By: Haylie Blankenship, Max Bruggeman, and Samar Suleiman 

Max Bruggeman: All right.

Max Bruggeman: Hello listeners, my name is Max Bruggeman and I’m here with Samar and Haylie and today on “Yo is this is racist, homophobic, ect, we’re gonna be talking about Asian hate and history of Asian hate and we can also touch on the homophobic things have been going on. In particular we’re gonna be talking about gay marriage and the right for people who are getting a gay marriage to enter a private business and be served. And um so without further ado let’s get started with the history of Asian hate. Does anyone want to get started? 

Haylie Blankenship: So, I know this was kind of yours and Samar’s idea um whenever we were kind of working on getting things together you kind of brought up the violence, shooting some history stuff. What is some history on the Asian hate and racism in there?

Max Bruggeman: Yes, so I’m actually a history major so i’ve learned a lot about the systemic racism going on with Asian Americans, and it goes way back to when Chinese immigrants began emigrating to the United States; back when we were actually recruiting Asian Americans to help build the transcontinental railroad and people out West would hire these Asian immigrants for cheap labor. And um but eventually there was only about like what less than 1% of the California population was Asian Americans. But there was this kind of like fear that oh my gosh Asians are coming to the country at an alarming rate, we need to block these Asians from coming to the country. So in 1882 Congress actually passed the Chinese exclusion act, and this was the first immigration restriction policy that we’ve ever had in our country.

 And this just shows that our willingness to discriminate against something that we do not understand, like this just came from straight fear there was never. As we know, today there was never really a chance of China coming to take over the west coast, but this was just a fear of people at the time, and also this continued with World War two, this has more to do with Japanese Americans. I’m sure we’ve all heard about the internment camps in California after the bombing of Pearl harbor. This is another example of how just out of straight fear like we are willing to discriminate against people who just look different from us, even though they may have lived in the United States, their whole entire lives.

And now, today, like we see even with Donald Trump calling the coronavirus the “China virus”, now that like just fear, how the president can stoke fear into people and pushing people into making discriminatory acts.

Haylie Blankenship: Yeah, most definitely. 

Samar Suleiman: Yeah, I mean I could also pick up on that. With current events like with COVID-19 cases still being at an all time high a lot of Asian Americans have experienced the highest rate of hate related crimes. I mean, In Portland, Oregon alone,  within the last week of January at- least 13 businesses had rocks thrown at their windows. Older people are targeted for just walking down the street, just because they’re Asians. So much hate has been directed towards Asian Americans, since the start of the pandemic and, as you mentioned Max,  former President Donald Trump he expressed a lot of racism towards Asian Americans, since the start of the pandemic. He referred to the virus as the “Wu-Tang” virus and obviously a lot of his supporters gained strength because they have a higher ranking member of the government, publicly saying this, and so they feel as if they had the strength to come out and attack people just because of their race. And, like, I guess, a lot of you guys have also heard. A couple of weeks ago, another tragic and horrific shooting occurred in Atlanta.  Eight innocent lives were lost due to this hatred. The suspect was Robert Long, he was charged with eight counts of murder and he targeted three suburban spas, in which he was a customer at two. Just the fact that some of the police officers were defending his act of terror and stating that “he had a bad day.” Like there’s no excuse for what he did, he clearly targeted those spa’s because the majority of people that worked there were Asian.

Haylie Blankenship: That’s insane.

Samar Suleiman: I know, like, I mean having a bad day isn’t an excuse to take out your anger on someone I guess you don’t particularly like.

Haylie Blankenship: I know. One of my biggest issues with racism is the fact that it’s the United States it’s not like obviously we’re called America, but who specifically is American, if not all.

Samar Suleiman: I know, right. 

Max Bruggeman: This kind of reminded me of like when I first wrote my injustice sample It reminded me of de Beavior “Second Sex” because, like she mentioned that no group ever sets itself up as the one without at once setting up the other against itself so like this kind of reminded me of like especially an 1882 white people in California just wanted to be the dominant group out West basically. And so you’re not going to make yourself the dominant group in the United States without pitting yourself against the others, and the others in this case is Asian Americans. I found that very interesting.

Samar Suleiman: Right, yeah, and like going off of what Max said, like relating it I guess to class content, I think of Simon de Beauvoir’s concept of the “One” versus the “Other”. And  in this case, Asian Americans are being outcast for being the “Other” based solely on their ethnicity. No one should have to feel a sense of exclusion from their society, just because they’re different.

Haylie Blankenship: Especially, which I don’t remember which module it was, but when they talked about the Asian community and whenever they come over like they bring Chinatown and they put it into play, but then, some of them feel forced to change, according to our society.

And I don’t feel like that’s fair to them, because they can put their own culture into ours and it’s not going to ruin anything it’s just going to, I would say change for the better.

