There’s a coming of age trope where the protagonist girl wants to be a part of the popular girls. So she starts mimicking them and in the process betrays her actual friends.
And the popular girls, who are also mean, don’t actually really accept her. They just pretend to and continue to mock her behind her back. So the joke is always on the protagonist girl. She will never be a part of that group.
Now let’s bring that analogy to a current and very harmful scenario.
Asians, particularly East Asians, who try to be adjacent with whiteness will never be a part of the very group with which they try to align.
It is an endless illusion where everyone else knows the reality except for those Asians seeking proximity.
Never ever in the history of Asians has aligning with whiteness not been harmful.
White supremacy leverages Asians chasing white adjacency to make itself more powerful. It will dangle a myth in front of them to chase, and simultaneously mock them, eventually sacrificing them soon enough.
We witnessed it during the 60s and 70s when the model minority myth was marketed and manufactured to drive division between Asians supporting the Black power movement.
We witnessed it with the Sinophobia surrounding Covid to escalate a political war. With conservative right whites who used Asians as a wedge to take down affirmative action.
We have witnessed it over and over again and it has done nothing but continue to feed and prop up white supremacy.
The very present impact of Asians seeking white adjacency is anti-Blackness, which has real life and death impacts that reverberate through healthcare, housing, education, the climate, everything, and more.
The lie, the bait to align with whiteness is very well funded, well networked, well advertised, and white supremacy needs it to sustain itself.
Aligning with whiteness literally means individualism that directly causes more oppression of more people, including YOUR OWN.
Instead, why not align to work for everyone’s liberation? Liberation, by definition, has enough room for everyone.
Let’s tap into our cultures of interdependence that white supremacy has been trying so hard to efface and take from us.
Let’s reclaim community back.
Let’s uplift freedom for all.
To get there we do need reparations for Black people. We do need LandBack under Indigenous stewardship. We do need to understand that we cannot allow ourselves to be divided and used as a wedge.
Let’s reclaim community back.
There’s no freedom without everyone’s freedom. I believe in us. I believe in us. Let’s do the work and will y’all.
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