by Charlene Huynh
Whenever late January rolls around, I am reminded of Tết (also known as Lunar New Year)–not because I particularly remember that it’s around the corner, but because my family’s week-long preparations are impossible to ignore. Tết instantly evokes memories of having a large family reunion at my grandparents’ house with tons of food, playing games with my siblings and cousins, lighting ear-deafening firecrackers in the garden, and walking to Vietnam Town to celebrate in our áo dài (a traditional Vietnamese garment, typically worn during special occasions), the firecracker smoke polluting the air above us.
This year, however, I was reminded of something else. On January 21–Lunar New Year’s Eve–a gunman opened fire in a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, killing ten and wounding ten others. Monterey Park is known as the first Asian ethnoburb, an unassimilated, suburban ethnic enclave, with 65% of the population being of Asian descent. Two days later, in Half Moon Bay, California, seven farm workers who were Chinese and Mexican immigrants were killed by another gunman. These two shootings come nearly a year after the Atlanta spa shootings, when two Asian-owned spas were targeted, killing seven women and one man. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent. The perpetrator, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, was being treated for having a “sex addiction” and was a customer at these parlors. He saw the workers as sexually tempting, ultimately motivating him to target them in order to “eliminate the temptations” and “help” others dealing with sex addiction.
As I sat reading the news in my college apartment in Wisconsin, unable to participate in Tết celebrations this year, I was reminded of the trauma the Asian American community has suffered, and the multidimensional layers of trauma we face as diasporic peoples. I assumed that the perpetrator was a sinophobic white man committing a hate crime, drawing from the well-known patterns of mass shootings in the United States. Surprisingly, both of the shooters were older, Asian men. Many on the internet began to suspect that it couldn’t be a hate crime if the shootings were Asian on Asian violence, misinterpreting the politics of identity and racism to assuage the gravity of the situation. However, as the motives of the two shooters remain unknown, for now, one thing is for sure: gun violence is a symptom of American culture, built upon white supremacy, colonial violence, and patriarchy.
Since the conception of North America as a European “discovery,” violence has been a foundational component of the colonial quest of the ‘New World,’ which is now known as the United States of America. In 1585, English colonists attempted to settle in territory they called Roanoke–in present-day North Carolina–where several Native tribes resided; as a result of mistrust, the colonists burned the surrounding villages and decapitated the chief. In addition to colonial atrocities, disease and famine would exterminate around 90% of the existing Native population, setting the stage for colonial and imperial violence to shape the rest of the historical development of the colonies and the eventual conception of America as a nation.
Additionally, Duke University Professor of Law Darrell Miller said at a Johns Hopkins panel discussion that "There is a long tradition, going back to the slave codes, of disarming free Blacks and enslaved persons. But equally, there is a long tradition of whites using private personal arms to act as privatized police of Black persons and communities of color in the slave patrol." In fact, a study found a positive correlation between the percentage of enslaved persons in a U.S. county in 1860 and the rate of gun ownership in the county today.
Perhaps the most obvious and encompassing example today is the excessive presence of law enforcement and the military. President Joe Biden signed the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, allocating $816.7 billion to the Defense Department–an 8% increase from fiscal year 2022–and Customs and Border Patrol were given $17.5 billion. Despite defunding claims following the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, ABC Owned Television Stations found that in more than 100 cities and counties, 83% spent at least 2% more on police budgets in 2022 than in 2019; in 49 of these cities or counties, police funding increased by more than 10%.
It has been made clear throughout history that neither Democrats or Republicans are willing to decrease state-sponsored violence and give power back to our communities. How can we expect our elected officials to seriously do something about the drastic increase in gun violence nationwide and protect our schools, as well as BIPOC, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ communities, when they are the ones perpetuating and reinforcing the culture of gun violence in the first place?
Intertwined with the issue of gun violence and militarism is patriarchy. 98 percent of mass shooters are men, and 90 percent of all murders worldwide were committed by men. The socialization and cultural upbringing that men are subject to work to reinforce and reproduce the patriarchal paradigm that men must be strong and dominating. Guns and violence represent an outlet for men to embody their masculinity and project their bottled up emotions and convictions onto scapegoats of their pain–namely, women, BIPOC, and queer folks. The Atlanta spa shootings are a clear example of patriarchal violence against women, exposing the deep-seated fetishization and racial sexualization of Asian women, mirroring the histories of sexual imperialism by the US military.
The entire history of the New World and the United States embodies a collective trauma faced by marginalized communities who were and are exploited, assaulted, killed, and othered. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Asian American community felt the full effects of the historical roots of racism, as anti-Asian hate crimes rose by 339% in 2021 compared to in 2020, exposing the racism-fueled narrative propagated by former President Donald Trump and the GOP. With our political leaders touting about the “China virus,” “Kung flu,” alongside other sinophobic claims, it’s no wonder that over half of Asian Americans said they often or sometimes feel unsafe in public because of their race or ethnicity.
I remember the day my grandpa, who usually takes walks around the neighborhood, said that he was scared to go outside because he feared getting attacked. My mom, while at Walgreens, overheard employees eyeing her and whispering about “how all the Asians are hoarding all the toilet paper.” My cousins, sister, and I also had an encounter at the store, where we received suspicious looks from someone, who proceeded to go to the self-checkout register furthest away from us. As someone who has always felt othered because of my race, the pandemic served as a reminder of the fact that people like me are unwanted here (echoing the sentiments of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, as well as a series of naturalization acts and immigration quotas) and that we will never be enough no matter how assimilated we are–we are the undesirables of America.
As I reflect upon the violence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Lunar New Year shootings, I understand now, more than ever, the implications of collective trauma, how it impacts a community’s responses to traumatic events, and how it affects the way our collective bodies move through life and the world around us. As the neverending slews of racist policies and attitudes invade the well-being of our communities, I wonder when–and if–we will ever be able to heal from these eternal wounds. Unless we change the whole system as it is, the systemic issues plaguing the country will not be solved. We can no longer depend on the government to help us. We must build back and strengthen our communities and relationships together, with love and compassion, one step at a time.