On March 16, 2021, a white gunman murdered eight woman at three spa and massage businesses in the Atlanta area. Six of those killed were Asian/Asian American (text below from the New York Times):

Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33 and Paul Andre Michels, 54 were the two non-Asian victims. As more details emerge, the gunman claimed that he suffered from “sex addiction” and that he felt compelled to “eliminate” “sexual temptations.” At this point, what he says is irrelevant and so is the question of whether sex work occurred at any of the spa and massage businesses that were targeted. What is of utmost importance, is that Asian American women were specifically targeted and murdered. These tragic deaths are the latest example of how Asian Americans have experienced countless incidents of harassment, bullying, verbal assault, and violence since the start of the COVID pandemic, including increased attacks, particularly against elderly Asian Americans who are perceived as foreigners and easy targets, just since the start of 2021.

Beyond highlighting how Asian Americans continue to be seen as the Yellow Peril, or some kind of political, economic, cultural, and/or public threat to U.S. society and specifically to the white population, these murders also specifically illustrate the misogyny and fetishization of Asian American women and how these are fueled by toxic masculinity. Mainstream media and popular culture further racialize and sexualize Asian women, heightening their vulnerabilities to interpersonal and institutional violence. My colleagues Jennifer Ho, Hye-Kyung Kang, and Nancy Wang Yuen have written excellent articles that detail, on the personal and structural levels, the challenges Asian Americans face on an everyday basis that are centered on the intersections of their identity as Asian American women, along with Kimberly Kay Hoang’s excellent article about how perceived connections between Asian American women and sex work ramp up suspicions even more and further dehumanizes Asian American women.

In addition to data that shows that hate crimes against Asian Americans have increased 149% from 2019 to 2020 while overall hate crimes declined by 7%, StopAAPIHate data also shows that women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men. These hateful acts have forced Asians and Asian Americans into a constant state of hyper-awareness and vigilance when they are in public, taking a huge emotional toll. My heart and deepest condolences go out to all those who have been affected by these acts of anti-Asian hate and I join them in collective grief, sadness, and anger. As an Asian American myself, and someone who has both a young Asian American adult daughter and elderly Asian parents, I have never been more afraid than any other time in my life that I, and people who look like me, will encounter some form of racism or xenophobia on a daily basis. It is a really scary time right now to be an Asian American in the U.S.

Where do we go from here? How can we as a society respond? What actions can we take? Here are some ways to support the Asian American community right now. For Asian Americans, we need to come together and recognize that our Asian American identity makes us vulnerable for discrimination. From there, the solution is not to run away or dissociate yourself from being Asian American, try to embrace whiteness and the model minority image as much as possible, and hope that those who have hateful intentions just leave you alone. Instead, we need to unite with each other, recognize our shared experiences and how those experiences make us vulnerable at this particular moment, and to help each other as much as possible — emotionally, physically, and politically. With that in mind, here are some resources to help those affected by anti-Asian hate.

For our political, community, and institutional leaders, they need to take our concerns and demands for equality and justice seriously, rather than systematically ignoring us, continuing to blame us for the pandemic or any number of other social problems taking place right now, and/or focus on trying to humanize the perpetrators of hate and violence against us (for example, by saying that the Atlanta killer “was having a bad day”). And for the rest of U.S. society, the first thing they should do is to become active bystanders and to challenge the everyday forms of anti-Asian hate that take place around them, from biased and offensive comments in one-on-one conversations, to acts of microaggression in the workplace as another example, to incidents of violence in public spaces. Other ways to respond and steps that people can take are:

The time for talk is long past. We need a commitment to change the status quo and we need concrete, meaningful actions.

Last year, I wrote about the spike in incidents of anti-Asian harassment, verbal abuse, bullying, and violence since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the level of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia seemed to have declined, but since the start of 2021, there seems to be a new wave of attacks aimed against Asian Americans and especially against older members of Asian American community. With this in mind, within the Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate Program at UMass Amherst that I direct, we recently created Student Advisory Board and Program Ambassador group of 10 amazing undergraduate students who support the Certificate Program through outreach and programming aimed at undergraduate students at UMass Amherst. They recently released the public statement Titled “Working Towards Anti-Racism and Dismantling White Supremacy” about this resurgence in anti-Asian racism and xenophobia and its connections to anti-Blackness, and I am very proud to reprint it here:

To the UMass Asian American Community & Beyond,

Since the start of 2020, racist and xenophobic incidents against Asians and Asian Americans have spiked, with the website StopAAPIHate reporting over 2,800 incidents of harassment, bullying, verbal assault, and violence since mid-March, and with many, many more going unreported. In recent weeks, there have also been numerous public examples of attacks on Asian Americans, including the death of 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee in San Francisco and the police shooting of 19-year-old Christian Hall in Monroe County, PA.

