It felt like history on repeat.
Last Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was called “a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party” and “the spy in Americans’ pockets” in a charged, five-hour appearance in front of the House Energy & Commerce Committee. In his prepared remarks, he addressed safety on the platform and attempted to reassure lawmakers that, among other things, TikTok’s parent company, the Beijing-based ByteDance, will soon no longer have any access to user data.
But microaggressions appeared to be on full display, as lawmakers mangled Chew’s name, assumed he was Chinese despite repeated reminders that he is Singaporean, and wasted opportunities to better understand the app’s potential dangers to repeatedly ask some version of an age-old ugly question: Was he, or anyone in his employ, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party? His country of origin, his Harvard University education, and that TikTok is an American company didn’t seem to matter. “They brought him in to yell at him and show they’re strong on China,” notes POLITICO’s Rebecca Kern.
Sure, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about TikTok (and all social media platforms); more on that below. But the posturing of the committee was yet another unwelcome reminder for Asian Americans that they are permanent outsiders in the U.S. For many, the lingering debate over the origin of COVID, the rise in hate crimes, and political brinksmanship with China have created an environment of constant stress. “You can’t avoid paying attention to the rhetoric because it has a direct impact on our lives,” Ellen Min, a Korean American from Pennsylvania, told CNN.
I leave you with insights from psychologist Jenny Wang, author of the book Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans. She offers stirring advice in an interview appearing, of course, on TikTok. Feeling both targeted and invisible and burdened by oppressive stereotypes, Asian Americans are facing a well-being tipping point. To move forward, she says, abandon traditional coping mechanisms like stoicism and embrace your unique identity by becoming an active student of your history, personal and collective.
“Home is this idea that I no longer need to abandon parts of myself in order to live the life I want to live,” she says. “Permission to come home is the idea that I may have to cocreate that space in which I can exist authentically and in a powerful way.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ruth Umoh.
On Point: TikTok
The Biden administration wants TikTok to lose its Chinese ownership
It's either that or lose access to the U.S. market. My colleague, David Meyer, breaks down why TikTok’s attempt to explain the pointlessness of this ask is a tough go.
Fortune
China accuses the U.S. of spreading disinformation about TikTok
Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shu Jueting says a forced sale “will seriously damage the confidence of investors from all over the world, including China, in investing in the U.S.” She adds that “the U.S. should stop spreading disinformation about data security, stop suppressing the relevant company and provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for foreign businesses to invest and operate in the U.S.”
Los Angeles Times
Is TikTok a threat to U.S. national security?
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the U.S. Senate that the app “screams” security concerns and that the Chinese government could possibly influence American opinion of China through TikTok. The U.S., Canada, and several other European and Asia-Pacific countries have already banned the app on government-issued devices. That said, the evidence is unclear.
CNN
Why ban TikTok and not Facebook?
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center has reported on the national security risk of Facebook, and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says the company consistently understaffs its counter-espionage and counter-terrorism teams. “This ban on TikTok was on the basis that it had an increasing amount of data they collect and can share,” Daily Texan columnist Sonali Muthukrishnan wrote of the statewide ban ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott last December. “Although this is the case with many social media apps, the state has chosen to target a tech company from China, making the choice xenophobic.”
On Background
A new study on the experiences of members of the AAPI community in California examined data from 2019-2021 and found increased economic distress and poorer mental and physical health outcomes after the pandemic began.
And I do mean the AAPI community: This study is one of the few that uses disaggregated data.
“We have been advocating for the collecting of disaggregated data on Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders so that we can have the precise data that we need to be able to measure what is happening within the many different communities that fall under that umbrella,” says Howard Shih, managing director of AAPI Data and a study co-author.
Some highlights:
- One in four Asian Americans in California has experienced a hate crime or hate incident, with Southeast Asians reporting the highest numbers of hateful interactions.
- About one in five Asian Americans in California worry "all the time" or "often" about being a victim of a hate crime, with worries highest among Filipino Americans.
- Suicide ideation increased between 2018 and 2019 and 2020 to 2021 for Asian Americans, with increases especially pronounced among non-U.S. citizens.
- About three in 10 Asian Americans in California reported difficulty accessing health services, citing financial cost, lack of awareness about options, lack of insurance, and limited English proficiency.
Parting Words
"Asked which of the country's ethnic minorities has been subjected to the most discrimination and the worst injustices, very few persons would even think of answering: 'The Japanese Americans'...Yet, if the question refers to persons alive today, that may well be the correct reply. Like the Negroes, the Japanese have been the object of color prejudice...When new opportunities, even equal opportunities, are opened up, the minority's reaction to them is likely to be negative—either self-defeating apathy or a hatred so all-consuming as to be self-destructive."
—University of California, Berkeley sociologist William Petersen, 1966
