A community discussion held on Zoom on Monday evening focused on ways community members can help combat anti-Asian violence, confront racism and amplify Asian voices.

The discussion was hosted by the CT BIPOC Mental Health & Wellness Initiative, a group run by New London social worker Janelle Posey-Green, following recent attacks on Asian American women in Atlanta. Community members were invited to discuss their own experiences while Posey-Green and a forum of speakers participated in a passionate, vulnerable conversation about generational and systemic racism impacting Asian Americans. 

The forum panel consisted of three Asian American women: Malyna Kettavong, a Laotian American social worker who practices in Norwich; Susan Duong, a Vietnamese American woman who lives in Waterford and works in the pharmaceutical industry; and Rachel Forbes, a Korean American and Jewish social worker based in Connecticut. They shared their experiences with racism in their own communities in the form of microaggressions, expectations to fit the “model minority” norm and feelings of fetishization and objectification.

Posey-Green began the discussion by citing statistics from police data gathered by the Center for Hate and Extremism at California State University that show anti-Asian hate crimes rising by 149% in the United States in 2020. She said she could barely wrap her head around those numbers. 

Forbes said that seeing anti-Asian hate crimes talked about in the media this year “has felt so validating while simultaneously so heartbreaking.” Forbes said that for so long, she has felt that the Asian American voice has been silenced. Now, she said it’s finally being heard, but at a high cost. 

The women discussed the increase of anti-Asian violence and language during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, saying phrases such as “China virus" or "Wuhan virus" have perpetuated irrational stereotypes against Asians. 

Duong said that while she hadn’t experienced much overt racism in her life, during the pandemic she has been stared at, given dirty looks and watched people avoid crossing her path. She’s developed a fear of coughing or sneezing in public, she said.

Janet Johnson, who joined the discussion after finding the event on Facebook, said that as an Asian American woman, she’s always felt the need to be on high alert, but was always told to ignore the feeling of being threatened. Now, at 42, she said her fears were validated when six Asian American women were among the eight people shot to death earlier this month in Georgia. 

“It’s kind of like that nightmare come true,” said Johnson, who lives in West Hartford. “It happened. People got killed.” 

Duong said that the attacks in Georgia motivated her to speak out and participate in the forum. “We can no longer be quiet because the more we do that, the more harm it brings to us,” she said. 

The group also discussed “the intersection of misogyny and racism,” specifically in the way that Asian American women are often objectified and fetishized. They also discussed how television and films perpetuate Asian American stereotypes by often only putting Asian characters in roles where they work in nail salons or Chinese restaurants. 

The group talked at length about the “model minority myth” — an idea that perpetuates stereotypes that all Asian Americans are obedient, quiet, academically intelligent and successful.

Duong said she’d experienced the pressure that these stereotypes create. 

“It’s just exhausting, you’re trying to live up to the standard, you’re trying to be perfect,” she said. “You’re trying to meet everyone else’s expectations and in doing so you lose yourself and you lose your identity, it’s very mentally draining.”

Forbes said she understood the exhaustion of that pressure and said racism, in all its forms, is a type of trauma. 

Duong said she hopes discussions like this continue in the southeastern Connecticut community. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “We have to start to shatter those stereotypes to go ahead and fight the virus of racism.”

Posey-Green provided participants and viewers with a list of therapists and healing practitioners of color who practice in the state; the list includes bilingual mental health professionals and Pan-Asian therapists.

t.hartz@theday.com