These incidents are linked to historical constructions of Asian Americans as the Yellow Peril — an imagined political, economic, or public health threat to U.S. society. In many of these incidents, bystanders failed to offer any assistance to the Asian Americans who were targeted, which also illustrates how Asian Americans continue to be seen as perpetual foreigners and as undeserving outsiders, unworthy of any help or sympathy.

While many other people have rightfully condemned these attacks and expressed support and solidarity with Asian Americans, some have focused almost exclusively on the racial identity of some of the perpetrators of these incidents and specifically, have resorted to using blatantly racist stereotypes against Black people and feeding into anti-Blackness. This rhetoric is not only problematic but also is unproductive in the fight for racial justice. These instances of violence against Asian Americans should not be seen as just a result of individual action, but rather as enabled by systematic violence inherent in white supremacy. As such, we need to continue to center anti-racism discourse and organizing around actively combating anti-Blackness because Black liberation will enable liberation for all other groups.

Hence, it is important that Asian Americans do not contribute to the over-criminalization of communities, particularly communities that are already disadvantaged, marginalized, and underserved. Asian Americans need to reject the ways we have been used as a wedge by white society to further perpetuate violence against Black and Brown communities. We need to focus on the root causes of systemic inequality, rather than resorting to stereotypes that demonize people and contribute to more policing, criminalization, and incarceration of already vulnerable groups. Instead, we call on our political, economic, and community leaders to develop community-based solutions that address root causes of alienation and powerlessness. In addition, our communities need comprehensive assistance for the victims and for the businesses that have been hurt by the pandemic. We need to combat the ways systems of oppression have long deprived all communities of color of the resources and support we need to thrive in America. We as Asian Americans must reject any attempt to weaponize our pain as a tool for white supremacy.

Cross-racial collaboration and solidarity are essential to move forward together and to fight together for justice and equality. With this in mind, we call on Asian Americans to:

• Educate yourself on issues faced by underrepresented communities within the Asian Diaspora and beyond, such as the South Asian, Southeast Asian community, LGBTQ+ community, the Pacific Islander community, and the Black & Brown and Indigenous communities
• Actively learn the history of white supremacy across the world and its relation to the domestic & global exploitation of the BIPOC communities
• Actively confront the ways anti-Blackness shows up in the Asian community and do the work needed to unlearn and dismantle these behaviors and stereotypes so we can better show up for the Black community
• Educate yourself on the history of students of color activism at UMass Amherst and take part in efforts to fight against racism here on campus
• Take Ethnic Studies courses to learn the history and experiences of various racial and ethnic groups
• Support reparations for Black Americans. Contact your elected officials and tell them to support HR 40, a federal bill that will establish a commission to make recommendations for reparations for Black people. It is important that this bill includes a comprehensive reparations plan, so support calls from activists to have bill sponsors make the necessary changes needed to fulfill their demands

We also call on our allies to:

• Learn about the issues faced by various groups under the Asian American & Pacific Islander umbrella and learn about the differences in our experiences and histories
• Learn about the ways white colonialism, imperialism, and neoliberalism have exploited Asian countries and Pacific Islands
• Learn the origins of the Model Minority Myth & Orientalism and the ways it has been used to make Asians invisible
• Actively dismantle stereotypes that you hold about the Asian community

As the Asian American community we need to actively remember that the root cause of our issues and pain has and always will be the result of whiteness and white supremacy. In order to achieve true racial justice and liberation, we must not lose sight of that.

“We are a society that has been structured from top to bottom by race. You don’t get beyond that by deciding not to talk about it anymore. It will always come back; it will always reassert itself over and over again”. – Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

“You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.” – Grace Lee Boggs

Check out Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s list of Resources for the Asian American Community on Anti-Blackness to learn more about the ways you can learn & take action.

As a follow up to my recent post titled “The Affirmative Action Debate Among Asian Americans,” these recently-published books provide some more details and sociological context regarding Asian American academic and socioeconomic success, as well as how these achievements affect their position in the larger U.S. racial landscape.

The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, by Ellen D. Wu (Princeton University Press)

The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the “yellow peril” to “model minorities” — peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values — in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country’s aspirations to world leadership.

Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era. She highlights the contests for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others. And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suiters leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawaii statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asians as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders.

By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood.

Redefining Race: Asian American Panethnicity and Shifting Ethnic Boundaries, by Dina Okamoto (Russell Sage Foundation)

In 2012, the Pew Research Center issued a report that named Asian Americans as the “highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing racial group in the United States.” Despite this optimistic conclusion, over thirty Asian American advocacy groups challenged the findings, noting that the term “Asian American” is complicated. It includes a wide range of ethnicities, national origins, and languages, and encompasses groups that differ greatly in their economic and social status. In Redefining Race, sociologist Dina G. Okamoto traces the complex evolution of “Asian American” as a panethnic label and identity, emphasizing how it is a deliberate social achievement negotiated by group members, rather than an organic and inevitable process.

Drawing on original research and a series of interviews, Okamoto investigates how different Asian ethnic groups created this collective identity in the wake of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Okamoto documents the social forces that encouraged the development of this panethnic identity. The racial segregation of Asians in similar occupations and industries, for example, produced a shared experience of racial discrimination, which led Asians of different national origins to develop shared interests and identities. . . . According to Okamoto, ethnic organizations provided the foundation necessary to build solidarity within different Asian-origin communities. Leaders and community members who created inclusive narratives and advocated policies that benefited groups beyond their own moved their discrete ethnic organizations toward a panethnic model. . . . As Okamoto shows, the process of building ties between ethnic communities while also recognizing ethnic diversity is the hallmark of panethnicity.

Redefining Race is a groundbreaking analysis of the processes through which group boundaries are drawn and contested. In mapping the genesis of a panethnic Asian American identity, Okamoto illustrates the ways in which concepts of race continue to shape how ethnic and immigrant groups view themselves and organize for representation in the public arena.

Servitors of Empire: Studies in the Dark Side of Asian America, by Darrell Y. Hamamoto (NYU Press)

Forcing a fundamental rethinking of the Asian American elite, many of whom have attained top positions in business, government, academia, sciences, and the arts, this book will be certain to generate a good deal of controversy and honest discussion regarding the role Asian Americans will play in the new century as China and India loom ever larger in the world economic system. Not since the large-scale infusion of scientists and engineers fleeing Nazi Germany has there been such a mass importation of intellectual labor from U.S. client states in Asia.

One of the specialized tasks assigned to this group is to build the technetronic infrastructure for the new world order command and control system. Servitors of Empire is not intended to fan the flames of suspicion and paranoia aimed at Asian Americans, but serves to illuminate the way in which highly trained knowledge workers are being employed to bring sovereign nations such as the United States under centralized rule made possible through advances in bioscience, IT, engineering, and global finance.

The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority, by Madeline Y. Hsu (Princeton University Press)

Conventionally, U.S. immigration history has been understood through the lens of restriction and those who have been barred from getting in. In contrast, The Good Immigrants considers immigration from the perspective of Chinese elites—intellectuals, businessmen, and students—who gained entrance because of immigration exemptions. Exploring a century of Chinese migrations, Madeline Hsu looks at how the model minority characteristics of many Asian Americans resulted from US policies that screened for those with the highest credentials in the most employable fields, enhancing American economic competitiveness.

The earliest US immigration restrictions targeted Chinese people but exempted students as well as individuals who might extend America’s influence in China. Western-educated Chinese such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek became symbols of the US impact on China, even as they patriotically advocated for China’s modernization. World War II and the rise of communism transformed Chinese students abroad into refugees, and the Cold War magnified the importance of their talent and training. As a result, Congress legislated piecemeal legal measures to enable Chinese of good standing with professional skills to become citizens. Pressures mounted to reform American discriminatory immigration laws, culminating with the 1965 Immigration Act.

Filled with narratives featuring such renowned Chinese immigrants as I.M. Pei, The Good Immigrants examines the shifts in immigration laws and perceptions of cultural traits that enabled Asians to remain in the United States as exemplary, productive Americans.

Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War, by Cindy I-Fen Cheng (NYU Press)

During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted U.S. racism in order to undermine the credibility of U.S. democracy. In response, incorporating racial and ethnic minorities in order to affirm that America worked to ensure the rights of all and was superior to communist countries became a national imperative. In Citizens of Asian America, Cindy I-Fen Cheng explores how Asian Americans figured in this effort to shape the credibility of American democracy, even while the perceived “foreignness” of Asian Americans cast them as likely alien subversives whose activities needed monitoring following the communist revolution in China and the outbreak of the Korean War.

