No, I Do Belong: How Asian American and Asian Canadian Professionals Defy Workplace Racial Violence During COVID-19 PDF

# No, I Do Belong: How Asian American and Asian Canadian Professionals Defy and Counter Workplace Racial Violence during COVID-19 ## Authors Jennifer Y. Kim & Zhida Shang - Tufts University School of Medicine - McGill University ## Abstract This article explores different types of racial viole...

# No, I Do Belong: How Asian American and Asian Canadian Professionals Defy and Counter Workplace Racial Violence during COVID-19 ## Authors Jennifer Y. Kim & Zhida Shang - Tufts University School of Medicine - McGill University ## Abstract This article explores different types of racial violence encountered by Asian American and Asian Canadians in the workplace during COVID-19 and how they respond. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, the results of this study suggest that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Asians experienced different types of workplace racial violence, including a revival of the yellow peril trope, physical manifestations of bordering behavior, and identity denial. In some cases, manifestations of physical violence also emerged. The data revealed that Asians demonstrated various types of agentic responses to challenge and counter unwanted and incorrect identities conveyed by the racial microaggressions. The authors argue that We enhance theory by shedding light on the experiences of Asians whose voice largely been ignored in the organizational literature. This study draws together and contributes to the theory on racial violence and racialized identity by highlighting the different types of racial violence faced by Asians and exploring the challenges they encounter in the face of racial microaggressions. Finally, this study discusses practical implications and offers insight into how organizations can help. ## Keywords AsianCrit, Asian Americans, Asian Canadians, critical race theory, microaggression, racial violence, racialized identity ## Introduction The study on the Asian experience in the West is uniquely nuanced, often portrayed as a “model minority” that has made "it" and therefore does not experience discrimination. The authors state that the model minority myth was created to undermine the Black and Latinx movement for racial justice, and that it created a false perception that Asians benefit from White privilege. Moreover, the treatment of Asians as a monolith, even though they represent over 50 different ethnicities, cultures (i.e., Hmong, Korean, and Vietnamese), and socioeconomic gradients, obscures the unique experiences represented by the different Asian diasporas in North America. For example, in the US, Asian Americans have the largest growing income divide among any ethnic group, displacing African Americans as the most economically divided group. Asians have been excluded from many equity conversations, leaving some of the most vulnerable subgroups obscured and under-resourced. The recent global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 challenged the idea that Asians benefit from White privilege. Following the growth of racist terms, such as 'China virus' and ‘Wuhan flu', there has been a significant increase in racially motivated aggression against Asians and their identity, ranging from passive avoidance to physical violence. In the US there have been over 11,400 reported incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes, representing over a 1900 percent increase in hate crimes against Asians since the start of the pandemic. Major Canadian cities reported similar, if not higher, numbers of racial attacks against Asian Canadians. Racial violence against Asians during COVID-19 has been reported everywhere, including the workplace. Despite self-reported numbers released by organizations such as Stop AAPI Hate, very little is understood regarding how these acts of aggression and violence against Asians manifest in the professional setting, and what effects they have on the Asian identity. The management literature, in its current state, lacks the examination of racial power and violence. The authors state that much of the existing management literature was created mostly by White scholars who never intended the frameworks to be used for such purposes. This leads to a dearth of organizational scholarship explored through the minority lens (in this case, the Asian lens). Asians make up one of the fastest growing populations in North America, with Asian Americans and Asian Canadians representing roughly 6 and 18 percent of the population in the US and Canada, respectively. Asians also represent a diverse and growing part of the larger workforce. The authors address the lack of scholarship and understanding regarding the effects of COVID-19, not only allowing for demeaning and invalidating behaviours against Asians to continue, silencing the Asian voice, but also perpetuating White-centred, race-blind scholarship and practices. ## Literature review ### Historical Influences on the Racialization of Asians Racialized identities are defined as group identifications that have been socially constructed as 'racially' distinct with notable cultural dimensions, and are malleable, flexible, and situational. The formation of racialized identities, such as Asian, Black, Indian, Latinx, and White in the US and Black, Chinese, Aboriginal, South Asian, and White in Canada has largely been influenced by historical and cultural contexts, many of which were undergirded by White supremacist ideologies. When communities from