Institutional Violence
Collage: Institutional Violence & Anti-Blackness
During the Covid Pandemic, anti-Asian violence surged as our country’s President modeled racism and blaming Asians for the pandemic. During this time, our country’s Anti-Blackness was revealed as Black communities raised up and resisted police brutality. However, once again, media institutions would blame Black communities for Anti-Asian attacks, repeating a history of scapegoating the Black community and calling for more policing, the exact opposite of Black movement demands. Through understanding this history of Southeast Asian resettlement, how does this help Philadelphians better understand present-day Black and Asian tensions and the city’s responsibility to provide adequate resources to all communities so they are not pitted against each other?
ARTICLES
From 1975 to 1995 the Southeast Asian population of Philadelphia went from nonexistent to 20,000. Southeast Asian resettlement was concentrated in areas between White and Black neighbors and exacerbated existing racial conflicts due to White flight. Gentrification pushed many black folks out of their communities because they could no longer afford to pay rent. Resettlement agencies receiving government funding could pay this rent and resettle large communities of Southeast Asians in these vacant houses. Black folks who were organized to improve their housing conditions were kicked out of this housing and replaced by subsidized Southeast Asian refugees.
These anti-Black institutional actions would exacerbate racial tensions adding on to the frustrations Americans believed that Southeast Asians received extra government assistance. On top of that, neighbors expressed frustration of not being told that refugees would be coming into the neighborhood.
How was housing policy and Southeast Asian resettlement used institutionally as a tool of Anti-Blackness? How did these historic conditions create current-day Black and Asian tension in Philadelphia?
The media sensationalized Black resentment towards Southeast Asians, depicting “City Blacks Resent Aid to Refugees”. Rather than holding the city accountable for their negligence of Black communities and failure in resettling Southeast Asian refugees, the city singled out and blamed certain groups, turning Blacks and Asians against each other.
However, the truth was there were equal tensions in White communities as working class communities fought for resources particularly in Southwest and Northeast Philadelphia. The city tried to mitigate the tensions by creating a Southeast Asian Taskforce and a hearing on Asian violence, but to no avail. What can happen when we shift our understanding of the roots of violence from interpersonal incidents to understanding the responsibility of institutions? What can be won when we can organize and connect the struggles of poor and working class communities?
Lesser known are Black leaders, such as Ada Alexander, who came to the support of refugees and led a free meals program for Southeast Asian children in West Philly.
Likewise in North Philly, Mary Cousar led safety corridors and rallies in Olney. In reality, Black and Asian political solidarity goes back to Third World Liberation movements, the Bandung Conference, Black Panther solidarity with Vietnamese Liberation, Martin Luther King demanding an end to U.S. imperialism in his speech “Beyond Vietnam”, and much more. What could happen if we were taught in our schools the stories of political and everyday solidarity of Black and Asian communities? What do you want to commit to in your personal study to understanding Black and Asian solidarity?
Racial tensions in neighborhoods came to a head in multi-racial schools where Asians endured much bullying. In 1988-89, Asians were 3-5% of population and were victims of 25-30% of interracial incidents.
In 2021, an Asian student was attacked on a Septa trolley and Asian organizations throughout Philadelphia wrote this statement: “While much attention has been put on the interpersonal nature of this latest incident, it's important to shine a light on the systemic roots of this harm. This is the direct result of decades of divestment from our city's public schools, leading to conditions where our youths are pitted against one another and school administrations are unequipped to support them. This leads to the normalization of violence between students of color and the failure of our city's institutions to center transformative justice and healing the aftermath, perpetuating the cycle of violence.”
WRITINGS
Neeta Patel, Ellen Somekawa, and Dao X. Tran. Forward Motion: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders: Changing Realities, Revolutionary Perspectives.
Scott Kurashige.PAN-ETHNICITY AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING.
STORIES
Please check back in Dec 2022 as we upload community stories!
ART
This is a collection of comics created by University City High School students who were a part of Debbie Wei’s (Founding member of Asian Americans United) class. Debbie Wei was an ESOL teacher in Philadelphia public high schools during the 1980s. During this time, Southeast Asian refugees migrated to Philadelphia and into public schools for the first time. As Debbie witnessed the institutional violence against Southeast Asian refugees, Debbie began to utilize her class as a way to support students. Students learned English through naming how their conditions were unjust and how to express their right to feel angry. Students created comic books and essays on the terrible housing conditions they faced at home, police targeting, and violence that they and their families faced. Teenage refugees were a bridge between the new American world and their Southeast Asian families.
As Debbie saw the great need in the Southeast Asian community, Debbie organized other Asian Americans in Philadelphia into the fight which would eventually lead into the forming of Asian Americans United (AAU), Philadelphia’s first Asian American organizing organization. Debbie and AAU would lead the organizing of many Southeast Asian refugee rights including housing organizing in West Philadelphia and McCreesh incident in Southwest. Through Debbie and Asian American United’s support and mentorship, Southeast Asian young people were organized to demand the change needed in their communities. The organizing of AAU would lay the pathway for forming other progressive Asian organizations like VietLead in 2015.
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