While histories of international politics and U.S. race relations during the Cold War have largely overlooked the significance of Asian Americans, Cheng challenges the black-white focus of the existing historiography. She highlights how Asian Americans made use of the government’s desire to be leader of the “free world” by advocating for civil rights reforms, such as housing integration, increased professional opportunities, and freedom from political persecution. Further, Cheng examines the liberalization of immigration policies, which worked not only to increase the civil rights of Asian Americans but also to improve the nation’s ties with Asian countries, providing an opportunity for the U.S. government to broadcast, on a global scale, the freedom and opportunity that American society could offer.

I presume that by now, you have heard about the furor surrounding UCLA student Alexandra Wallace and her ill-advised video that she posted to YouTube in which she “complains” about Asian Americans talking in the library by mocking them with such offensive phrases such as “Ohhhhhhhhhh ching chong ling long ting tong ohhhhhhhhhh” and makes light of the natural disasters and human suffering in Japan (the video in its entirety is below).

For various reasons, there quickly followed a big backlash and firestorm against her — UCLA’s Chancellor, Dean G. Block, issued a statement condemning the video (but later and separately adding that she would not be expelled because she did not commit a violation of the school’s code of ethnics):

I am appalled by the thoughtless and hurtful comments of a UCLA student posted on YouTube. Like many of you, I recoil when someone invokes the right of free expression to demean other individuals or groups. . . . I believe that speech that expresses intolerance toward any group of people on the basis of race or gender, or sexual, religious or cultural identity is indefensible and has no place at UCLA.

UCLA’s well-respected Asian American Studies Center summed up the sentiments of many in the academic community very well:

[T]his rant — beyond the action of an individual — is clear evidence that we still have much work to do before we can claim to live in a “post-racial” society. . . . “Asians in the Library” is a travesty on many levels, representing an attack on Asian and Asian American students and their families and undermining UCLA as a global university with deep ties to communities and institutions in Asia and other parts of the world.

It entails a “new racism” by foregrounding students who speak Asian languages and have different family traditions, as it insidiously groups and attacks UCLA’s American-born as well as our international students of Asian ancestry. As the only University of California campus without a diversity requirement, UCLA surely needs to implement a diversity requirement that will expose every student to the task of living civilly with people of different origins, backgrounds, orientations, and beliefs, whether they are born here or come from abroad.

I would like to highlight and expand on some of the points raised in UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center statement. Specifically, I see this video rant as another unfortunate and dangerous example of what happens (and is likely to continue happening) when institutional factors intersect with each other, as they are doing right now: White privilege, colorblindness, Asian Americans seen as the quiet ‘model minority,’ and ‘yellow peril’ fears of the rise of Asian countries.

Lesson 1: White Privilege

Let’s start with White privilege. However difficult it is for many White Americans to hear, examples like this video clearly show that many (as in a large number, but certainly not all) Whites implicitly think there’s nothing wrong with invoking cultural stereotypes to portray an entire group of color. I have written about this dynamic many times before, but needless to say, this is certainly not the first time that Whites have tried to “make fun” of Asian Americans or other groups of color on college campuses and elsewhere in society.

In her video, Alexandra Wallace unconsciously invokes White privilege by assuming that she can say whatever she wants about Asian Americans. For the sake of argument, I might accept that she is not aware that such phrases as “Ohhhhhhhhhh ching chong ling long ting tong ohhhhhhhhhh” and calling them “hordes” are deeply offensive and conjure up historical examples of Asians as faceless, sub-human invaders and villains.

But unfortunately, this “lack of awareness” is at the heart of the problem and in fact, forms the basis for much of the racism that Asians and Asian Americans encounter on an everyday basis. In other words, most non-Asians (most of whom are admittedly White) don’t purposely intend to be racist when make jokes or casual comments about Asians.

But when they do so, based on their ignorance of Asians and Asian Americans, they only reinforce and perpetuate their racial privileges as Whites. That privilege also gives them the ability to not have to worry about saying or doing offensive things about other racial groups.

That is, their racial privilege gives them a larger “comfort zone” to say and do things that they think are funny or harmless but ultimately, minorities find very offensive. Even if most Whites don’t have this consciously or even unconsciously in their minds when it comes to Asians, this climate of racial ignorance is a reality and functions to “protect” and “insulate” Whites — whether or not they’re even aware of it — at the expense of people of color.

