Black on Asian hate in San Francisco

Stop blaming the victim

Ever since I read Darrell Owen’s post “Black and Asian Hate in San Francisco” I’ve been meaning to write, well, if not a rebuttal per se, then a similar piece from my perspective, as an Asian person who was born and raised in San Francisco.

In my earliest memory involving a black person, I must have been around 5 years old. Just old enough to be in school with some nominal homework (that I didn’t want to do). I told my mom I didn’t want to do it; it wasn’t fun for me. Her face got very tight and she took me on an impromptu field trip downtown. When we got off the 31 at Powell, she marched me over to the first homeless person she saw, an old black man lying on a piece of cardboard. I could smell his stench from yards away. She pointed at him. “Do you want to grow up to be like that man, living on the street, soaked in your own urine? Do you?”

Stunned, I shook my head. Of course I didn’t.

“Well, then you’d better do your homework.” Wide-eyed, I nodded. And that was that. I don’t think I’ve ever missed a homework assignment throughout my school career. Not with a fever of 105. Not opioided out of my mind with a broken bone, awaiting surgery. Not ever. I never even questioned the mechanism by which skipping homework would lead to homelessness, but I assumed my teacher would put me on some national housing blacklist and I would never be allowed to live indoors.

Was my mom being anti-black? Anti-homeless? I don’t know. All I know is that what she did was effective. In the end, that’s often what counts for Asians. Especially Asian immigrants: effectiveness.

Then, when I was 11, I made the mistake of thinking a sunny day would be hot enough to wear shorts. On my walk home, a black man started following me and making sexual comments about my legs and body. Asking for my number. He followed me for at least 3 blocks and I was terrified. I shouted that I was 11. That didn’t stop him — he just kept following me, insisting that he “didn’t bite.” This was not an isolated event — it happened to me almost every time I was in public by myself. Until I “aged out” of the sexual harassment around the time I started college.

Were my relatives racist? Maybe casually. The “snide comments in response to news stories” kind. The “avoid them” kind. Not the “beat them to a bloody pulp” kind. Not the “follow them home and rob them” kind. And, while being stereotyped and feared may be painful; while the vast majority of black people don’t deserve this type of response, the problem is that none of these Asian elders can tell the difference between a black person who would hurt them and one who would not. Not by looking. Can anyone?

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Understand, the Chinese, we hate mafan — this is a Mandarin term that roughly translates to “hassle” or “trouble”. It’s a hassle to have our homes, cars and businesses broken into. It’s more than a hassle to be violently victimized, or when grandma is hospitalized by kids who think it’s ok to kick the elderly in the head.

Attitudes and actions are orders of magnitude different in the harm and terror they can cause. I find it cheapening when negative attitudes are mentioned in the same breath as physical violence (e.g. anti-black attitudes in Asian communities vs anti-Asian violent crime perpetrated by black people). Understand that the former is caused in large part by the commonness of the latter.

We just want to avoid being attacked: it isn’t enmity or anti-anyone hate to want to be left alone. Was I wrong to want to be able to walk home from school without being sexually harassed when I was 11? Or maybe it was wrong for me to notice the race of my harassers? Surely everyone can understand the desire not to be violently victimized while simply walking down the street or waiting for a bus?

And that desire is well-founded. Black on Asian violence has been an outsized problem since as far back as 2010, and it’s factually false to blame violence against Asians on white supremacists.

It was interesting that Darrell’s response to the video of the Asian can collector being harassed by a jeering black mob was an entire paragraph about the disadvantages of the attackers. Including the ominous conclusion: “when you fight against better housing, education and cleaner environments, you perpetuate poverty and the conditions that lead to hate and bigotry.” As if Asians trying to avoid exactly this type of mafan are somehow the root cause of aggressive or criminal behavior in black people. Victim blaming?

Here’s what I noticed in the video: the Asian elder was out collecting cans for five cents a pop. He was not wealthy or middle class either. He was also locked out of the tech boom due to poor English skills and low education level. He was likely food insecure and living in substandard housing. But was he attacking others or mocking them? No! He was doing backbreaking work, making the best of his circumstances, minding his own business. Wanting to be left alone.

That video and our responses to it are an illuminating representation of our very different perspectives, me and Darrell. He wants to place at least some of the blame for anti-Asian violence on Asians, and I just want for Asians to be left alone.

