When They Come for Us: Dr. Russell Jeung on Being Asian in America Today

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Hey, it's Jessica.
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Today's episode is a little different. There's no trivia, no segments, just a heavy, honest conversation. As a Chinese, Taiwanese American, I've been thinking a lot about how we process what's happening to us right now, in this moment, not just politically, but also personally. This is a conversation with Dr Russell Jeung that helped me process what I've been feeling, and I hope it helps you do the same, no matter what background you come from. When our elders are doing Tai Chi in the park and mixed race kids are being raised in households in our neighborhood and beyond, the identities are just messy.
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They're evolving. And so what does solidarity really look like. How do we come and show up in this moment as well for people who are having their lives destroyed by the moment?
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So thanks, Russell for joining the podcast.
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Thanks for inviting me. Jessica, glad to be here.
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Great. So bring us up to speed on your work, from your scholarship on Asian American identity, including the tensions being seen as perpetual foreigners and model minorities.
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To your leadership during the pandemic, from co-founder of STOP AAPI Hate. How have you seen our collective story evolve?
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Where are we now? I continue to see the story actually being maintained. You raised the idea of being perpetual foreigners, and you know, from the start, when Asians came, they were seen as outsiders, as the yellow peril, people who were dangerous and threatening, who brought diseases, who stealing jobs, a lot of fear mongering. And so, you know, from the 19th century on, that stereotype persisted.
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And so we've continued to face discrimination. You know, we were excluded from immigrating, from becoming citizens, speaking out in courts, from intermarrying, from being able to go to certain schools. So our history was one of exclusion.
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And then during COVID, you saw that fear and stereotyping and interpersonal violence resurrected. You know, we're seen again as disease carriers were blamed for the pandemic.
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And you know, if you ever read the stop AAPI hate reports, they're just terrible of how people treated Asians, they're like spitting on grandparents and throwing rocks at kids and saying just terrible things. So this hate and this stereotyping was really fomented by politicians. They use the fear of outsiders to to rile up their base, to mobilize voters to to mask other problems. And today, the same thing is occurring, right? And the anti Asian hate has just expanded towards being anti immigrant hate. We're still part of that story. As Asian Americans, we're still considered an immigrant group, even if my family's been here five or six generations, I'm still seen as an immigrant now, probably if I were walking down the street, be treated as an outsider, as someone who doesn't belong. So even though I'm American, born, raised in San Francisco, working in the city, people could still treat me again as a perpetual foreigner, and then we would face again interpersonal violence, but also these racist policies that are going on now regarding immigration, and I think you could really connect the dots up, the COVID racism experience has been actually expanded now towards immigrants overall, that Asians and Latinos are lumped in together as outsiders who don't belong. And so you see that in both the amount of anti Asian hate has actually remained as high as it did during the pandemic. People don't realize this, that that that racism, that discrimination, has persisted and has been normalized. So that's the first thing, that the anti Asian hate has continued past the pandemic.
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And then secondly, the policies of anti immigration have actually expanded. So, you know, we're doing mass deportation, and Asians are part of that.
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They are beginning to stop refugees from resettling, and Asians are a big part of that.
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They're cutting racial programs that actually support our communities and the anti DEI efforts, and we're a part of that, they're cutting funding into a lot of research, and that really impacts a lot of Asian American scientists and researchers. And finally, you know what they're doing is they're they're banning Chinese international students and cutting visas, and that's going to have that big impact on our community, impact on our society, if we don't get the research talent and the, you know, STEM talent that we need.
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So in a lot of ways, I think the Asian American community is being impacted by the continued hate and especially by these anti immigrant policies.
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What you're saying is something that is not on the news as someone. Who is Asian American, I didn't know that hate crimes were still on a higher level and like, how would you even track that? Right?
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Because as I was doing research for this episode, I realized that the majority of people, at least covered in the media who are getting detained are from Mexico or from South America or Central America, and so I worry about like experiences where I hear comments like, well, the people who are getting arrested are not us, so it's not really our problem right now.
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That makes sense, that people may think it's an issue that doesn't affect them personally, but I think, Well, my first response to that is, if someone's family is torn apart and separated because they were detained by ICE and or something even worse, gets deported. On a human level, that's just really when you think about it really painful to grow up here and then have your parents taken away suddenly if you were a young person, or to not see your family again for the rest of your life. I think that's sort of inhumane and too much, even if you're a criminal, that's too much of a punishment, right?
