We at HA:N United Methodist Church are outraged and heartbroken by the racism and violence against members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, especially our women, our elders, migrants and those struggling with poverty. As a predominantly Asian American and multi-racial congregation, we grieve for all the lives lost and hurt, particularly since the start of the COVID pandemic. And we are devastated by the thousands of AAPIs across the country who have been targets of violence, including the six Asian women murdered in Atlanta, Georgia on March 16, 2021.

Members of AAPI communities in the U.S. have long suffered racial bias and hatred. Racism is a social construct that stems from white supremacy, Western imperialism, settler colonialism, orientalism and xenophobia. It has blinded many from seeing how U.S. policies at home and abroad (especially through militarism) have led to political, social and economic destabilization in this country and many parts of the world. They included policies of forced relocation of Indigenous peoples through the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and later on to a steady flow of immigrants and refugees from Asia, the Pacific Islands and elsewhere, and more since the enactment of the 1965 Immigration Act. 

Despite the fact that AAPIs are a vital part of the history of continental North America, with Filipinos arriving as early as 1587, too many of us have been marked as perpetual foreigners. The U.S. government has shown a pattern of deploying nativist policies such as the Naturalization Act of 1790 to disenfranchise the very people they recruited for labor. Chinese and Japanese workers arriving in the 1820s and 1880s respectively, faced hostility, derision, and violence even as they were contributing to the building of this nation -- pushing it toward its stated ideals of liberty, opportunity and equality. The U.S.’s first federal immigration law, the Page Act of 1875, prohibited the entry of all Chinese women into the United States. Seven years later, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act banned the immigration of Chinese men. The U.S. government’s placement of our Japanese American citizens in incarceration camps during World War II and Executive Order 13769, also known as the Muslim travel ban, were travesties that continue in the form of systemic and individual racism against AAPIs in the U.S. today.

Regardless of the myriad contributions -- in science, the arts, the military, business, academia -- people of AAPI descent continue to be marginalized, stereotyped, exploited, violated, and rendered invisible. Those with limited resources and/or English language ability have borne the brunt of the violence against our communities. And the murder of six Asian women in Atlanta was not just an isolated instance of racism and bigotry, but also the product of racist misogyny.  

AAPI diversity has been turned into stereotypes and caricatures, and dissolved into a Black and white binary that erases the complex totality of who we are.  White supremacy and Western imperialism have sought to hypersexualize AAPI women and emasculate AAPI men in an attempt to minimize our humanity and strip us of our dignity. Further, the Model Minority Myth, falsely placing Asian identity in proximity to whiteness, has amplified anti-Blackness. Thus, AAPIs have been exploited both as tools of oppression and convenient scapegoats within racism. 

AAPIs reflect a broad diversity of ethnicities, ancestries, caste, cultures, histories, languages, faiths, genders, sexualities, abilities, socioeconomic status, class, geographies, and much more that comprise the pan-AAPI community. We celebrate both our diversity and our distinct identities within this community. When we join together to work for racial justice and our collective liberation, we will be seen, heard, and acknowledged in our fullness. And we will not be silenced or dismissed.

As a church dedicated to living out the healing and liberating message of Christ, queering the status quo, and confronting all forms of injustice and oppression, we at HA:N commit to finding solutions by joining with all communities of color and everyone working to dismantle white supremacy. We commit to fighting racism by calling out racist laws, attitudes and actions. We also commit to tearing down prejudices within our own communities -- including ethnocentrism, caste supremacy, colorism, language hegemony, religious fundamentalism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, materialism -- starting with honest self-reflection.

Yet, as we name our deep pain, we must also acknowledge how members of our own communities have too often been silent bystanders to the oppression and suffering of others. Within the U.S. and as well as around the world, we are witnesses or even perpetrators of oppression of Indigenous peoples and state-sponsored violence.  

This moment requires all of us to come together -- irrespective of our differences -- and join the urgent call for solidarity with those who refuse to stand by and watch another be oppressed or erased. We must work together to end racism. We urge all who yearn for liberation from injustice and oppression to stand up and speak out against anti-AAPI hatred and violence, and all forms of racism and bigotry. We invite you to co-conspire with us in pursuit of the peaceful and just creation that God intended for us all.