Asian/American Women Scholars,Gendered Orientalism,and Racialized Violence: Before,During,and After the 2021 Atlanta Massacre

Georgia On My Mind

On March 16, 2021 in the Atlanta area, a sex-crazed and violent young White American male named Robert Aaron Long killed eight people across three Asian-owned spa sites. The United States and the world lost eight Americans: Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, and Paul Andre Michels (first attack at Young’s Asian Spa); Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, and Suncha Kim (second attack at Gold Spa); and Yong Ae Yue (third attack at Aromatherapy Spa). Six of the victims were Asian/American women. The news also made it across the world, as the victims included people from China and South Korea. During and in between work meetings for the rest of the week, my laptop and phone received newsfeeds with eye-popping headlines such as “The Atlanta Shootings Fit Into a Long Legacy of Anti-Asian Violence in America” (Lang, 2021), “How Racism and Sexism Intertwine to Torment Asian-American Women” (Dewan, 2021), and “The History of Fetishizing Asian Women” (Ramirez, 2021).

For the rest of the week, I received a flood of calls and notes from mostly White faculty, leaders, and staff at an urban-serving campus where I am currently employed as a dean of education. They expressed abstract and vague concerns about racialized violence, most of them acting ignorant and/or surprised about what they clumsily viewed as a one-off incident. After my last meeting of the day, I received a call from an Asian/American colleague. When I picked up the phone, I could hear the deep sorrow in her voice when she told me: “By not naming the moment, they treat us like we’re dead.” I learned that her leader, a White woman do-gooder, did not even acknowledge the Atlanta Massacre at any point during a committee meeting. Instead, this individual happily talked about her plans to go to a waterpark for the upcoming spring break 2021. After this phone call ended, which is around the time I usually head to bed, I stupidly decided to check my inbox. My eyes found a note from a White colleague who sent me an awkward and rambling note about the Atlanta Massacre. The message started with this question: “What’s going on in your head?” Such a loaded question triggered an unsettling reality for me as the only Asian/American woman to serve as an executive leader at an urban-serving campus. I also have the distinct burden (or privilege, depending on how one views the politics of representation) of being the first Woman of Color to serve at the decanal level in the history of this White-dominated urban-serving campus.

This article describes how I have un/processed the Atlanta Massacre of 2021 and other types of racialized violence in and out of the academy by drawing on the analytic frameworks of Orientalism (Said, 1978) and racialized sexualization/violence (Lee & Vaught, 2003). Employing the method of restorying (Kumashiro, 2003), this critical autoethnography involved synthesizing traumatic reflections into concept maps with key data sources including author-generated poems, e-mails, institutional statements, and journal entries based on a series of critical incidents that occurred between March 15, 2021 to March 22, 2021 as well as over the past several decades, that are connected to the themes of gendered Orientalism and racialized violence. I will describe how the Atlanta Massacre not only perpetuated collective and intergenerational trauma with the news of carnage, but further demonstrated how many leaders at White-dominated institutions of higher education have long dishonored Asian/Americans and other individuals who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color)—both the dead and the living—through their in/actions, mis/behaviors, and mis/deeds.

The Stronghold of Gendered Orientalism and Racialized Violence in the United States

