5 Non-Obvious Reasons for Why the Lunar New Year Shooting is Disorienting for Asian Americans
What should have been a joyous Lunar New Year celebration this year ended up with 11 people murdered, 9 injured, and millions of Asian Americans across the country traumatized and devastated.
While many were reading about this through their social media feeds the morning after, I was driving through the street it happened to visit my family, just a few blocks away from all the helicopters swarming overhead, and the dispatched SWAT and homeland security.
What should have been an exciting day of celebration transformed into a dystopian day of fear, especially with the gunman still on the loose on new years day. Many, including my own family, were fearful to go outside.
Back in 2021, I wrote a Medium post covering a sociocultural analysis of the horrific salon shooting in Atlanta to outline some unspoken reasons for why it was especially difficult for the Asian American community to process. The Lunar New Year shooting in Monterey Park was a big trigger for me and many other Asian Americans to remind us about the anxiety, fear, and injustice we feel living in the U.S.
Since a lot of people found it insightful then, I decided to write this article as an expansion of my last post to delineate some non-obvious reasons why it is especially traumatizing and disorienting for the Asian American community.
1. The shooter was Asian.
This has been confounding for many, including myself. The Lunar New Year shooting has been identified and labeled as more domestically-motivated, than hate-driven but this doesn’t discount the trauma and trepidation it created for the Asian American community.
As soon as the shooting happened, Asian Americans’ first instinct was to believe that this was a hate crime. While it has been relieving to know that it is not as hatefully motivated, many will still use this fact to discount the gravity of the shooting and what it actually stands for—the collective fear that Asian Americans live with for being “different.”
The escalation of grief and anxiety that the Asian American community has taken on, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been exhausting and devastating, and it is something that cannot be dismissed.
2. Monterey Park is supposed to be the “safe place” for Asian Americans.
Los Angeles is considered one of the most ethically diverse regions in the U.S. And according to various academic sources, Monterey Park is a prime example of an ethnoburb.
Ethnoburbs are suburban regions with a notable cluster of a particular ethnic minority population.
What many may not know is, Monterey Park (and the greater San Gabriel Valley (SGV)) is the first region in the country where the minority became the majority. Because of its unique diaspora, the SGV is an anomaly when it comes to assimilation. The SGV is a community that fully welcomes and caters to its immigrant population, allowing it to thrive and preserve its rooted culture and heritage.
It is one of the biggest hearts of the Asian American community in the U.S., and known as the first suburban Chinatown with a population of over 62% Asian Americans.
This is a place where Asian Americans across Southern California often make hour-long commutes here just to enjoy a nice weekend morning of dim sum and go grocery shopping. During my childhood, Monterey Park always felt like the Mecca for Asian Americans.
The SGV is truly a special and sacred place to the Asian American community. But in a place that is supposed to be safer in theory than anywhere else, it was not. Many families, including my own, that had plans to dine out for dinner or attend cultural festivities canceled them all and hid in their homes in fear.
More personally, as someone who recently moved back to LA after living on the east coast for almost a decade, I was excited and even a bit relieved to come back to what should have been a safer community. While living on the east coast during the rise in Asian hate crimes, there were periods during the COVID pandemic when I’d mask up and wear my darkest sunglasses I kept seeing countless reports of Asian American women like me getting murdered and assaulted.
3. Monterey Park/the SGV is an ethnic enclave for older first-generation, foreign-born citizens who came here to find a place to call home.
Monterey Park and San Gabriel Valley include over 55% of foreign-born citizens. This is over 3 times the U.S.’ average.
These are people who immigrated to the US from another country in hopes of living what they believed the American dream offers — a place to call home with a better and safer life. And as I’ve mentioned in my previous article:
Home is supposed to be a safe haven and sanctuary. My family and millions of others have given up their homes and traveled to foreign lands to seek new opportunities that they otherwise would never have had.
Oftentimes, many of us are born into this world expecting a home, taking for granted that many others had to venture out and find one for themselves. However, knowing that our families have come all this way just put up with racist slurs, fight to receive minimum pay, and live in fear of hate crimes — and still not find their sense of home — is incredibly disheartening.