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It's sort of double jeopardy, where someone commits a crime and then gets supported afterwards, after paying their their sentence. So on a human level, I just think it's but especially as an Asian who Asians, care about their families a lot, this is what bothers me so much about deportation, is that it's tearing families apart. You know, if you remember seeing kids being separated from their families at the border, when people were crossing the border and they were putting them in cages, that seems like traumatizing and unfair and inhumane and wrong, and so if it's not happening to you, I think what I would want people to do is to develop empathy for their fellow human that you don't want to be a selfish person only thinks about yourself you want to. I would want my kids and my family to be people who care right, people who are humane and have compassion and empathy. So on the on the, again, basic human level, if you think about it, it's not happening to you, but it's happening to those around you. It's it's happening to your neighbors, it's happening to your coworkers, it's happening to maybe your extended family.
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It could be happening to brothers and sisters in Christ if you go to church. So if you think of people as people like yourself, then it is happening to you because they're your fellow humans. They're your you know, again, your neighbors. So it is happening to you right now, if you're an American citizen, it is happening to you because American citizens and American legal residents are being detained and deported without due process. So it is happening to you as someone in America
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that's very powerful, and the Asian hate that happened directly kind of accelerated during the pandemic, didn't go away, but actually, the hate has just expanded to different groups.
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Well, they are targeting Asians and so, yeah.
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So they are targeting people who they think are outsiders, who they think are weak. So other examples is beyond like banning Chinese international students.
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They're resurrecting the China initiative. Sorry, what is the China initiative? Yeah, the China Initiative is part of the Department of Justice's efforts to stop espionage and trade secrets. And so the FBI and the Justice Department, they track and review scientists who are doing research. I do. I have heard about this, yeah, and have connections with China. And so there's been a bunch of Chinese scientists, Chinese American sciences, from University of Pennsylvania, from MIT, who've been arrested wrongly, have spent time in prison, who've lost their jobs, have their, you know, careers and lives destroyed because their families are impacted and then found to be innocent, right? And so their
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reputation is already ruined, right? Because they are and they've had to live through that experience, even if they're found innocent, it really like destroyed their life in a way or like it heavily impacted, significantly impacted their lives,
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right? So a lot of researchers at the University level who are Chinese, they they they know that this is an issue.
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They know that both their universities are facing pressure to monitor them, and then that the government's monitoring us.
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So I'm including myself in this.
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As a Chinese American researcher, you're way less likely to work on your research with China, even though that they hamper your research, and because of it, a lot of Chinese researchers are returning back to China. Because why would you want to face so much government surveillance? You know? Why would you want to be hassled so much? Why would you want to be under the threat of arrest by your own government simply because you're Chinese? But that's exactly what's happening.
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And then these Chinese American scientists have been because of their association with people have been arrested. So that's another example of an official policy that impacts individual civil rights but then also impacts their families, impacts the scientific community, impacts research, impacts America's ability to develop research talent. So we're actually having a reverse brain drain. You know how the US used to receive the best scientists and researchers from all around the world. That's how my parents came. Yeah. So that's our prime drink. Yeah, a brain drink from Taiwan, from India. But now there's a reverse brain drain.
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So people are leaving the US because the opportunities are better throughout the world and at the university level, I'm seeing cuts everywhere from large research universities? San Francisco, state, in the sunset, we're all getting cut
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another large issue besides immigration, which is higher education. Almost every Asian child or parent I've ever met, including myself, has wanted to go to Harvard. Harvard is like the gold standard, like the best of the best, right?
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Like, that's like the dream to go because it's the best university in the world. And like, coming from that angle, where our culture values education knowledge, right?
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It's, it's like a war against what we believe in, which is higher education too, but they're just parallels of like, how they're affecting you at San Francisco State University directly, because there's cuts happening all over the higher education system. And similarly, even in this critical moment, we're really trying to connect our story to what the larger story is. But it's so hard because it's not being given to us, we have to create
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it, right, right? So I want to make two points about that in regards to it. Well, first, about higher ed, and I don't want to draw this parallel to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but people from China see the parallel. Because, you know, the Cultural Revolution in China had really large, consequential tragedies, but it's parallel. What's going on now is parallel in that professors are being silenced about what they could say about Palestine, you know, and actually getting fired now professors, we're getting so many cuts in research, and that's going to impact, like cancer research on, you know, heart research, it's, it's totally ridiculous. The level of cuts to the National Institute of Health, to the National Science Foundation, so there really is an anti intellectual bias of this administration, and so that's if you're if you're a Chinese family who wants to pursue higher ed, there's not going to be the same higher ed because the professors will be gone, the facilities won't be available. The research will be threatened, especially, and let's say you want to even go into the remaining fields of AI, you're going to be really, especially if you're Asian, you're going to be, again, surveilled, and you have to be careful about going in and out of the US. But on the other end, you know, talking about ICE raids. You know the protests in LA were in Chinatown, because that's where ice was focused.
