I am embarrassed to see that I did not mention one of the key sources for last week's post:
From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoon.
Just to recap how we got here, I started reading about Latasha Harlins last July. It had seemed reasonable to bring her material up with Black Music Month, I guess because her death influenced so many musicians (especially Tupac Shakur).
Of course, I was running late, but I read Troublemaker by John Cho in July also.
In December I saw some artwork commemorating Vincent Chin; that's why I read Paula Yoon's book, which I got to in February.
I am not the first person to make the connection, but it is hard not to have those two deaths and court cases inextricably linked after reading about them. That is why I had to write last week's post.
There is another factor that has been weighing on me, and I want to try and get to that here, about how these situations happen. My path may be clumsy.
Let me go back to The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. Riots by Brenda E. Stevenson.
Both Stevenson and Yoon tried to be fair to all of the subjects, which I know is right but sometimes I just wanted to condemn them.
I did feel early sympathy for Soon Ja Du. Working in the store was stressful for her. I am willing to believe that she felt pressure and that she was at times truly afraid.
I also do not think that it is a coincidence that in both documented times when she pulled out her gun, it was at teenage girls.
That is anger, but also lashing out a target that is safe.
You do get angry about perpetual fear, but how much of that fear is based in reality?
The store had been robbed; that is true. Because it was in a Black neighborhood, the majority of the robbers were probably Black. In a white neighborhood, the robbers are probably going to be white.
The difference is that perception, where all Black people are perceived to be the same, and more easily seen as thugs and criminals. That does not happen by accident. Please understand that the people who are making the propaganda don't love the people who buy it.
It can be safer to attack a teenage girl than a grown man, but also it is safer to attack one who is Black. Systemic racism will discount her innocence and right to life. That makes it easier for a judge to find the lethal "reaction" reasonable, but it also makes the judge letting off the murderers of as Asian-American man easier.
I think that Soon Ja Du believed the model minority myth. Her people were hard-working and smart and good, not like the Black people that made up their customer base. There may have been some satisfaction in it, but based on the stress and anger and fear, it wasn't making her life better. Of course, she got to keep her life, and Latasha didn't.
In a different city a few years earlier, it could have been her husband murdered by disaffected white people, and his killers be the ones let off.
In Troublemaker -- the work of fiction -- Jordan is trying to move through Los Angeles at the time of the riots to get a gun to the store where his father is boarding up the windows. That leads to some trouble, but the title refers to the reputation he already has, for not being good at school... not being perfect, the way he is supposed to be. The expectations he was not meeting were a source of anger and frustration and parental conflict. The character is fictional, but the feelings are not.
One thing I had not expected, but that made sense, was the importance of Claudia Kishi (The Baby-Sitters Club) to Asian-American girls. That was not just for some representation, but also for representation that could be loud and artistic and struggle with math.
The boxes aren't always fatal, but they are never good.
And sometimes they do kill.
Related:
Related, from me:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/12/vincent.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/04/not-justice.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/03/black-history-month-latasha-harlins.html
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