It is vital to situate the Atlanta Massacre as a race-based hate crime and as a national tragedy worthy of critical scholarly critique to avoid the common traps of defining moments of racialized violence as isolated incidents divorced from multiple historical, political, and social contexts. Foremost, I concur with Palumbo-Liu (1999) with his intentional use of the term “Asian/American” (forward slash) over Asian-American (hyphen) or even Asian American (no hyphen) to offer a “choice between two terms, their simultaneous and equal status . . . and a dynamic, inclusive, and unsettled movement” (p. 1). While Asian/Americans themselves, other BIPOC people, and Whites often believe that being Asian and American are mutually exclusive or that one must choose between identities (Garrod & Kilkenny, 2007), situating Asian/America as a more complex and fluid construct challenges simplistic frameworks of cultural essentialism and identity formation. Indeed, scholars of diasporic/transnational studies of Asian/America (e.g., Azuma, 2005; Hsu, 2008; Ong, 1999) have generated innovative scholarly avenues for interpreting the complex intersections between the representations of Asians overseas (in Asia) and Asian/Americans (those living in the United States) in Western imaginaries to situate moments like the Atlanta Massacre as part of historically racialized narratives that are somewhat predicable. Indeed, the stronghold of racial imperialism in the United States through the maintenance of institutionalized borders, state-sanctioned racism, and unequal geopolitical relations with other nation-states have created conditions to displace and scatter diverse Asian-origin and other racialized bodies into different communities throughout the nation from large urban communities to micropolitan areas to rural communities to the suburbs.

Moreover, what happened during the Atlanta Massacre cannot be divorced from a long history of anti-Asian ideologies and violence in the United States, particularly those connected to the perpetual fetishization and sexualization of the Asian/American woman’s body. Said (1978) defines Orientalism as a doctrine that “expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles” (p. 2). Within Western imaginaries, the construct of the “Orient” conjures up images of difference, mystique, and/or peril. Orientalist ideologies have gendered and sexualized dimensions that may partially explain how White males like Long may justify dehumanizing and eventually slaughtering Asian/American women. The term “racialized sexualization” (Lee & Vaught, 2003, p. 457) refers to the troubling phenomenon that involves the exotification and objectification of Asian bodies, cultures, and experiences based on White-supremacist fantasies and frameworks. Rooted in centuries of the West’s geopolitical and military involvement in Asia that could be described by the sexualized metaphor of armed forces penetrating and violating the feminine and subservient East (Yoshihara, 2002), racialized sexualization is an intense and persistent phenomenon that continues to haunt girls and women of Asian ancestry across ethnicities, nationalities, space, and time.

Creepy White Ghost’s Yellow-Fever Problem

White ghost smiles at me,

And says, in this creepy mock-Asian accent, flocking to me like a honeybee:

“Konnichiwa! You soooooo be-a-u-ti-ful.”

“Would you like to [points his dirty finger down south] suck-suck/blow-blow?”

Displeased, I roll my [Chinese-Japanese-look-at-these] eyes at White ghost (and all of the king’s horses),

As if the Occupied Forces,

Just shot me in the head,

But even with these bullets in my head, I’m still not dead.

And I refuse/to surrender,

And/or suck-suck or blow-blow White Ghost’s shriveled-up member (Endo, 2014).

“The Atlanta Women . . . Could’ve Been Me/Us”

I do and do not represent Asian/America. My experiences are likely joyfully and/or painfully familiar to many other Asian/Americans born and raised in White-supremacist environments and who also carry other identities such as being first-generation college students. On my mother’s side, I am the descendant of Japanese nationals in the United States who were legally denied citizenship from their arrival in the early 1900s to the 1950s when federal immigration laws began to shift in ways that eased some race-based exclusionary acts. However, The McCarran-Walter Act in 1952 created an explicit set of preferences to sort and track foreign nationals based on racially coded desirability criteria. My father arrived in the United States from Japan not even a decade after the passage of The Hart-Celler Act in 1965. Growing up in a bilingual family with transnational connections is supposed to be an ideal environment for young Asian/Americans to thrive, as this type of sociocultural context is said to immune us from the dual evils of assimilation and internalized racism. However, reflecting on my earlier years, I now fully recognize that attending majority-White public schools in the Midwest, where many local citizens blatantly and subtly devalued racialized bodies, impacted me in negative ways. Specifically, my peers and I were educated to believe that Asian/Americans and other BIPOC people were inferior and undesirable to Whites through perpetual erasure such as the lack of a culturally affirming learning experience and seeing no BIPOC school leaders or teachers throughout our K-12 years. I also knew of few Asian/American athletes, celebrities, and political leaders. I could not even walk into a store and find a doll, greeting card, or picture book representing someone who looked like me.