Of course, many Whites will respond by basically saying that it was just a joke, Asians should just shrug it off, that it was harmless and that we Asians should just lighten up and not take things so seriously. The problem with that argument is that it ignores the larger historical and cultural context and that there are fundamental institutional power differences inherent in situations in which Whites denigrate minorities.

Each time an incident like that happens, it reinforces the notion of White supremacy — that Whites can say and do whatever they want toward anybody at any time without facing any negative repercussions. Ultimately, suggesting to us that we should just “get over it” only serves as another clear illustration of White privilege — of those with in an institutionally superior position telling those below them what to do and what they should think.

Lesson 2: Colorblindness

A contributing factor that functions to reinforce and perpetuate White privilege is the ideology of colorblindness. Again, I have written about the fallacies and failures of trying to be colorblind in U.S. society many times.

In this case, the institutional backdrop to Alexandra Wallace’s rant is the misguided belief that we now live in a colorblind society in which everyone and every racial group is now politically, economically, and socially equal, and that racial/ethnic discrimination, inequality, and racism no longer exist. Further, being colorblind also means that it’s impolite to discuss race or the U.S.’s history of racial oppression and domination — let’s just forget about them since they’re not important anymore, right?

Suffice it to say, and as this video shows, race and racial differences are clearly still very important today. They are still relevant because inequalities still exist and discrimination still takes place, and because colorblindness still provides a crucial foundation upon which White privilege can exist. In other words, if everybody is the same and on an equal playing field, it’s perfectly fine to joke about them however we want, right?

Lesson 3: The Model Minority Image

Another factor that comes into play is the image of Asian Americans as the model minority: smart and high achieving, but also quiet, passive, and obedient. While it is true that on the aggregate level, Asian Americans as a collective group outperform Whites on many measures of socioeconomic achievement, when we look beneath the surface, we see that there are notable differences between ethnic groups (some Asian immigrant groups are more self-selective in terms of their human capital while others are more likely to be involuntary refugees). Further, generalizing the seemingly positive belief that Asian Americans are successful puts extraordinary pressure on all Asian Americans to live up to those standards.

In this particular case, I will hypothesize that Alexandra Wallace (and many others like her) presume that almost all Asian Americans are smart ans successful but also passive and therefore, won’t care if she complains and mocks them. Also, I cannot rule out some degree of resentment about the success of Asian Americans as well, particularly at a university where 40% of the student population is Asian American.

This resentment leads me to my final lesson . . .

Lesson 4: Yellow Peril and Fears About Rising Asia

At the risk of being redundant, again I have already highlighted numerous examples in which U.S. society and U.S. citizens are increasingly feeling destabilized by demographic changes in the U.S. population, the negative effects of globalization, and increased competition with the rising economies of Asian countries such as China and India.

The latter is often referred to as the new “yellow peril” image of Asians “invading” the U.S. and taking over or destroying its institutions and society. It is an image that frequently gets conjured up in times of economic recession and especially when Americans perceive others to be benefiting and prospering at their expense. With the economic and political emergence of Asian countries such as Japan, China, and India in recent decades and the concurrent decline of U.S. superiority, this yellow peril image has gained new life and indeed, seems to be a growing fear, consciously and unconsciously, for many Americans these days.

When people feel that their standard of living or “way of life” is being threatened, they are likely to get defensive, consciously and unconsciously. In that situation, one way to react is to draw a more rigid cultural boundary between “us” and “them.” In this case, Alexandra Wallace invoked this nativist sentiment clearly when she said, “In America, we don’t talk in the library.” Inside Higher Education has a very well-written analysis of this entire episode and journalist Allie Grasgreen quotes Professor Joe Feagin, former President of the American Sociological Association and well-respect expert on White privilege research, on this emerging distinction between “insiders” and “outsiders”:

For Joe R. Feagin, a sociology professor at Texas A&M University and co-author of The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, Wallace made a blatant statement that Asian students are separate from — and less important than — white students. “A key part of the stereotyping of Asians and Asian Americans is their foreignness,” Feagin said. “She makes the point that not only are Asians and Asian-Americans stereotyped and evaluated from the old, white vs. others — you know, racial framing — but they also face this dimension of not being American. That is, foreign vs. American.”

Taken together, all of these factors form the sociological context within which Alexandra Wallace publicly expressed her anti-Asian sentiments. The sad part of this episode is that she is certainly not the first person to engage in racism against Asian Americans and alas, she will not be the last.

