Dr. PushpaKanagaratnam, PhD., C.Psych.
Clinical Psychologist
A black male, George Floyd, died in the American state of Minnesota after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly 8 minutes. His last words were “I can’t breathe”. We all know that racism against black people is not new, but this tragedy has sparked protests at a global level.
What is relevant to us South Asians in this specific incident is the other Asian police officer who stood there preventing bystanders trying to intervene, even after Floyd appeared to have lost consciousness. This incident is going to be a monumental moment in the history of South Asians in the West, exemplifying the passivity of most South Asians in a societal context. What can we do? As minorities, we can ask this question. The Asian police officer may have had the same thoughts. As inscribed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: “Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”
I would say that as Asians, we are taking advantage of the West’s discrimination against Muslims and blacks. By giving us a status as the “model minority,” the mainstream is successfully distracting us Asians from the daily micro-aggressions and racism we face and the racism and stereotypes that exist within our communities. What does the “model minority” imply? Asians are “submissive” — they do not rock the boat; they give importance to the nuclear families. The issues we have in our supposedly harmonious families, including the long-term impact of war, domestic violence, mental health issues and addictions are all nicely buried within the four walls. Asians value education and hard work — understandable, as education is likely the only weapon we have in our attempt to stand as equals to caucasians. This concept disregards the inequalities faced by blacks and other ethnic groups. Could we argue that racism, including more than two centuries of black enslavement, can be overcome by hard work and strong family values? As the “model minority” we are kept in our place, handcuffed from reacting to the racism and discrimination experienced by other racial/ethnic groups. Having this privilege should actually foster our empathy in acknowledging the struggles faced by those who are targeted the most. Even if we are not actively supporting these groups by engaging in protests, we should at least develop our knowledge and awareness on this issue. By doing so, we can stand against racism.
Who is targeted depends on the social and political reality at a given time. Like the growing islamophobia post 9/11, black racism is now again in the forefront. Likewise, we saw a rise in racism against Asians with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been times when the Tamil diaspora has been in the limelight. I am reminded of this when I use my smartphone; whenever I type the word Tamil, the next suggested word I get is ‘Tigers’.
As an ethnic group, large and diverse, it appears that what we have common as Asians is our passivity. As a Tamil friend and activist once told me, “We will talk about war, but we will not talk about what the war did to us.” The war is probably the only thing that, in spite of creating fragmentation in the community, united us as Tamils in one way or the other. Aside from the war, what do we talk about? Through the war, we have experienced torture, sexual abuse, separations, betrayals, tragedy, and much more. But we never talk about this. There is no space in our community to even touch upon these issues. A Tamil mother and grandmother who is raped by government forces does not even have the words to express what happened to her. Silenced for decades, unable to disclose this even to her children, the only reason she was forced to open up was to provide her story to the Immigration and Refugee Board, which had a pending deportation order. Biting her palm to swallow the trauma, this woman did not even have the words to narrate what she had gone through, stating…”they behaved with me like family.”
Such narrations apply not only to Asians; this ranges from the South African Reconciliation testimonies, to narratives of raped women in the former Yugoslavia and our Tamil mothers who are protesting for their loved ones who are still missing a decade after the end of the war in Sri Lanka. What is common for these women globally is that they have been silenced by their own people and communities that they will not be given a space to disclose, vent or heal from what happened to them. They can speak out, demonstrate, and protest for the people in their lives — or the men in their lives — but not for themselves. As a community, we are terrified to talk about feminism — a reason why I get requests to speak about parenting and children’s mental health on International Women’s Day, but not for instance on domestic violence, women’s roles and functioning, or sexual abuse. Nobody wants to stir things up. Women are concerned that talking about feminism will lead to accusations they are not being proper women. Men are worried that they will be labeled as “lesser men”.
Caste issues are another major concern in our South Asian communities. We never talk about it. Our ancient Hindu temples have carvings that depict same-sex relations and gender variance, showcasing the open culture that we once belonged to; we were forced to adopt the Victorian era’s rigidity and sexual properness by the colonial powers. It is indeed ironic that we are today seen as regressive and backwards by the very cultures that brought this regressiveness upon us. Our cultures were once accepting of gender identities and diverse practices of sexuality. So how is all this related to racism against Black people?
We have blood on our hands too, because we are obsessed with white skin. This ingrained ignorance is eating us alive. Are we even aware of this issue? How many young girls with dark complexion are considered as a burden to their parents in our Asian communities? How many adults in our communities are affected so deeply by the discrimination they faced as children with darker skin, and continue to suffer from low self-esteem?
I think one of the biggest negative influences we are facing at the present time in our communities is the influence of the Indian movie industry. There are good movies reflecting social issues, but they are only released once in a blue moon and therefore fail to have a lasting impact. The industry is dominated by regressive norms and values and all the isms that are part of our cultures. From Fair and Lovely advertisements that give the message to young girls that applying this lotion is supposed to boost their self-confidence, we have popular artists like Surya (in the movie Singam) who calls the black man and co-actor in the movie as an “African chimpanzee”. While Tamil cinema proudly hails the darker complexion of their male actors, female actresses are imported from the “whiter” parts of India. When the storyline needs a woman with darker skin, the white-skinned actress is transformed into an unnatural darker character. This foolishness and irony in our people is incredible.
