Stop Hate
By Yaoyao Shi
In Chinese culture, I have learned the importance of tolerance since elementary school. Tolerance of hardships in the historical context was often taught as a great quality to have. However, to what degree should we tolerate? Two years ago, New York City was a vibrant and diverse city to me. Today, walking in Hell’s Kitchen in the city, I feel unsafe and nervous because a 65-year-old Asian woman was attacked on the same street.
Since the pandemic hit last year, to me, America had been covered by a black curtain which left only darkness for me. In the past year between March 19, 2020, and February 28, 2021, nearly 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents were reported, and women reported hate incidents at 2.3 times the rate of men. Rhetoric like “China virus” and “Kung flu,” incidents of elders assaulted, and the Atlanta spa shootings and other cases of violence have been devastating. It was frustrating for me to see the mainstream media continuously failing to address the complexities of these incidents. There was huge debate of whether the gunman in the Atlanta shootings had a racial motivation, and there was also the narrative that the murder of eight people could be blamed just on “a bad day.” Those words killed my hopes. We should not tolerate violence stemmed from racist and misogynistic biases.
Moreover, this is not only about Asians, but it is also about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, asylum seekers, separated families, travel bans on Muslims, and more. We and our brothers and sisters of other minority identities constantly face xenophobia, hate, and racism everywhere in our daily life, and we carry different forms of injustice. We cannot tolerate the fact that the people in power kept creating racist narratives and not making efforts to bring systematic changes.
We must not tolerate, but create change. Like how James Baldwin suggested to his nephew “that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.” Regardless of our gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, sexuality or religion, we have the responsibility to restore justice in the system. We interact with each other in different communities, and it is important that we create and emphasize the right narrative. In school, we should stay open minded, engage in difficult yet important conversations, proactively learn about various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) topics, and understand misconceptions, use of inclusive language, and allyship. In local communities outside school, we should self-reflect and lead with openness in conversations with people around us. In the globalized world today, we should appreciate the differences from each other and contribute our efforts collectively to restore justice.
Baldwin has told us that not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. This pandemic makes us face and review the cold reality of systematic injustice, and it also encourages us to change. Changes are difficult and painful, but we need to act now.
