We Did Nothing Wrong, and They Destroyed Our Stores

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I.

If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will.

Your story, told through someone else, is stolen. The stolen story is no longer yours; it is theirs, twisted and disfigured to augment their story, like a piece of metal hammered into form a small piece of a suit of armor. Our story can only be ours if we tell it. Only then can we imbue our own experience with the sovereignty that it deserves.

So here is our story.

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II.

Last month, a black man named Freddie Gray died in Baltimore while being arrested by the police. Gray suffered multiple fractures in his spine in the course of the arrest. Gray’s death was a tragedy; he should not have died.

People got angry at this senseless death—the latest one of the many senseless deaths of black men at the hands of the police. The anger turned into protests. The protests turned violent. In the course of the protests, numerous Asian American businesses were destroyed:

What the rioters didn’t steal from Hyo Yol Choi, they destroyed, or tried to. When it was over, Beauty Fair, in a squat, unattached brick building that Choi leases, was ankle-deep in ruined inventory—in torn-down shelves, racks and counters; in stomped-open bottles, jars and tubes. The marauders took wigs, leaving dozens of bald mannequin heads scattered along the walls. Brushes and mirrors, ribbons and barretts, costume jewelry and women’s hosiery were strewn from front to back, and the floor was a swamp of bergamot grease, argan butter, tea tree oil and leave-in hair mayonnaise.

The story of West Baltimore can be told through life at one intersection [Washington Post]

At least 42 other Korean American businesses were destroyed. When the store owners tried to defend their business, they were beaten. Were Asian businesses targeted for being Asian-owned? There are some indications pointing that way. Witnesses say black-owned businesses were spared from looting. But that doesn’t matter. The fact that other businesses remain standing doesn’t magically pick up the destroyed merchandise from the floor and put it back on the shelves, fully restored.

Really, who cares about those other stores? For immigrants, your store is your universe. It is everything you own in the world, everything you experience about the world, rolled into a dingy strip mall storefront. You poured down all the money you had, plus a staggering amount of debt, just to own that shitty store. There, in that store, you spend your entire life—sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years. You barely know what other stores exist around the block, much less around the city. You barely know the weather outside. The only people you see are the customers, who don’t give a shit about another chink, another dot head, another Ay-rab manning the cashier at yet another deli, liquor store, nail shop, beauty shop, bodega. The store, its inventory, the people who come in and out of it, are the only things the immigrant knows about the world.

The Baltimore rioters destroyed our universes. Forty-two of them, at least. That’s our story.

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III.

Please, if you can just shut the fuck up. Didn’t I just say we will tell our own story? Our story is not yours. It is certainly not for you to pick up as a rhetorical cudgel, used to beat up people who are justifiably indignant with all the shittiness around them.

Nor will we countenance the well-intended, but tone-deaf, counsel to shut our story down for some kind of greater good. We did nothing wrong, and our stores were destroyed. And we are mad as shit about it.

Yes, I know Asian Americans enjoy privileges that African Americans do not. I’m not stupid. We did not go through the same historical suffering; we don’t have the same disadvantages today. I also know that when it comes to racial discrimination, Asian Americans hardly have clean hands. I know all about the petty racism that Asian Americans engage in, against whites, blacks, Latinos—better than you will ever know. It's a stain on our people. I have invested my own time and money addressing that, while you lazily decry Asian racism in the cesspool that is the Internet comment section.

I am still waiting to hear why any of that justifies the fact that our stores were destroyed. 

Don’t bother telling us that the riots were some kind of “forest fire,” a natural reaction to the greater oppression, because this disaster was no fire. This disaster had human faces, human hands that smashed the bottles, human feet that kicked us into submission when we were desperately trying to protect our stores. Don't ask us to extend understanding to those humans while we are still nursing our burning injuries. Bearing the brunt of this disaster gives us a view of those humans that are not kind and understanding. Because when our stocks are spilled on the ground, when a punch to our gut knocks our wind out, when our world is disintegrating before our eyes, we cannot understand how, just how, we deserve any of this punishment that those humans are raining down upon us, because the police killed a black man. We cannot understand why we deserve to watch our lives burn, helpless.

IV.

We have to tell our own story. Because if you don’t tell your own story, someone else will. And this is our story: we did nothing wrong, and they destroyed our stores.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

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