I was also constantly unsettled by the spoken and unspoken messages about being an Asian/American girl and a young woman from the perspectives of White America. I will never forget certain moments such as when a White boy spat on me in kindergarten during recess and then tried to remove my shirt. Or the time when I overheard a White friend’s mother tell her that I was too dirty to stay over for dinner, even though I bathed daily. The White mother, who also claimed to be a God-fearing Good Christian, curtly sent me home while her husband, a large White male, ogled me while I walked out their back (not front) door. Or the time when a young White male teacher called me up to his desk after class one day and put his hand on my rear when I was in middle school. Or the time when another White male teacher suddenly came up from behind me during gym class, picked me up with his arms wrapped around my torso, and twirled me around when I was in high school.

Unfortunately, as an adult including as an employee at various private and public universities over the years, I have, like many other Asian/American women scholars, been belittled, cat-called, demeaned, discredited, groped, infantilized, stalked, subjected to highly sexualized jokes, and touched by mostly White women and men. While I really dislike admitting this, no matter what I do or say, I may always be seen by many Whites and some foreign-born men as the geisha girl who should just serve them eggrolls and tea with a smile on my face. However, I also now realize that being what many Whites describe as the loud, oppositional, and rude body of difference (Endo, 2021) might have actually saved my life over the years.

When I learned of the Atlanta Massacre on March 16, 2021, and as more news began to emerge from White law-enforcement officials about Long’s sex addiction and so-called “bad day” as reasons for why he slaughtered eight Americans including six who looked like my relatives and/or me, I had an odd out-of-body experience. Foremost, I grieved for the six Asian/American women and their loved ones. I also grieved for young Asian/American girls and women who have been subjected to everything from rape to sexual harassment to sexual violence by White males like Long who cavalierly disrespect our families, our lives, our minds, our racialized realities, and our souls but somehow claim to love our bodies and our cultures. I also started to think about the more subtle forms of racism that Asian/Americans across ethnic groups, generations, nationalities, and regions encounter at school and within their workplaces that in many ways mirror Long’s behaviors where we are treated in White-dominated spaces as disposable, inferior, and not worthy of life. “Well, nothing really is new or surprising here,” I responded to a curious White woman who informed me, with her voice shaking, that she was terribly disturbed and surprised that the Atlanta Massacre happened. I paused, and then added:

People who look like me have been brutalized, racially profiled, and slaughtered for centuries in the United States and overseas. Government-sanctioned racism has clearly enabled a culture of violence against racialized bodies including in academia. However, I believe, as do others, that the only way to realize true progress is when our institutions of higher education and national leaders finally reckon with our nation’s racialized past through a reparations framework. Freedom, liberation, peace, and uplift must benefit Asian/American people, as well as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Pacific Islander folks. Of course, what benefits the BIPOC collective will only benefit Whites as well.

The impact of my collective memories of racialized trauma across place and time has become more salient as I have navigated various majority-White institutions of higher education as an Asian/American leader and scholar who is constantly expected to represent Asian/American students as a respectable role model. Many Asian/American students on the urban-serving campus where I am employed are Southeast Asian/Americans from refugee backgrounds. We have a prominent population of Asian international students. There are also a range of ethnic groups represented among our student population such as Chinese/Americans, Filipinx Americans, Japanese/Americans, Korean/Americans, and others. Many students are also from food-insecure, impoverished, or working-class backgrounds. Many are first-generation college students who transferred to this institution from community and technical colleges. There are also several Asian/American faculty and staff across campus whose lived realities mirror the students we serve. When I accepted my current position, I was told by a White leader that I would supposedly be “really good” for this campus because of who I am: an Asian/American, a first-generation college student who started my postsecondary pursuits at a community college, a person with disAbilities, a Woman of Color scholar who writes about identity, and the like.