When we are not even aware of what is happening in our backyard, how are we supposed to be knowledgeable about black racism? Though this is a large generalization, our communities appear to have lost their ability for any critical thinking. There was a large research study conducted by CAMH, Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital, focusing on the mental health issues in the Tamil diaspora. The investigators were surprised with one of their findings, namely that discrimination was not mentioned by the community as a significant concern. Why is this? Is this good news? Or are we so colonized that we do not dare to utter a word against the White majority?
Let us forget about the older generation. We have suffered a lot fleeing from the war and are still trying to come to terms with our past experiences. We have as a community managed to invest in our people and many of us have become successful to a certain extent in making a living in this country. But what about our children? Do they not have to study and put in twice as much effort to fulfill their educational and career dreams just because of who they are? Do we talk to our children about the micro-aggressions and racism they face in their daily lives? We remain silent, as if nothing is an issue if we do not talk about it. When we are not even openly talking to our kids about the racism they face, how are we supposed to talk about the experiences of other races and ethnic groups?
What do we do to hold on to our “model minority” status? When Islamic extremists attack Paris, we change our Facebook profile picture to the French flag. At the same time, when there is an attack on Muslims, we keep quiet. Recently, anti-racism protestors in Bristol tore down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston and rolled the sculpture into a nearby river. Rather than saying that the protestors had every right to remove a landmark that celebrated Britain’s racist past, British politician Priti Patel, who was born in a Ugandan-Indian family, lashed out at the activists, calling the toppling “disgraceful”. In an interesting contrast, police superintendent Andy Bennett said that it ‘felt right to allow the removal of statue’ to happen and that was why they did not intervene. How long are we going to take advantage of our model minority status?
Racism blinds us. It leads among other things, to racial and religious stereotyping.Those in power get to define the stereotypes. It is this power that allowed the boat people from Sri Lanka to be called terrorists. Today, the majority of the Tamils who were brought in by the MV Sun Sea in 2010 have been accepted as refugees.
Evidence from the service provision shows that black patients are more likely to experience inadequate pain management from their practitioners than white patients. The disparity between black and white women who die during or after childbirth is alarming. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), black women’s survival rate during pregnancy is similar to women in developing countries. This cannot be explained away by the typical social factors such as poverty and lack of education in the black population. A 2016 study conducted over 5 years, analyzed the data on pregnant women in New York and found that college-educated black mothers were more likely to suffer complications of pregnancy or child birth than their white counterparts who never graduated from high school. It is interesting to note that these disparities even affect high-profile black women such as Beyonce and Serena Williams. According to a 2011 article in the Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, racial/ethnic minorities consistently receive less adequate treatment for acute and chronic pain than non-Hispanic whites, even after controlling for age, gender, and pain intensity.
Our stereotypes assume for example that Blacks are dangerous and Muslims are terrorists. In an interesting study using a sample of 146 episodes of prominent US news programs such as ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Dixon found that among those described as domestic terrorists on those programs, 81 percent were identifiable as Muslims. Yet in FBI reports for the same period, only 6 percent of domestic terrorist suspects were Muslim, or about one in 17. Likewise, among those described as immigrants accused of a crime on those news programs, almost all (97 percent) were identifiable as Latinos, according to the study – yet only about half (47 percent) of immigrants are Latinos, according to a cited 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. As such, those with the least power receive the most bias in coverage.
In another recent study published online this month, Halberstadt et al., have found that prospective teachers appear more likely to misperceive Black children as angry than White children. This anger bias is obviously affecting the black children, leading to their feelings of not being understood and not belonging to their school, and leading to unfair treatment, which have long term consequences. Halberstadt says, “Those common racist misperceptions can extend from school into adulthood and potentially have fatal consequences, such as when police officers kill unarmed Black people on the street or in their own homes.”
Sandra L. Shullman, president of the American Psychological Association, states the following regarding the mental health consequences of recent high-profile violent events targeting African Americans:
“If you’re black in America – and especially if you are a black male – it’s not safe to go birding in Central Park, to meet friends at a Philadelphia Starbucks, to pick up trash in front of your own home in Colorado or to go shopping almost anywhere…We are living in a racism pandemic, which is taking a heavy psychological toll on our African American citizens. The health consequences are dire. Racism is associated with a host of psychological consequences, including depression, anxiety and other serious, sometimes debilitating conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders. Moreover, the stress caused by racism can contribute to the development of cardiovascular and other physical diseases.”
Let us be more aware of our own thought processes and our traumatic past, and hone our critical thinking skills to strengthen our compassion and enable us to stand in solidarity with people who are deeply affected by social injustice, as we have been. The time is right to reflect, learn, understand and educate those in our communities who continue to live in ignorance. Let us strive towards building mentally healthy communities.
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