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Just saw an article that they're beginning to write raid nail salons. And so, you know, that's sunset, that's correct. Yeah. So they target these communities, but there's an official policy I just read today that they're stopping. Trump actually told them to stop raiding agricultural areas and hotel areas. And he calls these are good workers, because those industries actually lobbied him to stop the rates, because they need the workers, right? The rates are really affecting the Asian community a lot. Oh, and here's the scarier thing, okay, here's just to make it on human level. I interviewed a person who has to go check in with immigration because he has a record. Now, before it was just a regular, periodic check in, I'm doing work, I'm law abiding, I'm raising my kids, and so for two decades, he checked in because he's been out of prison that long. But now, because of this deportation policy, he's really afraid that he'll get deported. He'll be separated from his family, right? That's the worst thing. He raised these his kids, and now that's the most important thing to him, is his family. But not only was he afraid of being deported back to a place where he doesn't know anybody, and Asians are being deported to not their countries of origin, but they're being sent to Guantanamo Bay. They're being sent to El Salvador.
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They're being sent to Sudan and Libya. Can you that's like kidnapping? I mean, it'll be called about disappearing. And I think it's human trafficking, where we're just transporting people to where they don't want to go. It's like and then abandoning them. I can't even fathom that kind of policies, where can people find resources?
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Yeah. So the first thing is that you should know your rights. And we call them a n, y r cards, or these red cards that we're trying to share with everybody that have to talk to ice. You don't have to allow them in. So then you should know your rights, and everybody should know and you could get those know your right information if you just sort of Google know your rights. There's resources like the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. So beyond knowing your rights, then you also should know your rights for your coworkers and your kids classmates. So the another executive order is now ice can is being allowed to go into hospitals, you know, to go into schools and to go into churches, and so these are usually traditional places of sanctuary.
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You know, if you need health care, you should be able to access it. If you're going to school, you should be able to go to school safely. But now people are afraid. You know that ice may be parked outside your kid's school, and so that's going to impact you, because your kid may be a citizen, but their classmate may be a child of unauthorized parents, but then now ice could actually go into schools. They could actually go into your church while you're worshiping. I mean, just yesterday, I got a notice from the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Association that they're afraid of ice coming in and aware that there might be ICE raids. So I just get this information just on my own, but that's where I think we need to have a conversation about how we can share this message, kind of like, I don't know that. I didn't know everything you're talking to me right now I'm learning, yeah, and so I think I just like, you're if you're but I didn't know that it was that, like, the Chinese and Asian American communities were already being targeted in such a profound way. Yeah, yes, Chinatown has been targeted. That's where the LA protests were. That's one of the at the centers. Yes, nail salons are getting targeted.
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So when I first started like researching and trying to frame this conversation. I was afraid that there wasn't enough, like, connection with the Chinese community. Yeah, no, that was serious. Like, that's why I had a hard time going about this.
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Because, like, the conversations, again, that I've had with people who are Asian American are more like a, it's not really affecting us yet, but B, the other thing that I'm hearing out there is, what can I do about it? Right? Like, I'm not, I don't want to go out and get arrested. I'm not a person who wants to go out and, like, potentially get hurt. You know, on the streets, and a lot of my friends who are live in the sunset want to avoid the protests. So like, even if you have the knowledge of, like, this isn't, this is something that's affecting me right now, if we can shift the framework to be, what would you recommend Asian Americans to do, to kind of resist in their own way, like, what does that look like, and what can we do?
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Yeah, I think this just, it's sort of the same with anti Asian hate. You you may not want to go to a anti Asian hate Raleigh, because, you know, and think, Well, what good will that do? But I think there's a lot of ways on your individual personal life that you could do things to stop the anti Asian hate, to stop this anti immigrant trend.
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The basic thing for me is to vote that that's really important, that again, I think a lot of the racism and a lot of the policies, again, are instigated by politicians who are trying to support their own base. And if you're against that type of politics that's fear mongering, if you're against politics that's racist, then really support go out and vote for elected officials who you think are non racist and supportive of your communities.
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I had I ask a hard question, yep, this day and age when Congress has literally been like, de powerized by and so the federal executive branch of government, it has an inordinate amount of power been historically, seen today, and the last standing obstacle that I see are courts, rather than the elected officials who are supposed to represent us. And in fact, even if they believe the right things like lead, intention and action, reality are different things. So, yeah,
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okay, yeah. So two responses, so bear with me. My quick response to that question, I was like, Well, what good will it do? The first response, at least in terms of getting involved or at least voting on the political level, is that we do need the checks and balances against this administration. And you know, we can, in 26 actually swing Congress the other way, right? It's only like four or five congressional districts would swing it so that there'd be a change in in composition.
