Asian American Parents, Too, Prepare ​“The Talk”

In January, Asian and Asian American parents in New Haven will have an opportunity to discuss raising children amidst racism.

That will happen at an online event convened by the Immigrant History Initiative (or IHI), an organization that seeks to raise awareness of Asian and Asian American history in the U.S.

IHI recently won a $4,215 Connecticut Humanities ​“Quick October Grant” to run the event and prepare a related downloadable online guide. The workshop is slated for some time in early 2021. (The precise date hasn’t yet been set. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to learn more or register)

“We are designing this workshop for parents to provide concrete strategies and tools against Anti-Asian racism,” said Kathy Lu. Lu graduated from Yale Law School and is a co-founder of IHI with fellow law graduate Julia Chang Wang.

The webinar will focus on several goals: learning how to recognize anti-Asian racism, learning broader context around racism and ways to approach the discussion, and learning about a historical perspective. After the class, parents will receive further guides on talking about racism with their children.

“A lot of Asian Americans [are] confronted with racism and told ​‘This isn’t really racist,’” said Wang. The seminar, she said, will help ​“give voice” to parents’ concerns and find ways of dealing with it.

The seminar will also incorporate feedback from mental health experts, discussing the effects of racism on youth. ​“It’s not just abstract emotions, but very real effects on a physical level,” said Lu.

Wang and Lu created the workshop after receiving many requests from parents, especially in the Covid era. A study found that anti-Asian racist events increased after President Trump’s rhetoric calling Covid the ​“Chinese virus” and ​“Kung Flu.” These events have ranged from verbal attacks to a stabbing of a family in Texas.

While Covid-era racism has primarily affected East Asian populations by their visual appearance, Lu and Wang stressed the importance of including all Asian identities. ​“Whenever [the] US reaches a crisis point, these ugly feelings bubble up once more and become very visible,” said Lu. “[And] what is powering this discrimination has been lying under the surface all along.”

Teaching parents how to have those tough conversations is just a part of the IHI’s work, which encourages children to embrace their identity by learning about Asian American history. Lu and Wang founded the organization in the wake of the 2016 election while the two were at Yale Law School; after several pilot history classes, it was officially incorporated in 2018.

“We had similar childhoods – struggling to reconcile [our] Chinese American identities growing up ” said Lu. ​“It was not a bad childhood, but I didn’t know how to wrestle with my identity except knowing that I was seen differently.”

Wang agreed. ​“Being excluded in history is a part of being othered,” she said. ​“I never learned that there were Chinese immigrants who came in the 1800s.”

“We both hungered for the kind of Asian American history and stories that would have helped us feel more grounded and sure of belonging here,” said Lu.

“Not All ​“Doom And Gloom”

Yukiyo Iida is one of the parents who requested the program. She has lived in West Hartford with her daughter and husband for the last five years. After coming from Boston, which had a much larger Asian American community, there was a bit of shock.

“The slanted-eye incident, you know what I’m talking about, happened as soon as we moved to West Hartford,” said Iida. Her daughter was in second grade at the time.

Iida’s daughter is biracial, she said, so her experience is different from Iida’s childhood as an Asian immigrant. ​“But here she is, experiencing the same thing I experienced when I was in elementary school.”

Iida hopes that the webinar will help her parenting. ​“We as parents don’t know how to support our kids in the here and now,” she said. She mentioned that race conversations often take place in a white-black context. ​“Where do we fit in as allies? And how do we use our privilege?”

Regina (“Gigi”) Belen felt the same way. ​“People have learned about ​‘the talk’ that Black parents give their kids,” she said. ​“There is no equivalent for Asian Americans.”

Belen has four kids and lives in West Hartford. Her children are biracial and go to a majority-white school, so they’ve adopt the mainstream culture. ​“It’s hard for me to tell [my children] they’re not white – they know they’re part Filipino but they don’t know what that means,” said Belen.

Her 13-year-old twins, for example, both had Chinese students in their class who were ostracized because of their language differences. ​“I was like, ​‘You know you’re more similar than you think, right?’” she said.

Having these conversations is difficult. ​“You can’t always go into gloom and doom with a four year old,” Belen said with a laugh. ​“Kids have questions, and you want to [turn] that question into a teachable moment – how do you do it?”

“Our parents didn’t talk about [racism and identity], so we don’t have role models or the skills ourselves in an age appropriate way,” agreed Iida.

“I hope,” she concluded, ​“this won’t be a one-off event.”