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As for solutions, if the problem is racial resentment as Darrell states, then integration won’t help. As he noted, traditionally black neighborhoods like the Bayview and Visitation Valley are now increasingly Asian. Has that improved relations, or has it simply increased the chance for contact and thus increased the rate of violent victimization?

Personally, I wonder why anyone would even want to live and go to school with people they resent? It is interesting that Darrell blames Asians themselves for anti-Asian hate in the black community: “perpetually keeping Black people in poverty in S.F. by denying integrated housing or schooling is what fuels poverty and anti-Asian resentment.” As if Asians have the power to decide where anyone else gets to live or go to school? Really odd to blame black life circumstances on Asians — shouldn’t they have more control over their own outcomes than strangers do? He also claims that black San Franciscans widely agree with recalled school board member Alison Collins that “the Chinese community are just white people suck ups” and “house n—s” (as Collins put it).

Here’s what I think could help: better black leadership. Leaders who offer something more productive than Darrell’s victimhood narrative. Leaders who tell their community “If you work hard for it, make good choices, get a good education, no one can keep you in poverty. No one can deny you anything, but you have to put in the work. No one else can do that work for you. But you can do it: it’s all up to you whether you want this life or a better one. Don’t wait for respect. Don’t demand respect. Go out there and earn it.” Positive black leadership already exists, though it doesn’t seem popular in San Francisco.

Darrell stated (and I agree) that young black perpetrators wouldn’t beat up black elders because they’d be stigmatized within their own community for it. The same stigma should apply regardless of the race of the targets. That it doesn’t says something about the black community of San Francisco. Hence, the need for better leadership.

Something else that could help: if SFUSD (perhaps in partnership with nonprofits like Spark) offered every student who is falling behind a free scholarship to Kumon or similar. As we know, the most effective path out of poverty is education. And one of the most effective ways to improve academic proficiency is, unsurprisingly, spending more time reviewing the material. When poverty and low academic achievement no longer plague San Francisco’s black community at today’s rates, perhaps they won’t feel so much resentment towards Asians that they violently lash out on a regular basis. But again, this isn’t something Asians or anyone else can do for them.

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In the end, I think the most damning part of this whole discussion is the way that Darrell uses the passive voice. Things are done to the black community. They have no personal agency. In a more recent article from Darrell, he says “San Francisco’s educational system is producing a generation of Black San Franciscans destined to fail before they’ve even got started.”

But is it correct to blame the educational system for these outcomes? It’s important to note that the same system produces much better results for Chinese students, who enjoy an English/Language Arts proficiency rate of 80% by 11th grade while 41% of Chinese elementary school students are classified as English language learners. Meantime, just under 30% of black 11th graders are proficient in reading when only 3% are English language learners in elementary school. Is it poverty? Around 55% of Chinese students are classified as low-SES, compared with about 67% of black students.

He also claims “the Information Economy requires a degree of intelligence beyond the basic trade skills of the past, and we’re not even reaching the bare minimum for Black children.” Again, putting the responsibility on society or the school district — anyone other than parents and students. As if 100% of the black students’ school performance can be chalked up to the educational system when in fact, 90% of student achievement is attributable to student characteristics and only 10% to teachers and schools.

While we’re on the topic of education, let’s set the record straight on Lowell. It’s a form of pathological narcissism to assume that those who support merit-based admissions care about the racial composition of the school. It’s not a matter of “segregation” to want every student to be able to perform at the same high academic level so teachers can teach more efficiently. Lowell has more AP classes because it enrolls more students who are prepared to take and pass them. As to “hogging resources,” Lowell ranked dead last in per pupil spending this past year — notably, far less than any high school in the Bayview. Maybe they’re the ones hogging resources?

More generally, no one cares about the skin color of the students that attend school with their kids. What they care about is proficiency rates and like-minded parents who ensure their kids do not disrupt classes or violently attack others. All basic things that any reasonable parent would want.

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Why am I not suggesting ways for my own community to improve? Whatever issues blacks have with systemic racism and feeling left behind in the tech boom cannot reasonably be blamed on Asians. Try as one might to blame it on us (with accusations like “upholding white supremacy” or being “white adjacent” or “white people suck ups”), it remains true that Asians are not motivated by whatever black-white beef predated our arrival here. The resentment is misdirected.

Besides, the main charge against us is thought-crime. Again, it’s nothing personal.

We just want to be left in peace.