03/25/2021
(For context, see SF Chronicle article https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Mayor-Breed-calls-for-S-F-school-board-member-to-16040970.php)
We support , Commissioner, SF Board of Education, and NAPAWF sister, to stand strong against racism and anti-Asian sentiments. (Many thanks to Dr. for your support.)
We, the Bay Area Chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), are pained and disheartened by the comments and subsequent non-apology by school board Vice President Alison Collins regarding Asian Pacific American students, teachers, and families.
It is tiresome that the stereotype of Asians as a model minority is so often used to pit minoritized communities against each other. It is ironic that it was used by Vice President Collins to call out anti-black racism precisely because it endorses the very same racist ideologies at the root of racism. Vice President Collins called out anti-blackness within the Asian Pacific American communities in a way that ironically invoked the very same racist ideologies that privilege whiteness at the expense of minoritized people.
Saying that Asian Pacific Americans “actively promote” and “use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead” conflates issues at the intersections of race and class and gender and immigration status. Saying that Asian Pacific Americans are complicit in being anti-black dismisses and minimizes the long history of black-Asian solidarity and, as such, is a painful betrayal of allies in our collective fight against institutionalized racism and structural inequality.
Vice President Collins, Asian Pacific Americans are not the enemy. We, too, must bear the disproportional impacts of inequality on minoritized people. This is the toll of racism. Instead of acknowledging that the oppression of one is an oppression of all, your statements only served to divide and dismantle intersectional work towards equality.
Even as your statements have betrayed us, your response to our reactions is salt on our wounds. Your statements were as racist then as they are racist today, some 5 years later. That your statements are taken out of context by recent media focus on anti-Asian violence does not absolve you from the harmful impacts of your tweets on Asian Pacific Americans 5 years ago or since.
We looked to you to do intersectional work in your role. We need leaders who create bridges, not raise them. We need leaders who are willing to listen, admit wrong, and promise to do better. We had these hopes for you, and we still hold these hopes now.
Signed,
The Bay Area Chapter, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)
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