Author and Activist Helen Zia: Asian Americans in the Time of COVID

Author and Activist Helen Zia: Asian Americans in the Time of COVID
Debra Meyers

Author and activist Helen Zia recently engaged Taft students in a virtual Community Time conversation entitled "Asian Americans in the Time of COVID: Challenge and Resistance." The talk was the central piece and culminating event of Taft's celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, and part of the school's ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion work.

"Asian Americans are fighting two pandemics: COVID and intense racism," Zia told the Taft community. "Since December 2019—as soon as the virus was identified in China—Asian Americans have experienced an uptick in racism and violence, with Chinatowns under siege."

By the end of March 2020, there were 2,600 reports of stabbings, beatings, acid throwing, bullying and harassment. Today, that number exceeds 7,000, with incidents of violence being reported on every continent except Antarctica. And while the COVID may be new, the racism against Asian Americans it has helped fuel is not. 

"There's not anything new about these attacks. The pattern of the way Asian Americans are treated in American society throughout history has been to blame, to scapegoat, to target, or to make Asian American and Pacific Islander people as though they are always the "other"—never belonging," Zia explains.

Zia offered students background, context, history, and understanding about how Asian Americans have been viewed throughout history, with additional consideration of "things we don't know," she says, "things I call MIH—missing in history." She traced the early migration of Asian and Pacific Island people to the Spanish galleon trade in the 15oos, while noting that references to these groups don't appear until the 1800s. The result, Zia explains, are exclusionary laws and actions based on "horrific stereotypes," from the 1875 Page Act and 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act to the Japanese internment camps, the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin by displaced Detroit autoworkers, and distinct stereotypes— "one-dimensional images" that remain pervasive in our culture.

Zia also noted that, throughout history, communities of color in the United States have worked together to fight oppression, though little attention has been paid to the importance of those connections. Wong Kim Ark, for example, was Chinese American—born in America, then later living in China. His return to the US was barred by the Chinese Exclusion Act. He took his case to the US Supreme Court and won. Along the way social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke out against Chinese Exclusion Act, cementing the interconnectedness between the Black and AAPI communities. 

"We have to have a new vision in our minds," concludes Zia. This is what we're building toward: Communities with Unity. This has been the 21st century challenge: to imagine new visions of lived unity—new visions of openness and dialogue to explore and understand differences, and seek common values, not shut down because of differences. To change systems of oppression we must decolonize our minds, show the full humanity of all people and know their stories with full rights and dignity. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. We must help it bend."

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About Helen Zia

The daughter of immigrants from China, Zia has been outspoken on issues ranging from human rights and peace to women's rights and countering hate violence and homophobia. She is featured in the Academy Award-nominated documentary, Who Killed Vincent Chin? and was profiled in Bill Moyers' PBS series, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience. In 2008 Zia was a Torchbearer in San Francisco for the Beijing Olympics amid great controversy; in 2010, she was a witness in the federal marriage equality case decided by the US Supreme Court.

Published in 2000, Zia's first book, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, was a finalist for the prestigious Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. She also authored the story of Wen Ho Lee in My Country Versus Me, about the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy for China in the "worst case since the Rosenbergs." Helen's latest book, Last Boat out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution, traces the lives of migrants and refugees from another cataclysmic time in history that has striking parallels to the difficulties facing migrants today. She interviewed more than 100 survivors of that exodus and countless others. Zia's essay in the New York Times reveals her mother's secret that inspired her to write this book.

Zia received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of San Francisco and an honorary Doctor of Laws from the City University of New York Law School for bringing important matters of law and civil rights into public view. She is a Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Princeton University's first coeducational class. She attended medical school but quit after completing two years, then went to work as a construction laborer, an autoworker, and a community organizer, after which she discovered her life's work as a writer. 

Zia was Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine and a founding board co-chair of the Women's Media Center. She has been active in many non-profit organizations, including Equality NowAAJA, and KQED. Her ground-breaking articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in many publications, books, and anthologies, receiving numerous awards.

Slides Copyright (c) Helen Zia. Used with permission.