![]() At age 14, his barber nicknamed him “Charlie,” off the Vietnam War-era racial slur. “We need to be proud of who we are and look people in the eye.” This was coming from a man who had suffered countless bouts of racism after immigrating from Hong Kong to Florida during high school. “We need to stand up and stand tall,” he said. When my husband caught up to me before I reached the car, he asked me to stop running. Like many immigrants, I had long believed that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. The man shut up, and then I bolted for the parking lot.Īs had been the case so many times in my life - when I was repeatedly asked where I was from or told to go back there - I avoided conflict at all costs. My personal alarm was in my purse, ready to emit a high-pitched sound with a touch of a button. My husband, who is also Chinese, stood up and glared at the man. Our tables were separated only by makeshift partitions made of blinds tacked onto a clothing rack for social distancing. As this man continued his ridicule for what felt like 10 minutes, nobody in the packed restaurant reacted. The Vietnamese meal was one of my first ventures out since the start of the pandemic. One person I had interviewed recommended that I carry a personal alarm. I became a bit of a recluse, not wanting to leave the apartment. To protect myself, I started wearing sunglasses in public often, to obscure my race. Another victim I spoke to, Iona Cheng, was tackled to the ground as she delivered a Christmas gift near Oakland’s Jack London Square - not far from where I used to hang out with friends growing up in the Bay Area.Īfter my stories published, I was accosted online, with racist tweets and emails. I had recently interviewed 61-year-old Noel Quintana, whose face was slashed cheek-to-cheek with a box knife while he was on his way to work on the New York subway. Besides the staff, we were the only people of Asian descent in the establishment.Īs a Chinese American journalist who had been covering the recent anti-Asian attacks, I was all too familiar with the scenario and how it could easily escalate into violence. As we finished our beef noodle soup and paid the check, a White man, who was sitting with his family at the table next to us, started mocking the accents of our waiter and the cook, loud enough for the entire room to hear. This past spring, at the height of violence against Asians and Asian Americans during the pandemic, my husband and I chose to eat dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant near where we live in South Florida - in a show of solidarity with our community.
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