Asia began emigrating to North America, they had very little common with each other. Asian immigrants represent over 50 different ethnic diasporas and cultures with distinct histories, cultures, and political views, including Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Pakistani, Taiwanese, and Thai. Despite the diversity represented, White supremacy has fuelled a racialization process that lumps all Asian cultures into one category, characterizing them as a monolithic racial group, possessing inferior traits compared to the dominant White majority. This type of racialization has historical origins and stems from Western societies' attempt to dominate the Eastern world by constructing the mysterious, intriguing, yet primitive, strange, and despotic ‘Orient' as the inferior Other. Racist constructions of Asian identities have continued to shape the lives of Asians within North America. Throughout the 19th century, Asians were labelled 'yellow peril', denoting the economic threat and menace they posed to White laborers and Western civilization at large. These attitudes lead to xenophobic policies (i.e., Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in the US; Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 in Canada; and government sanctioned internment of Japanese American and Canadian citizens during World War II.) as well as violence that included burning and vandalization of Chinese settlements and public lynching. For example, one of the biggest lynching in US history was the Chinese massacre of 1871 in which 19 Chinese immigrants were killed and hanged. In the 1980s, Japan's economic competitiveness fuelled heightened racism towards Asian Americans, leading to attacks and murders of Asians, many whom were not of Japanese descent. Though Asians are still viewed as a threat to Western civilization in certain contexts, the dominant monolithic depiction of Asians has shifted from 'yellow peril' to 'model minority'. The model minority stereotype suggests that Asians are universally successful, do not experience racism, have an edge in obtaining education and employment due to their diligence, and are considered White or White-adjacent, a view that has readily been adopted in every Western country with a significant Asian presence. The racialization of Asians as ‘model minorities' or 'honorary Whites' subjugates Asians in several ways. Labelling Asians as a model minority perpetuates the false narrative that poverty and lack of social mobility are character flaws. If you are poor, it's because you are lazy' and ignores the role that systemic racism plays in oppressing different racial minority groups. Furthermore, it reinforces racism towards other communities of colour, pits Asians against other minority groups, including Blacks and Latinxs and fuels resentment towards Asians by other communities of colour. Second, the racialization of Asians under the monolithic, model minority label and their proximity to Whiteness obscures the systemic racism faced by Asians who are often excluded from racial discourse and efforts to distribute help and resources. The assumption that Asians are a model minority conceals the growing disparities that exist within this group. ### Asian Critical Theory (AsianCrit) Framework To understand racialized identities pertaining to Asians and how they have been used to bolster dominant systems of racial oppression in the organizational context, the authors introduce AsianCrit, which is an adaptation of CRT. First, the authors discuss CRT, explaining how it can be extended to study different communities of colour. * The legal and educational field has widely utilized CRT to understand how White supremacy shapes the legal and education system and the experiences within it. * A growing group of scholars have started to apply it to the study of organizations, fitting given that the workplace is largely an extension of the broader racially divided society in which we live. * CRT tenets were those introduced by Delgado and Stefancic, which are rooted in beliefs such as treating race as a construct; acknowledging the ubiquity of racism in all aspects of life; and understanding that Whites who wield decision-making power in society only support policies that elevate people of colour when Whites also benefit. Though CRT has helped researchers centre race and White supremacy in their analyses, the CRT framework does have limitations when applied to the Asian experience. First, several scholars have noted that CRT has disproportionately informed scholarship focused on Black and White populations. Such scholarship is integral to address the serious racial oppression faced by Black communities, particularly in the US. However, an adapted racial framework can provide in-depth critical analyses that addresses other racial minority groups, providing a holistic understanding of racialization and White supremacy. Though CRT is general enough such that it can be applied to analyse all communities of colour, scholars studying non-Black communities have to generously adapt the tenets to their population of interest before they can engage in a deeper and more nuanced analyses of their population. The authors argue that CRT does not directly address how the racialization process shapes Asians' views about racial oppression and justice, other group's perceptions of them, their communities' views of each other, and institutional decision-making that excludes or marginalizes them. To address such shortcomings while still utilizing the core tenets of CRT, scholars have begun to apply critical frameworks that have been adapted and tailored for specific communities of colour (TribalCrit: Brayboy, 2005; i.e., Latinx Critical Theory: Valdes, 1996). The authors argue that the AsianCrit framework is an adaptation of CRT- consisting of adapted CRT tenets that can be used to understand how White supremacy shapes the experiences of Asians in North America. the tenets are outlined below: 1. **Asianization** - The racialization of Asians - stems from White supremacy and pervasive nativistic racism in the West that racializes Asians as perpetual foreigners who pose a threat to Western existence. 