“What have I made of myself and my children? … We cannot exercise our rights. Humility and insults, who is responsible for all this? Me and the American government. Obstacles this way, blockades that way, and bridges burnt behind.”
The quotation above was excepted from the 1928 suicide letter of Vaishno Das Bagai, an Indian immigrant victimized by racist Anti-Asian legislation which stripped him of his citizenship, property, employment, and ultimately, his self-esteem in America. This New Yorker article looks at history and the experiences of people like Bagai to explore how systemic racism continues to influence the lives of Asians in America. It describes the duality of the Asian American experience:
“There are now, in a sense, two Asian Americas: one formed by five centuries of systemic racism, and another, more genteel version, constituted in the aftermath of the 1965 law. These two Asian Americas float over and under each other like tectonic plates, often clanging discordantly. So, while Chinese-Americans and Indian-Americans are among the most prosperous groups in the country, Korean-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Filipino-Americans have lower median personal earnings than the general population.”
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