“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” — Warsan Shire
Despite all our families have been through, they still have not found a place to call home.
What happened this past weekend has been disorienting because it reminds Asian Americans of their dismissed roots and falsely perceived hopes for what the U.S. offered when they first immigrated. For something like the Lunar New Year shooting to occur in a place like Monterey Park — a place that is supposed to be the role-model safe haven city for many immigrants — only creates more hopelessness for the millions of Asian Americans across the country.
4. Monterey Park thrives on Asian-owned small businesses, which thrive off of opportunities like Lunar New Year… but this year, they may take a hit.
With several changes of plans after the Lunar New Year shooting, it will certainly have a sizable impact on the Asian-owned small business economy. What was supposed to be a bustling and festive street was occupied by homeland security and helicopters swarming overhead on new year’s day. Many families, including my own, who had plans to dine out for dinner, or attend cultural festivities canceled them all and hid in their homes in fear.
Lunar New Year is often a time that Asian American-owned small businesses in the leisure/hospitality sector rely on to boost their revenues, according to different sources.
In San Gabriel Valley, the leisure/hospitality sector took the biggest hit during COVID and has been on its way to making a long-awaited comeback. These businesses often rely on grand events like Lunar New Year to give them the extra boost safety net they need.
And through a more macro lens, based on the small business economy during the onset of COVID-19, over 80% of Asian small business owners reported negative effects from the pandemic and 44% have decreased the number of people they employ, according to a 2020 survey by the Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship.
Further, research by JPMorgan Chase reported that Asian American-owned businesses took a substantial hit post-lockdown.
5. Mental health is a highly stigmatizing subject for Asian Americans due to their multi-generational culture of minimization.
The Lunar New Year shooting has provoked grief, fear, anger, sorrow, bitterness, and countless other emotions in the Asian American community. However, this community, especially, is going to have a difficult time processing everything mentally and emotionally.
While Asian culture individually has varying beliefs, as demonstrated by research, however, the overarching theme across them all is that traditional beliefs are that there is a gap between traditional vs. modern beliefs about mental health and wellness. And as a result, there is just as wide of a gap when it comes to learning how to properly cope in times of distress.
Moreover, as I’ve mentioned in my previous article, we as Asian Americans come from a multi-generational culture of minimizing, which makes it more challenging to know how to ask for help.
During a time when so many are hurting, we’re still struggling because it’s up to us to speak up for ourselves and call out the many injustices. It’s a very isolating experience and this is something that cannot be fully understood without understanding our culture. A large part of Asian culture traditionally emphasizes the concept of minimizing ourselves, being selfless, and embracing humility — and we see our parents and grandparents actively practicing this every day for as long as we can remember.
Millions of Asian Americans are infuriated but we have been trained from a young age to learn to be reluctant to speak strongly about our emotions because of how stigmatized it is in our culture. Traditionally, by way of Confucianism and other beliefs, an individual’s value is dependent on our ability to take care of our family and community. Thus, indulging too much in our emotions can deem us inadequate in our ability to properly care for our families — essentially, our purpose in life. Failure to demonstrate this ultimately creates a feeling of weakness which is seen as shameful.
More than ever, this is a time when we need more awareness and compassion. While this is a systemic issue, making a positive difference begins with each and every person and how we respond to issues like this on a day-to-day.
Here are some ways you can do to be compassionate and be supportive:
1. Bring awareness to the issue.
- Call it out.
- Reach out to your AAPI friends and coworkers.
- Bring attention to it at work.
- Educate others on what happened and why it’s a big deal.
- Educate yourself and others on the history of Asians in America.
- Seek out resources to combat anti-racism.
2. Be conscious of racism and act on it.
- Speak out against it.
- Actively make efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
- Educate others on the issues at hand. Report hate crimes.
3. Support your local and national Asian American organizations and businesses.
4. Actively find ways to be inclusive. Diversity is about representation but inclusivity is about making individuals feel valued, welcome, integrated, and heard.
