third generation Texan and also Asian American. I wish I didn’t understand the racialized and sexualized violence from last week. But with a body marked as foreign, even though I’ve never known another home, people ignore my experiences and assume who I am. I know I am not alone.
Between March 2020 and February 2021, researchers documented a surge of racist, xenophobic targeted acts against Asians. Americans reported 2,800 anti-Asian attacks (from verbal harassment to vandalism to physical assault) during those eleven months. This violence was again brought to the forefront of our consciousness by the most recent attacks in Atlanta.
Six Asian women massacred. Our mothers’ and our grandmothers’ bodies were sexualized and then they were murdered. They were invisible until they were not. That is the tradition in this country.
We must address the intersections of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and poverty Asian-Americans experience daily. These are not new problems that only emerged because of the coronavirus pandemic; rather, this violence is a result of centuries worth of discrimination and oppression.
As scholars in religious studies, we have tools to analyze what is happening. About the way, the perpetrator was entrenched in evangelical Christianity. About what it means to be fetishized. About the relationship between contagion, moral value, immigration, and sex. About rituals of xenophobia and nationalism. About how the great American story is rooted in a white supremacy that requires the silent sacrifice of bodies deemed unworthy.
It is long past time for us to offer our interventions, so it is especially critical that we now take specific steps to make amends for our past silences. Protect Asian women. Reject the assumptions you make about your students. Think about the absences in your pedagogy. Review your citations. Re-evaluate what consists of good scholarship. Amplify Asian voices. Support and believe your colleagues. Allow us to be our full selves. Do not make us vulnerable by rendering us invisible.
Xiaojie Tan, 49 years old.
Daoyou Feng, 44.
Hyun Jung Grant, 51.
Soon Chung Park, 74.
Suncha Kim, 69.
Yong Ae Yue, 63.
May their murders ignite a reckoning.
L. Nelson Leonard is a PhD student in the Religion in Society track at UT Austin’s Department of Religious Studies. She has training in political science and uses her interdisciplinary methodological skills to address cultural intersections of race and religion. You can learn more about her and her work here!
Aixin Dunn is a PhD student at the University of Texas. She studies immigration, sexual violence, and religion.
