Orientation

Let us talk about an uncomfortable subject.

On Tuesday, March 17, 2021, in Atlanta, Georgia, a 21-year-old white man named Robert Aaron Long bought a gun. At approximately 17:00 EDT, he used this gun to open fire on Young’s Asian Massage, Gold Massage Spa, and Aroma Therapy Spa. Eight people – seven women and one man – died as a result; one was wounded. Six of the eight victims were Asian women: Delaina Ashley Yuan, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Yan, Daoyou Feng, Julie Park, and Park Hyeon Jeong.

After what Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office called a “brief pursuit,” Long was arrested and questioned. “The suspect did take responsibility for the shootings,” Baker said that Wednesday. “He said that early on, once we began interviews with him.” Baker further reports that “[Long] does claim that it was not racially motivated”, instead pinning his motivation on “what he considers a sex addiction,” describing the spas as “temptations he wanted to eliminate.” Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said that at the time, they could not decisively call this event a “hate crime.” The police chief was not willing to label the murders of six Asian women, murdered because their very existence as Asian staff for Asian massage businesses was a danger to a white man’s “sex addiction,” a hate crime. Eight people died because an Asiaphilic white man felt endangered by the “temptation” of Asians who worked for Asian massage parlors, and authorities refrained from correctly calling this a hate crime.

Asians and Pacific islanders still face racism as a direct result of colonialism and our proximity to whiteness. We are reduced to “oriental” and “exotic” aesthetics, to pho and firecrackers and “Chinese” new year. We are written off as oil-crazed terrorists and dog-eating acupuncturists who strictly adhere to tradition and nothing else. Our cultures are reduced to easy-to-digest packets for worldwide commercial consumption, all stripped of anything but surface-level influences so as to appeal to as many people as possible. We are reduced to the “model minority,” where those of us with lighter skin are turned against anyone with darker skin, even our own kin. Telescopes are built on our sacred land without even asking for blessings or permission. Multi-level marketers continue to vomit pseudoscientific woo while citing our dangerous medical traditions as post-enlightened cure-alls from the enlightened minds of lost geniuses. Our megadiverse rainforests are illegally mowed down at unsustainable rates in the name of the logging and palm oil industries, destroying our ancestral homes and ways of life. We are coughed on as we are made out to be a featureless, generic whole, all seen as personally responsible for the act of “divine retribution” known as the Covid-19 pandemic – even those of us who aren’t Chinese. The United States Senate and House of Representatives only issued formal apologies for laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Our privileges are cruelly conditional, granted half-heartedly so as long as we assimilate and uphold the colonial violence perpetuated against us and fall in line to turn it against our Black, Latine, and Native kin. We may be allowed the fantasy of culturally “climbing the corporate ladder,” so as long as we violently gatekeep the status quo to ensure that only the “good” minorities – the ones who protect and bolster white supremacy in its many forms – are tentatively allowed to succeed. It is not that we “have it worse;” rather, it is that what we have was gained through unjust and inhumane ways that stripped both us and our targets of who we are. That we’ve been subject to this violence yet still chose to replicate it on others is unforgiveably abhorrent.

Reorienting Ourselves

Now that we’ve laid the groudwork, let us discuss the origin of the word “orient.” The earliest known uses of the word refer to the direction from which the sun rises: the east. European explorers would later refer to the entire continent of Asia as “the East,” a practice casually continued to this day. “Middle East” is not a phrase that came from the regions it’s supposed to refer to. “Middle East” assumes an absolute origin point on a two-dimensional plane, and to no one’s surprise, the implied origin point is Europe. To refer to entire countries and cultures as “eastern” is to other them – because they aren’t from the origin point. “East Asia” is acceptable because the continent has a definitive boundary on a two-dimensional plane. The “Far East,” in reference to areas such as the South China sea, is not; one person’s perceptual “east” may be someone else’s perceptual “west” – or even a third person’s origin point, their home. “Oriental” is rooted in Eurocentrist colonialism, so we must conclude that because Eurocentrist colonialism is racism, “oriental” is therefore racist.

Not all racism is created equal. Robert Long’s murder of six Asian massage therapists because they were “temptations” is racism, and so is mocking spoken Chinese by saying “ching-chong.” Mocking the sound of someone’s native language hurts, but the pain it causes is leagues away from the violent, traumatic deaths of six people based on ethnic stereotypes about them. Both of these are forms of racism, ways in which entire ethnic groups are treated as lesser than others. The way we think is dictated by the words we use, as the very nature of language is describing and communicating ideas. To call someone’s country of origin “the Orient” is to invoke a long history of colonialist violence and fetishized othering against us.

Ultimately, I cannot speak for every Asian person, every Pacific islander. We are not a monolith. I have tried to write this article in the most thorough way with the best faith possible, but I am known to have severe tunnel vision. I’m doing my best and welcome corrections – please e-mail me if you have any.

Currently, I don’t consider this article complete, but it is well along enough that I don’t mind putting it up on the Internet right now.