See Me, Hear Me, Recognize Me

See Me, Hear Me, Recognize Me Rachel A. R. Bundang (bio) On the way to preparing these reflections,1 I stopped to watch the documentary short 38 at the Garden, in which Jeremy Lin finally gives himself permission to revisit the winter of 2012, when Linsanity hit the New York Knicks and the NBA.2 Much of the film shows the racism he encountered throughout his pursuit of a professional basketball career, in his improbable rise and fall. Through interviews with journalists, comedians, cultural commentators, and former teammates, we remember and understand anew the multilayered importance of representation and the way Lin shattered expectations. What I found most thoughtful, though, was the way Lin presented his unique, Cinderella experience as bookended with the Trump-fueled anti-Asian racism of these last few years. The documentary pointed me right to the predicament of Asian invisibility, which means that we are hiding in plain sight—until we are not. Asian invisibility in the United States is made to feel and seem natural, so that the moments and patterns of racism go unquestioned. The anti-Asian racism that flared up under Trump has not gone away; at best, it has leveled off a little. I have been living and working in coastal cities most of my life, and it surprised me that even in the Bay Area, with its high Asian, Asian American, or Pacific Islander (AAPI) population, I was attacked, harassed, made to feel unsafe and unwelcome. By making his bigotry clear, undeniable, and unapologetic, Trump gave permission through his example. Shifting Trump's familiar, othering tropes of contagion, infestation, and disease, I posit that he contaminated the social climate so that attacks in public spaces and public discourse became more common, normalized, and even "excused." In my case, I also saw [End Page 133] this bigotry seep into the workplace/classroom climate, when at a former institution a white male student freely hurled racist insults at me and suffered little consequence other than being transferred out of my class. AAPI individuals and communities are often rendered strange, and othered, as in the original sense of "alien"; it is so embedded that racists do not always recognize how or that they are being racist. We generally "wear our foreignness on our face," so while we might have occasional, situational power or privilege, it is capped or porous. Unless we happen to be visibly white-passing (or some other form of passing more readily slotted and intelligible), we will never be perceived as American, if that means trying to locate ourselves in that strict racial binary. And that is also part of the invisibility. In the US context, the racial binary still hangs heavy and admits nothing but "Black and white." The continuum is not real, and it does not work. Additionally, AAPI communities contend with the messiness and uncertainty of who actually counts as Asian, and when, and why, and how; I cannot think of the equivalent of a one-drop rule for us, problematic as that is in the first place, except to gauge on appearance. We confront the perpetual dominance of East Asianness in the AAPI sphere and question whether there is anything to be gained by lumping all the groups together. And let us not forget the additional layers and modes of being mixed race and/or white-passing. Related to my academic work, when I write or present, I cannot assume anything. It is difficult to know for certain what my audience understands about my context or identity, and where we might have a mutual starting point. I will often have explanatory material on standby, just in case, ready to add in or cut out as needed. It is like the temptation to overpack—in this case, to have a suitcase full of parentheticals!—to be prepared for every contingency, to be ready to MacGyver possible points of connection. So, it will feel as if progress is slow and stuttering. Every time I must do the explainers, it is like starting all over again. Invisibility, as I have been thinking about it, can work in a couple of ways. On the one hand, it can function as a...