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So you could, if you care, really, you would help support a party or support those campaigns in those states that are, are key swing states, and you could actually change the composition of Congress, who may then offer another check and balances to this administration. Another way to help provide that check and balances is, you know, everything, all these executive orders that I think are racist or are ridiculous, they've all been challenged in the courts because they're the, like you said, the most official, most effective obstacle to the implementation of these executive orders. But here's the thing I think that could actually stop anti Asian hate, and could actually stop anti immigrant is for us to start.
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Maybe you're not gonna go protest, maybe you're not get politically involved, or you're not gonna spend your money, but what we need to do as the Asian American community, is to share our stories. Most Americans, community of Americans, don't know the Asian American community. They don't know who are famous Asian Americans. They can't even name, you know, a famous Asian American. They can't name historical facts from Asian American history. So they just don't know about us, and because they're ignorant of us, and because they don't have relationships with us, that's why stereotypes begin to shape their thinking, right? But they see on cable news or what they hear from politicians, and that's why we have the perpetual foreigner stereotype. It's because they don't know us and they don't interact with us. So all we have to do is be Asian with other people, and as they get to know us right, know about our food, know about our histories, then they're not so afraid of us, then they don't think of us as outsiders. That's what they people have found to be effective in changing people's attitudes is, if you know someone, then you're less likely to be racist towards them. If you know somebody, you're less likely to be afraid of them, right? As people interrelate, they're just less likely to hate each other. So that we call that social contact theory. Politicians are fomenting the problem, but because people don't have a lot of interpersonal contact with Asians, then stereotypes replace the ignorant source, going back to the storytelling and changing the narrative about us, right?
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So the narrative about us is we're outsiders, we're dangerous, we're disease carriers, we're stealing secrets from the US. Oh, this is another data point. Is that four out of 10 Americans think Asians are more loyal to their countries of origin than to the US. So that goes into this notion that we're stealing secrets and we're more loyal to China. If you're Chinese, if you don't think it's happening to you, it is because it is happening in your nation, this authoritarian rise where the military is arresting its own citizens. It's arresting its own us, senators, it's gotten to a level of violence where in Minnesota today, some Democratic elected officials were assassinated. It's happening to you because it's in your city, in San Francisco, where your fellow San Franciscans are fearful. Kids in the schools are afraid for their parents being detained and deported and like returning from school and not seeing their parents. So it's happening to you and your kids.
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It's happening to you because in the sunset, they are now beginning to target nail salons there. They'll target restaurants where they think undocumented people are. They're targeting schools so that now you know, San Francisco State's international student population has really declined because people can't get visas to become international students. That impacts San Francisco State, we have a lot less students, so we're getting a lot less funding because we have a lot of students. So then your kid who wants to go from Lincoln to city to state or to city to Berkeley, their schools are a lot worse because we don't have the international students that help with the funding, right? So in a lot of ways, it is happening to you now, so you should be concerned it's happening to be to you, because it's happening to your kids at the university level, I see students mental health levels have really declined since the pandemic, right? And it's reasonable that people have worse mental health, maybe more depressed, more anxious, but our young people, our college students, I see this again, in my classroom, have a lot of anxiety, and part of that anxiety is because they're afraid of the future. They're afraid that the economy won't provide them jobs, there won't be any opportunities to be able to buy a home. But they're also anxious about the climate, and they're really anxious about the state of the US and the amount of political polarization and violence, right, political violence and the hate, that level of hate where the rhetoric is always attacking people that contributes to the mental health of young people today. So it is happening to you. If you just you. Ask her kids, take the time to educate yourself about why are people protesting? Maybe just and if that's too much, just have a few conversations with other people, even within your own family. What do you think about what's going on? And maybe your kids would want to need some advice. You know maybe you are your partner, maybe your partner cares more than you think, and it's impacting them.
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So I think just having those conversations, even if, for yourself, you're anxious or overwhelmed, maybe having those conversations will help you realize you're not alone.
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Something's shifting, right? You can feel it in the rhetoric, in the silence, in the raids and in the sunset. We don't always talk about it. Maybe we should start talking about it more with each other, with others, to share our stories, to share that we're human too, and we're being affected and others are being affected. So we should all care, because this is the last stand if you've ever wondered what you would have done in the Civil War or like in the civil rights movement, this is the time, whatever you thought of those people, what they did or didn't do during those times we're in that time we get to choose how we react in this situation.
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Isn't about guilt. This isn't about telling you what you should do, but it's about seeking the truth. All I'm asking is that we stay awake.