More nuanced dialogue should follow hate crime

There’s a beautiful fireplace outside my apartment complex, Cardinal Gardens. It’s often on at odd times, but when it is, the courtyard is enlivened with the kind of relaxing atmosphere to study with friends that just screams “college.”

So when, earlier this week, a Facebook post revealed that a fellow Asian Pacific American was sitting in front of my favorite fireplace when he was attacked by eggs and racial slurs, it’s safe to say that the spot holds a different overtone for me now. Given the unparalleled student efforts to better our campus climate over the past year, it is heartbreaking to confront the reality that things may not have changed that much.

And when it was later revealed that the perpetrator was also Asian American, I didn’t know how to react. Some used the perpetrator’s ethnicity as a reason to excuse his actions — but far from diminishing the impact of this hate crime, his APA identity calls for greater reflection about how internalized racism continues to manifest itself in more nuanced ways than ever before.

It’s unfair for me to speculate as to why this individual chose to perpetuate racial slurs that harmed his own racial group. But he is not alone. Internalized oppression, as sociologists like W. E. B. Du Bois explained, clarifies why minorities may act in ways that are counterproductive to their community’s interests. In a world that so often defines minorities by race first, it’s not surprising that they begin to incorporate them as part of their psyche.

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity,” Du Bois wrote.

On a college campus, internalizing racism through language is a social access point. But though self-deprecation may seem endearing, perpetuating slurs against one’s own racial group is a sobering preservation of existing stereotypes that have very real consequences.

And though people of color by definition cannot be racist — since they do not benefit from perpetuating white supremacy — they can most definitely be discriminatory to other racial groups, to members of their own racial group or to other identity groups.

As an outsider, it’s easy to see why someone might be more forgiving to the student who perpetrated a hate crime because of his APA identity. But regardless of the intention or identity of the individual who threw eggs, the victim still felt disrespected and unwelcome, so much so that he posted about the incident on Facebook. The incident still preserves a sense that Asian Americans are, according to California State University Northridge professor Que-Lam Huynh, “perpetual foreigners.” And since mainstream race relations conversations are so often black and white (literally), it still suggests that Asian-American communities are less important when it comes to dealing with racism.

On a grander scale, similar tensions in the Asian-American community have recently manifested in protests and counter-protests for and against the conviction of NYPD cop Peter Liang, who fatally wounded an unarmed black man. While some say that Liang should not be a scapegoat for white police brutality, his APA identity does not erase the effects his actions have on black communities. And just as Liang should not be absolved due to his race, so too should the perpetrator of the hate crime at Cardinal Gardens be held accountable.

Like many APA Trojans at this moment in time, I’m left with more questions than answers. I’m unsure what this incident means for Asian-American solidarity, for dismantling tropes that have for so long defined us and for working to craft more challenging and self-aware conversations. But in our own communities, we need to realize that we are not immune from inflicting prejudice and discrimination. The most we can do is start and continue a critical dialogue to more closely explore these concepts and reinforce policy efforts for tolerance and exclusion — both in our ethnic communities and outside them.

Sonali Seth is a sophomore majoring in political science and policy, planning, development. She is also the editorial director of the Daily Trojan. “’SC, What’s Good?” runs every other Thursday.