2. **Transnational contexts** underscore the need for situating Asian communities and White supremacy within global economic, political, and social processes that shape how racism against Asians are enacted (i.e., the rise of China as a political and economic force and its impact on Asian diasporas in North America). 3. **(Re)constructive history** acknowledges that Asians have been made invisible and voiceless and aims to elevate the voices of Asians through shared narratives and the incorporation of the Asian experience in scholarship and practice. 4. **Strategic (anti) essentialism** recognizes the ways White supremacy racializes Asians while also recognizing that Asians are agents of change who actively intervene to counter the racialization process. 5. **Intersectionality** recognizes that White supremacy and systems of oppression intersect on different identities (i.e., sexism, ableism, heterosexism, classism, etc.) to shape the experiences of Asians. 6. **Story, theory, and praxis** are based on the narratives of racially marginalized communities that can be used to challenge the dominant, White, European epistemology and offer alternative epistemological accounts grounded in the realities of people of colour. 7. **Commitment to social justice** highlights the fact that AsianCrit is dedicated to ending all forms of oppression and exploitation. The authors acknowledge that AsianCrit is not intended to replace CRT. It is an adaptation of CRT that provides distinct tenets that have been tailored to the Asian experience and can help advance critical analyses of White supremacy's impact on the lives of Asians, while connecting this experience to the broader CRT landscape. AsianCrit provides an avenue for the inclusion of Asian American and Asian Canadian experiences within the broader CRT landscape, providing scholars, practitioners, and policy makers to connect, collaborate, and act based on shared knowledge that centres around the Asian voice. Though AsianCrit has primarily been used in the educational field, its framework can also be applied in organizations to help stimulate much needed critical work on Asian professionals. AsianCrit can be added to the growing body of work exploring the lived experiences of Asians working in organizations. ## Examining Workplace Racial Violence against Asians during COVID-19 Applying AsianCrit to management studies. The authors apply AsianCrit to the organizational setting and discuss its relevance for examining racial violence against Asian professionals during the pandemic. This examination serves an important purpose, given credence to the racism experienced by Asians. Grounded in the reality that nativistic racism in America is pervasive and results in the racialization of Asians, AsianCrit underscores how racialization of Asians as a perpetual foreigner or a yellow peril can dehumanize and ostracize them. Asians represent a significant portion of the professional workforce, sometimes even surpassing their representation in the general population, albeit mostly at the entry level, in certain industries, such as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Not addressing the racism they face, particularly during a time marked by an increase in anti-Asian sentiment and heightened racialization, allows for racism against Asians within the workplace to go unaddressed, increasing the alienation, fear, and threat felt by Asians. ## Methods The study utilized an interpretivist, inductive approach to both data collection and data analysis to explore how COVID-19 has affected the types of racial violence experienced by Asians in the workplace. Similar to other studies using grounded theory methods, the authors bounded the context where they would derive findings and insights, and relied on purposeful sampling - choosing participants in a context where the phenomenon of interest is likely to be present. ## Research Context The authors note that the study took place during a pandemic that was racialized as an Asian virus through the use of terms such as 'Kung flu' by high-ranking leaders and politicians, which legitimized the hostility and violence towards Asians. Unfortunate as it was, studying racial violence enacted against Asians in this context allowed us to unearth and capture, at the most extreme level, how the racialization of Asians and their identities, legitimized by racist rhetoric from the highest levels of media and political leadership, can manifest in the organization and inflict harm on Asian professionals. ## Sampling and Participants The authors recruited participants through a snowball method by reaching out to their professional network, resulting in a dozen initial participants who then referred us to other Asian professionals. This effort was supplemented with recruitment from online Asian professional groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. To qualify for this study, participants had to (1) self-identify as Asian American or Asian