During the week of March 15, 2021 before the urban-serving campus where I am employed wrapped up its winter 2021 quarter to switch over to spring break 2021, I came to realize (yet again) that I may not exactly be “really good” for this campus, at least according to leaders who are White and/or those subscribing to White-supremacy culture. For one, I became outwardly irritated when several leaders unapologetically announced their plans to go camping/golfing/hiking/and so forth over spring break 2021 while my week was filled with check-ins with faculty, staff, and students, in addition to dozens of meetings. Some of these leaders’ salaries also exceed mine by five and six figures. Comments such as the following were abundant from these highly-paid leaders: “I really need a break” and “I’m just so exhausted.” At this time, which was just a day before the Atlanta Massacre, I found myself yet again telling several leaders that it would be highly insensitive and unethical to go on vacation during the dual pandemics, especially when our campus community continues to struggle with life in quarantine.

Then, the news media bombarded the world with headlines about the Atlanta Massacre on March 16, 2021. Similar to what happened to several Black folks after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 (Endo, 2021), a handful of mostly White leaders and scholars started to bother Asian/Americans with grossly insensitive and/or performative comments about caring about me/us. Oddly, a range of insensitive and wildly disturbing comments started to fly of mostly White people’s mouths such as: “I’m really concerned about your well-being . . . you’re not smiling today” to “You really need a vacation! What are you doing for spring break?” During one particular Zoom meeting on an ominous day this week, I wanted to log off immediately upon entering the room. For one, there was zero mention of the Atlanta Massacre. Instead, I heard more cheerful talk about spring break 2021 including many White folks’ plans of camping/golfing/hiking/and so forth. At one point, I briefly unmuted myself to directly address one of the most serious offenders after I heard the word “vacation” for the umpteenth time:

Do you seriously want to go on another vacation during the dual pandemics? After yet another national tragedy predicated on racialized violence? I guess going on vacation will allow some of you to avoid or not think about faculty, staff, and students who look like the victims of the Atlanta Massacre. If your vacation is more important than being there for our campus community, then I question why some of you are even in a leadership position. However, if you really insist on going on vacation, why don’t you, at a minimum, donate one week’s worth of your salary to the Pantry or some nonprofit organization that seeks to advance racial justice?

I started to (yet again) see the typical avoidant behaviors of those who clearly dislike it when Women of Color disrupt their happy-go-lucky Whitespeak. Subtle forms of pouting such as avoiding eye-contact/looking down and frowning filled those one-dimensional Zoom-screen boxes. The stone-cold silence was chilling but expected. I kept my video off and muted myself for the rest of the meeting. I decided to check my inbox, which was a mistake. I saw a request from a White faculty member in another area I do not know well, asking if some students in one of her courses could interview me about my reaction to the Atlanta Massacre. I stepped away from my laptop. At this point, I no longer was paying attention to what was being said during this painfully unproductive Zoom meeting. During other meetings throughout the day, it was clear that several Asian/American women faculty, staff, and students on this urban-serving campus were scared in the aftermath of the Atlanta Massacre because, as one student told me, with her voice shaking: “The Atlanta women . . . could’ve been me . . . and us. It could happen to us.”

At the end of the business day, I closed out my final Zoom meeting, which mostly involved White employees complaining about feeling overworked. I felt like telling them that while feeling overworked is indeed challenging, at least we are alive and working . . . and not dead, sick, or unemployed. However, I had zero capacity to engage with them. As I reluctantly peeked again at my inbox, I saw an e-mail from another White person I have not heard from in months. In part, she wrote: “I was thinking about you today [ . . . ] By the way, can you recommend a resource on Asian culture? That might help me better understand your perspective on what’s going on, as I imagine you’re really angry right now.” After my eyes glazed through this e-mail again, I really wanted to call my mother to rant, but I decided I need first to eat some fried chicken and rice to calm down to spare her from having to see the worst in me due to yet another Karen’s problematic remarks. As an Asian/American scholar who has academic training in critical multiculturalism and ethnic studies, I was unsure whether to cry or laugh at this e-mail. Do I tell this White person that there is no monolithic “Asian culture?” That there are differences between Asians in Asia and Asian/Americans? That asking me for a resource on “Asian culture” to help her “better understand” what she calls my perspective of a racially motivated national massacre is emblematic of some of the most egregious forms of modern-day Orientalism? That labeling me or any Asian/American (or really any BIPOC person) as “angry,” after we just saw ourselves in the news (yet again) as carnage, is also a form of racialized violence?