As all the major media organizations are reporting, President Obama is in the middle of a high-profile trip to Asia, visiting many of our major allies and trading partners, particularly China. Rather than focus specifically on the political and economic policies about which he and his Asian counterparts will speak, haggle, and disagree, I’d like to take his visit as an opportunity to focus on the love-hate relationship that the U.S. seems to have with China these days.

It is undeniable that globalization has made the economies of the U.S. and China much more intertwined and dependent on each other. One result of this trend is that when the U.S. economy is struggling (like it is these days), China has resources in terms of investing in U.S. businesses and opening up markets in China for U.S. businesses to sell to, both of which help alleviate some of those struggles. For example, and as a nice “Globalization 101” lesson, the Washington Post has an article that uses a few examples to describe U.S. companies vying for Chinese investment:

On visits to Shanghai and Beijing, Obama will encounter not simply a rising global power but a nation that is transforming and challenging the way Americans live overseas and at home, from college classrooms to real estate offices to the ginseng farms of central Wisconsin. . . .

“Years ago, it didn’t matter what we grew. They bought everything we had,” said Randy Ross, a 54-year-old former dairy farmer who has been growing ginseng since 1978. “Now we’ve got to learn how to satisfy them. They are changing us.” . . . Hate it or love it, China is a major player in American life. . . .

Meanwhile, in a state that has lost more than 160,000 (or one-third) of its manufacturing jobs in a decade, local newspapers have been running editorials praising the People’s Republic and blasting those who oppose closer trade ties or Chinese investment. “China is a friend to Wisconsin and its businesses, not an enemy in a trade war,” the Wisconsin State Journal said in an editorial.

At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Chinese undergraduates now account for more than half of the 1,109 Chinese students there. That increase is another sign that China is coming because Wisconsin, like many state schools, doesn’t provide scholarships for international undergrads. Last year, Chinese students paid out $2 billion in tuition nationwide. “That money is keeping some American colleges alive,” said Laurie Cox, who runs the international student center at the Madison campus.

The Washington Post article lists several other ways, many just using businesses in Wisconsin as examples, that Americans and American companies have become dependent on China. In reading over these accounts, one might conclude that to a certain extent, many Americans see China as an “economic savior,” without whom they would be much worse off.

On the other hand, we can contrast those positive sentiments with other, more negative assessments and suspicions about China’s impact on the U.S. I’ve already written Americans being upset towards China for unsafe consumer products, human rights abuses, and allegations of spying and espionage.

More specifically, within this same process of China investing in U.S. companies, many Americans allege that the main reason China is doing so is to take them over and use them to eventually dominate and “take over” the U.S. economy. These suspicions were illustrated loud and clear in a CBS 60 Minutes segment from April of 2008 (entire episode is below, about 12 minutes long):

As I mentioned, these suspicions about China’s “real” intentions are opposite sides of the same coin and are great illustrations of the love-hate relationship that we Americans have with the Chinese. We love their money and their 1.3 billion consumer market, but we hate that their money might lead to them having a say in how our business is run or may eventually lead to them taking over the business completely (this is sometimes referred to as the “New Yellow Peril.”)

In fact, this kind of love-hate relationship that the American society has with Asians, Asian Americans, and Chinese Americans is not new. Starting with when the first large-scale immigration of Chinese to the U.S. in the mid-1800s, reinforced through subsequent decades, and continuing these days, these kinds of contradictory sentiments have manifested themselves in different ways.

For example, mainstream American society loved our cheap labor, how hard we work, and that (at least in the past), we were relatively powerless in asserting our rights for equal treatment. But they hated that we wanted to settle here, raise families here, and that our hard work frequently resulted in us making more money.

In the past, mainstream American society and the White majority also did not want us to freely intermingle with them — that’s why they passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and various other local and state laws that restricted where we could live, what jobs we could work in, and who we could marry. Such rampant hostility forced many of us to live in segregated ghettos as a matter of survival. But at the same time, they also criticized us for congregating in our own ethnic communities and accused us of not wanting to assimilate and to be American.

Fast forward to today and the same kind of cultural schizophrenia still exist in regard to the relationship between Asians/Asian Americans and the rest of American society and the White majority. The most visible example seems to be simultaneous hopes and fears over China’s investment in the U.S. economy. Such contradictions are also seen when Asian Americans are both praised and criticized for supposedly being the “model minority.”

Alas, this seems to be the consistent pattern in terms of the relationship between Asians/Asian Americans and the rest of American society — two steps forward, one step back.