Canadian, and (2) have at least 1 year of full-time professional work experience in Canada or the US. 35 Asian professionals (26 Asian Americans; 9 Asian Canadians) were interviewed. The sample was 74 percent female and included East, South, Southeast, and multi-ethnic Asians. The median age was 32.6, and median number of work experience was 8.2 years. Primary sources of data were collected by both authors who conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with all participants. Interviews were conducted over Zoom (videoconferencing software) and were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interviews ranged from 35 to 63 minutes in length, began with questions about the participants' professional background, using questions such as 'Please describe your overall work experience' and were followed-up with ‘How has COVID-19 affected your interactions at work?'. The authors kept the prompts general to discourage demand characteristics and allow participants to share incidents of racial violence that were salient to them. The researchers state that more than half of the participants volunteered incidents involving COVID-related racial violence without us prompting. When participants described a salient incident involving COVID-19 related racial violence, follow-up questions such as ‘Could you tell me more about what happened? What was going through your head?' were asked to more fully understand the experience and its impact. ## Ethical Awareness Since the research involved sensitive topics, they were very careful to ensure that the participants' identities were protected. They ensured that all transcription was done in-house by the two authors to ensure utmost protection of participants' privacy. Information was removed and anonymized (i.e., using pseudonyms, generalizing location, removing organization names, etc.) to protect the identities of the participants. The transcribed data was then stored on an encrypted cloud storage to which only the two authors had access. They decided to unpublish the data to prevent deductive disclosure. They chose to anonymize their ethnicity, and, to prevent deductive disclosure and ensure their confidentiality, when an incident mentioned by a participant was deemed unique and specific. ## Analysis The authors used a grounded theory approach to analyse the data. The process involved an iterative process (Gioia et al., 2013), keeping memos of reflections and sharing them during regular meetings during the data analysis process. To address discrepancies, the researchers would re-read the relevant narratives and discuss until agreement on the coding was achieved. They started by looking at manifestations of racial violence, which in turn triggered questions around misidentification, for which they would return to the data. They reached theoretical saturation after 30 interviews at which point, additional interviews did not generate additional codes, categories or themes. ## Results The study found four major categories of workplace racial violence encountered by Asians during COVID-19: 1. **Blatant**: Physical violence and physical manifestations of boundary creation and maintenance 2. **Subtle**: Identity denial, denial of racial reality (individual and systematic), yellow peril 3. **Microaggression** 4. **Agentic Empowerment** ### Types of COVID-19-Related Racial Violence Encountered The researchers first explored if and how Asians experience racial microaggressions in the workplace during COVID-19, including determining if racial microaggressions were experienced, what types of microaggressions were experienced, and how they were experienced (i.e., emotions associated) . Of the 35 interviewed, 25 confirmed experiencing at least one powerful racial microaggression in the workplace during COVID-19. #### Physical Violence The authors uncovered examples of threats of violence and actual physical aggression, something that they did not expect to find among a professional sample. One Chinese American woman healthcare worker was followed and verbally threatened by a man while on hospital grounds whereby the aggressor screamed racial expletives and threatened to sexually assault her. Another Korean Canadian nurse shared an incident in which he was spat on by a patient who was yelling racial slurs at him and his Asian colleague. The majority of cases involving physical violence or threats of violence happened in the hospital setting, mirroring the research on healthcare workers and the emotional and physical abuse they experience relative to the general population, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors state that these manifestations did not fit under the microaggression framework and were categorized as physical forms of racial violence. Although most modern forms of racial violence enacted against Asians prior to COVID-19 have not been violent. These findings highlighted vulnerable groups such as Asian healthcare workers who may be more prone to experiencing physical violence and threats compared to Asian professionals working in corporate settings. #### Physical Manifestations of Boundary Maintenance The researchers found that physical manifestations of behaviour that heightened racial differences between Asians and the majority group emerged as a salient type of microaggression related to COVID-19. Creating physical boundaries or boundary maintenance refers to the strategies used to cultivate differences between groups, often expressed as symbolic or physical ways. Boundary maintenance emerged as physical avoidance, which we categorized