Disrespecting the Dead . . . and the Living

On March 20, 2021, I felt like I was walking through a dark and thick fog. My phone was barking: dozens of text messages and voice messages had gone unheard. I tried to quickly return the calls to the Asian/American women who I knew were likely having similar out-of-body experiences and processing all of this collective trauma. Before lunch, I picked up the phone to catch up with an Asian/American colleague who, like me, was raised in the United States. My body shivered as she recalled how a White male colleague started to speak to her in Mandarin during a meeting. When she told him she could not understand him, he said he was “more authentically Chinese” than she is. As she started to tell him that his comments were inappropriate and racist, her White leader cut her off, saying publicly that the Asian/American woman scholar was “being uncivil” rather than telling the White male to stop making racially insensitive remarks.

After we ended our phone conversation, I send a note to the campus leadership team (Endo, personal communication, March 20, 2021) that read, in part:

In summer 2020, some of us attempted to engage in critical reflection about the cycles of racialized violence leading up to the murder of George Floyd that also had clear connections to [campus’s name] climate and culture. The recent massacre in Atlanta inspired many of us to further reflect on what progress we have/haven’t made since summer 2020.

Rather than talking about camping trips, self-care, and/or spring break, we might benefit from being more other-focused during a time when our campus community sorely needs us. During these precarious times, campus leaders must courageously interrupt cycles of racialized violence (including the ones we inflict irrespective of our intentions) that mirror the very ideologies that fuel everything from racially motivated hate crimes to more subtle forms of racism including erasure, exclusion, and objectification.

Please also remember that many colleagues and students are likely experiencing extreme distress in this moment. That is, it’s re/traumatizing to constantly see people who look like us, our grand/children, other relatives, and/or our spouses in various news media (and within our institutional contexts through, for example, curricular representations) as carnage, collateral, non-existent, and/or subhuman- not just sporadically, but across several generations.

While the recent massacre in Atlanta shouldn’t surprise us, it should outrage us enough to at least admit that our campus hasn’t sufficiently acknowledged and/or tackled the stronghold of, among others, the interlocking ideologies of anti-Black racism, Orientalism, and White-supremacy culture.

The urban-serving campus where I am employed has an Office for Equity & Inclusion, a place that is my and others’ sanctuary. The office staff hosted a lovely event on March 22, 2021, the first day of spring break 2021 on this campus, to honor the victims of the Atlanta Massacre and their loved ones. I was running a few minutes late to this event. When I entered this space, I did a quick scan of the Zoom room. I smiled when I saw several familiar faces including Asian/American faculty, staff, and students, as well as several BIPOC colleagues. I frowned when I saw a White faculty member who recently called me by the name of another Asian/American woman on campus who looks nothing like me. As I scrolled around the room, I was looking for members of the leadership team of this urban-serving campus. I quickly realized that only 5 of us were there or about one-fourth of the entire group; all of us were BIPOC. No White leader was present. I soon came to the painful realization that several of these campers/golfers/hikers/so forth view Asian/American women, whether alive or dead, as disposable, invisible, and not even worthy of an hour of their time.

As the news media began headlining more stories after the Atlanta Massacre about Asian/American women being physically attacked across the nation with brutally raw footage or photographs (blood, bruises, and the like), I received more calls and notes of concern, primarily from White folks and a handful of foreign-born men. They asked what they could do to “help” and “support” me. Some went as far as to say they care for and/or love “Asian women” like me. I did tell one White leader that perhaps the best form of “help” is if that person could convince other White leaders to reflect on how to move forward with restitution to BIPOC faculty, staff, and students, as simply attending another rally, reading another book on anti-racism, and re/posting #StopAsianHate on their social-media accounts are, at best, insufficient. I then candidly shared with this person:

As you know, not everyone here has proven to be an advocate, an ally, or really even a leader. Having them step down from their roles could possibly be the best form of “help” that would be the start of a demonstrated commitment to equity and racial justice.

