It’s never easy for Asian American and Asian Canadian men to navigate White spaces. The pervasive assumptions that guide non-Asian people’s minds leave us seen as quiet, submissive workers if we are acknowledged at all. Few people look at an Asian man and assume he is a leader or a visionary. So, people like Rohadi and me have to work extra to prove ourselves, and we’ve spent a good chunk of our lives doing this.
Even when we left shitty evangelical culture, we discovered that the cultural dynamics were often the same outside with people now gravitating and platforming White male influencers. And nothing against those White guys, well some of them, but often the work of helping people decolonize from Whiteness is left to the non-White people. So many layers to this issue.
Rohadi Nagassar is still a Christian-identified person, but he believes in human flourishing for all, like me. And we have both stopped trying to work from inside of minds colonized by Whiteness. And that makes us dangerous to White supremacy and White Christian nationalism.
A recent NBC News poll found that 25% of Americans believe Chinese Americans are a threat to society. I don’t think Trump and MAGA just flipped a switch in those people’s minds. I think he played on their already problematic views of Asian people and fertilized their shitty assumptions to grow into full-blown racism.
Every month is AAPI Heritage month for me. Or ACPI Heritage month for Rohadi. And if you are reading this, you are part of the observance of the month and hopefully, you see us.
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