as microassaults due to their blatant nature. Participants shared that they had not previously experienced these blatant microassaults in the workplace, making these incidents salient to them. All participants who experienced physical distancing from others attributed it to COVID-19. Physical manifestations of boundary maintenance emerged as physical avoidance and shunning of Asians by those around them, including colleagues, supervisors, and clients. #### Yellow Peril The theme of Asians posing a threat to White existence emerged as a salient type of racial microaggression. Though the portrayal of Asians through the yellow peril lens (i.e., subhuman, dirty, diseased, and unfit for citizenship in the Western world) has diminished over the years, this study confirmed that COVID-19 has led to a ‘renaissance' of the yellow peril stereotype in the workplace. Most forms of racial violence tied to yellow peril emerged as microassaults consisting of blatant comments made by leaders, colleagues, and clients about the eating habits of Asians (i.e., Asians need to clean their food. It's because they eat dog!'), portrayals of Asians as disease carriers and spreaders (i.e., '[Asians] brought the virus!') and stereotypes portraying Asians as dirty, uneducated, and barbaric (i.e., 'Chinese people are so disgusting!'). The researchers note that this finding is notable because it reveals that the workplace, a place where generally blatant racism is neither expressed nor tolerated, is not immune to displays of overt expressions of racism. #### Identity Denial Identity denial emerged as another salient type of microaggression, manifesting mostly as microinsults – actions that subtly conveyed demeaning messages to the target. Identity denial refers to a type of acceptance threat when an individual has a core part of their identity repeatedly questioned or denied by others. The researchers provided examples related to one's American or Canadian identity that Asian participants strongly associated with but that was repeatedly denied by others. Typical examples that Asian Americans and Asian Canadians experienced were recurring questions that questioned their American or Canadian identity, such as 'Where are you really from' or ‘Do you speak English?” statements that serve as palpable reminders that Asians do not fit the prototype of what it means to be American or Canadian (Cheryan and Monin, 2005; Lalonde et al., 1992; Sanchez et al., 2018). A second in-group prototype related to one's specific ethnic group identity (i.e., Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese), which were denied by assumptions that all Asians are monolithically Chinese. Participants shared various ways in which they were made to feel misidentified in the workplace that left them not only confused and angry, but also excluded and ostracized. #### Denial of Racial Reality The researchers found that racial reality was especially affected by the pandemic in two forms – denial at the individual (i.e., denial by colleagues) and organizational level (i.e., denial by the institution). The constant denial of one's lived racial experience with racial microaggressions which were exacerbated during the pandemic by close colleagues left many of the participants feeling angry, frustrated, as well as unheard and unseen, and hence invisible. The authors note that several participants shared that the invalidation of their racial reality was far worse than the actual microaggression about which they were complaining. Systemic invalidation manifested in the form of organizational silence on the racism and hardships faced by Asian professionals during COVID-19. Organizational inaction was interpreted as a systemic invalidation of the challenges experienced by Asians and left many feeling ostracized, erased, and invisible. ## Emotions Associated with Experiencing Microaggressions during COVID-19 Participants shared the types of affect they felt during and after these encounters with racial violence. These included a range of negative emotions, including anger, frustration, paranoia and despair as they made sense of the threats to their identity. Many shared that though they did not express their emotions to the aggressor, the interaction left them in a negative mood long after it had occurred. ## Responses to COVID-19-Related Racial Violence The researchers categorize the responses that the Asian participants used during the pandemic. They categorized the responses along the dimension of agentic empowerment, defined as the degree to which people ‘enact change in their own lives or influence others in their environment’. High degrees of agency can be achieved through demonstrations of empowerment and are characterized by the ability to control one's fate. In contrast, low degrees of agency can be characterized by low demonstrations of empowerment and beliefs that one cannot control one's fate. ### Direct Strategies: Resisting Identity Denial Ascribed by Others Most responses were categorized under high agentic empowerment: participants exerted a high degree of control over the situation involving an incident of racial violence. Agentic responses high on empowerment occurred immediately or not long after the incident had occurred and focused on renegotiating their identities with others to reduce discrepancy. Here are three tactics that the Asian participants used to contest identity denial, refusing to be misidentified or mislabelled by the aggressor: 1. **Confronting the aggressor** 2. **Reporting the aggressor** 3. **Publicizing the microaggression** ## Discussion