Max Bruggeman: I completely agree it’s interesting because you think like that these types of things are getting better with time, like before coronavirus I know personally. I never really thought of Asian Americans in America being necessarily discriminated against, like violently, but like this is definitely opened my eyes, like look how just-just simple rhetoric and like misunderstanding and ignorance can just lead to such hatred.

Haylie Blankenship: Which the ignorant part we can kind of put an add on the like gay wedding cake. And since homophobia is a huge issue. Um. So I don’t remember what year it was, I actually did this systemic injustice. So a few years back, there was this bakery and they refused to make a wedding cake for this two male couple that we’re going to get married. They basically said no we’re not gonna make you a wedding cake, but you can buy anything else in the bakery.

 I can’t tell you how much that boiled my blood, my skin, because that’s just that’s such ignorance to me not being able to just accept them. They’re just people like us. So if a male and female can go and get a wedding cake, but like two females or two males or like that’s just injustice to the LGBTQ community.

Max Bruggeman: Yeah I completely agree with you, I just want to ask like where do you think that this? I know we just talked about Asian hate and that we think that it comes from mainly comes from ignorance and rhetoric, where do you think that the homophobia conflict comes from? You think it comes from a religion? Or are you thinking it also comes from ignorance or something else? 

Haylie Blankenship:  So for this, he claimed it was on his religion that’s what was his claim on it, and why, because there’s a whole lawsuit on it, and he said that was based on his religion, but there are so many different like it can be religion, it could just be stuck on tradition. Um.

The kind of ignorance of not being able to accept, being closed minded, there’s a multitude of reasons. But I don’t know. Samar what’s your stance on it?

Samar Suleiman: I mean, I guess, I think it’s just honestly ignorance, like, in this day and age, like there is going to be different people than who you are, and there’s going to be different beliefs than what you believe. At the end of the day, I guess how you pointed out. If a man and a woman can go up and get a wedding cake why can’t, I don’t know, a woman and a woman- or whoever- get like a cake for their wedding day? It’s their special day they also deserve to be happy, they also deserve to get, I guess, the sense of belonging in their community, and no one should have to be discriminated against, whether it be race, gender, ethnicity or whatever. Like you know what i’m saying?

Haylie Blankenship: Yeah, I agree with that. 

Max Bruggeman: Also it has become so political as well. My I was, I was recently hanging out with my uncle, my great uncle actually, and one of his uh my cousin, so his grandson, is gay but he’s a republican and I know he talked to me about how it’s like hard for him to like stand for or like support politicians that that are against like gay marriage, but he also has a gay grandson and it’s just I don’t know I don’t like how it has become a political issue it’s more of a human rights issue like, I don’t understand why we can’t just put this to the side, this can be something that we agree on, this doesn’t have to be a partisan issue. It’s easier to say that than actually make that happen. I feel as if there is other things that like political leaders can debate on other things other than just whether or not gay people should have rights, you know?

Haylie Blankenship: Right. I know we’re running low on time, but I agree with that, like a big issue is like they’re trying to put the LGBTQ community with the politics part of it with like they’re trying to narrow it down to a political thing of Democrats versus Republicans and that’s just not fair to me. Like religion and stuff, that kind of it’s the United States of America. And I don’t even know where I left off my bad. But like LGBTQ community isn’t part of politics in any form, or fashion.

Max Bruggeman: I can just touch on that. It’s also very regional. I know that we’ve discussed this before we hopped on but what if you come from like a rural town where like, If you’re not exposed to people who are gay then like I can see how it’d be harder to understand that, like the gay couples like want to be together, but like when you move to a city like Columbus or i’ve also always been from the city, so I was also previously from Cincinnati. But like when you’re not around it, I feel like it’s just it’s hard to understand how like people could discriminate against people who, who are gay.

Haylie Blankenship: I don’t know if y’all know where it is but i’m from Meigs County. It’s kind of like a small village; it’s a county but where I’m from Pomeroy it’s a village and it’s just more I guess the smaller Community you have it kind of feels like it’s more narrow minded. It doesn’t feel like you can be as accepted if you’re not the same as everyone else. But that was my kind of growing up life.

Max Bruggeman: Samar, you want to add anything?

Samar Suleiman: I don’t really have anything to add right now.

Max Bruggeman: Oh, okay, well, I think we can wrap it up, then, if no one says anything else to add.

Haylie Blankenship: Yeah that sounds great um I think we had a nice chat today about all the injustices with the Asian racism, and homophobia with the wedding cake.

Max Bruggeman: Those are great examples, great examples, but obviously in this class there are so many different forms of systemic injustices that have been rooted within history.

Even in 2021, as even though we’re making changes to overcome those, we still have to make note of these injustices, so we can correct them in the future.

Samar Suleiman: Yeah.

Max Bruggeman: Awesome, well, i’ll see you guys later, thank you.

Samar Suleiman: Thank you.