Andrew Yang Says Asians Need To 'Show Our American-ness' In Order To Avoid Racism
Andrew Yang’s name is trending on Twitter, but for many Asian Americans, something isn’t adding up.
In a Washington Post op-ed published Wednesday, the former presidential candidate, who suspended his 2020 campaign in February, attempted to address the increasing incidents of harassment and blatant racism against Asians amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In what he described as a “call to action,” the businessman argued that Asian Americans should combat coronavirus-related racism by helping to end the public health crisis, urging them to “help our neighbors, donate gear, vote, wear red white and blue, volunteer, fund aid organizations” and “demonstrate that we are part of the solution.”
“We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness in ways we never have before,” he added in the article, titled, “We Asian Americans Are Not the Virus, but We Can Be Part of the Cure.”
By late Thursday, more than 6,000 tweets had turned “Andrew Yang” into a trending name, with people criticizing the former presidential hopeful for suggesting that the burden should be on Asian people in the United States to prove that they deserve to be in the country.
This is not it, Andrew.
It shouldn’t be on Asians to prove we’re American by sacrifice. That hasn’t protected us before and won’t now.
We prove we’re American by fighting things that should be un-American, like racism—and not just when it happens to us.https://t.co/0OsmxeO2oh— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) April 2, 2020
andrew yang, wearing "red white and blue" isn't going to stop people from being racist when they see me. do you think the guy who harasses me on the street cares about community work we've done? want us to hand out resumes while we're being told to "go back to china"? fuck off
— Ashley Oh (@itsashleyoh) April 2, 2020
The op-ed opens with an anecdote about how Yang felt last week when a man outside a grocery store gave him an “accusatory” look.
“I felt...