The study results have both theoretical and practical implications for understanding workplace racial violence against Asian professionals. The authors dispel the long held belief that Asians are a model minority that is immune from experiencing racism. COVID-19 served as an important contextual factor that renewed and heightened anti-Asian sentiments, which have long existed in North America. Yet, historically, anti-Asian racism has managed to go underexamined in both the mainstream media and management studies based on the belief that Asians are White-adjacent and do not warrant further investigation. The pandemic's racialization as an Asian virus through the use of racist terms such as ‘China virus' by political leaders legitimized and normalized the expression of prejudice against Asians, revealing how socio-political factors such as current events in the form of a global pandemic and its handling by political leaders can heighten expressions of racial prejudice in the workplace where displays of overt racism are typically not condoned. Though the pandemic itself will eventually come to an end, its secondhand effects are likely to linger in the broader psyche, manifesting in the workplace as racial microaggressions. The current study focuses on the distinct racialization and the psychological processes of Asians, which can facilitate organizational action to legitimize the lived experiences of Asians. ## Study Limitations and Directions for Future Research The study offers several avenues for fruitful future research: First, the authors recognize the need for further research, as their study focused on the detailed accounts of Asians whose experiences are likely different from those of recent Asian immigrants to North America. The US and Canada are hosts to a growing population of international Asians whose experience might look different from that of Asian Americans or Asian Canadians. Future studies can explore the unique types of racial violence experienced by recently immigrated Asians, and what type of responses they choose and how it compares to the responses used by Asian Americans and Asian Canadians. The authors argue that their study sample was predominantly female, and acknowledge the need to explore the intersection of race and gender. Their study was comprised primarily of Asians of a single ethnic origin, and the future studies may wish to explore the experiences of multi-ethnic Asians, such as those who are ‘White passing'. Second, the study relied on a snapshot of narratives collected during the beginning of the pandemic and did not capture the fuller, more insidious, long-term effects of the pandemic that may permeate the workplace long after the event has occurred. An interesting and fruitful study would be to conduct a longitudinal study among a group of Asian American and Asian Canadian professionals to understand the more long-term effects of COVID-19 induced racial violence. Such studies may also benefit from combining grounded theory methodology with critical incident techniques (CIT) that can help capture specific events and promote further in-depth and targeted reflection Lastly, the researchers' sample represented a diverse range of Asian Americans and Asian Canadians working in different industries ranging from finance to higher education, which may have diluted potential differences in ways racial violence can manifest in certain settings. Further research may wish to examine how racial violence manifests differently in particular industries. Given the inductive nature of the study, including a wide range of experiences representing various industries and countries provided a starting point onto which future studies can build upon. Further, including both Americans and Canadians in their study offered them a unique chance to highlight the similar types of racial violence experienced by Asians in the US and Canada. Though the two countries are culturally different, they both share historical similarities in their discriminatory treatment of their Asian population. The study lays the groundwork for future studies that transcend national boundaries and can be generalized beyond North America. Furthermore, their work also highlights the need for studies that explore the experiences of Asian diasporas in other White majority countries such as Germany, Australia, England, and New Zealand, which have sizable and growing Asian populations, so that these countries can also confront their racist and colonial pasts. The ultimate goal of such studies is to ensure that historical mistreatment of Asians, and other racial minority groups, are neither allowed to repeat nor persist in the not-so-distant future,. ## Acknowledgments This research was supported by funding from Los Andes University. The authors would like to thank Dr. Caroline Gatrell for her helpful feedback and support on this manuscript. ## Notes 1. We intentionally included the experience of both Asian Americans and Asian Canadians in our study. This is because despite the different histories and cultures represented by the two countries, both countries have a similar legacy of racism against Asians, including similar immigration policies that banned the entry of Chinese immigrants as well as similar reports of racial discrimination (Hall et al., 2001). 2. We conducted our study between May and Aug 2020, which was before the Atlanta shooting in which 6 Asian American women were shot. Only after that incident did the media start covering anti-Asian hate crime and organizations start speaking out against anti-Asian hate.