Dear (Un/Caring?) Leaders: Who Do You De/Value?

[ . . . ]educators and leaders have a unique responsibility to better understand how the formal, hidden, and null curricula with/in our institutions, as well as current knowledge systems and ideologies, play into the motives for how and why a young White male decided to racialize, sexualize, and then casually decide that Asian/American people are disposable. Most Americans of all backgrounds go through their K-12 and university years not learning about the complexities of Asian/American experiences, histories, and identities. (Endo, personal communication, March 22, 2021, p. 1)

Before the Atlanta Massacre, I was aware that many leaders at the urban-serving campus where I am employed did not fully respect or value Asian/American women and other BIPOC scholars, especially those of us whose pedagogies and scholarly frameworks center critical multiculturalism and ethnic studies. We are only acceptable when we are agreeable and subservient to Whites; however, even then, we are still treated as second-class citizens. More boldly, when we refuse to be disrespected, exploited, and silenced by any White-supremacist thinker across the color line, or when we decline to re/share our racialized experiences after years of not being heard, we are rewarded with perpetual exploitation, inaction, retaliation, and silence. On March 16, 2021 as the news unfolded about the Atlanta Massacre, I had flashbacks of constantly being belittled, interrupted, and silenced by various leaders who have claimed to be champions of diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, since they have not demonstrated respect for those of us who are (and have been) alive and well, it should come as no surprise that these same individuals could not even take an hour out of their day to honor the deceased.

During spring break 2021, a group of Asian/American students and a few of their BIPOC allies across campus asked to meet with me to connect while many other campus leaders were camping/golfing/hiking/and so forth. During this national tragedy, these young people were looking for a bicultural role model. We talked about how awful it is to be racialized and sexualized on a daily basis; that we found it unfortunate how it took the slaughter of six Asian/American lives in the Atlanta area for White America to even take a moment to hear and see us. That evening after I met with this group of students, I took one last hard look at myself in the mirror, surprised to see how much I have aged just over the span of one year after the COVID-19 pandemic placed the entire world in quarantine. I composed and then sent a two-page note to the most influential leaders on campus that, in part, read:

[ . . . ] as our campus seeks to continually profit from the identities of Asian/Americans and other BIPOC communities, [ . . . ] [the campus] Executive Leadership Team must minimally show greater respect to both the deceased and the living. For example, our campus recently sought federal Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI) designation based on our student demographics. We also recently accepted the Carnegie Foundation Classification for Community Engagement designation; we further identify as a member of the national Coalition of Urban-Serving Universities (CUSUs). If we wish to continue affiliating ourselves with national organizations that centrally value access, diversity, equity, and inclusion, we cannot continue with business as usual where racialized lives are solely commodified without any reciprocal institutional investments in our lives and livelihoods (Endo, personal communication, March 29, 2021, p. 2).

Before, during, and after I hit the send button, I did not just think of Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue. I thought of the young Asian/American students at this urban-serving campus who are our children and grandchildren; our nephews and nieces; the list could go on. Will the leaders who went camping/golfing/hiking/and so forth during spring break 2021 understand that the Asian/American students they are tasked to serve are younger versions of me and that I was once them? That Asian/American faculty, staff, and students, like the rest of Asian/America, are (and are also not) Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue? That we are all diverse individuals with a shared racialized experience in a nation-state that hates us alive . . . and loves us to death?

Magic Mirror: Did You Know?

Magic mirror (on America’s imaginary) Great Wall,

Did you know that not all Asian/Americans . . . want to be the fairest (and Whitest) of them all? (Endo, 2014)