‘We can’t keep taking these tiny morsels.’ Why Tacoma condemning Asian hate isn’t enough
Suzanne Pak hadn’t been planning her words for long. When she spoke during the Tacoma City Council’s March 23 meeting, it came from her heart — and her gut.
Pak, a 47-year-old Korean American who works as director of Community and Behavioral Health at Korean Women’s Association, was invited to speak for the Council’s passage of a resolution denouncing anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander hate. Unanimously approved, the resolution came in response to the alarming uptick in reports of anti-Asian crime and bigotry across the country, and in particular the recent mass shooting in Atlanta, which left a total eight dead, including six Asian women.
Pak — whose family immigrated to the United States when she was a young child — told the council she was grateful for the important gesture of solidarity, given the rise in anti-Asian hate that the coronavirus pandemic has fueled in the United States.
But when her Zoom mic went live, she couldn’t help noting that more than words and resolutions are needed here in Tacoma.
“I feel like it’s not enough,” Pak bluntly told the city’s elected officials and anyone watching at home.
Hopefully we were listening.
Unlike places like New York, Los Angeles and Boston, Tacoma has not seen a recent increase in anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander hate crimes, according to statistics provided by the Tacoma Police Department. TPD spokesperson Wendy Haddow told The News Tribune there were a total of 25 hate crimes recorded in 2019 and 24 in 2020. Of those, none were identified as specifically targeting Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders. A March 21 break-in at a Tacoma cafe on Pacific Avenue — news of which recently spread online — is also not suspected to have been motivated by race or ethnicity, Haddow said.
Still, according to Pak — whose call received knowing nods of acknowledgment from a number of City Council members — the need for societal transformation and change doesn’t start and stop with simply condemning ignorance, hate, crime and violence.
If Tacoma really wants to be the kind of Welcoming City it takes pride in, Pak said, it will require an “intentional” effort to connect with and understand its incredibly diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander community, including reexamining how decisions are made, how priorities are set and how current initiatives focused on diversity, equity and inclusion are actually working.
In other words, when it comes to ensuring that Asian American and Pacific Islander voices are included and heard, it has to mean more than checking a box, Pak said.
“The proclamation recognized that — of course — violence against Asian Americans is never OK. They were denouncing it, and I think that’s very important,” Pak told The News Tribune. “I think the next step is for them to review their planning process, review their equity and inclusion process, and to intentionally include Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the process.”
On Thursday, Pak said the challenge she delivered to the City Council was slightly out of character, or at least it used to be.
As crimes and attacks against Asian Americans have been reported with increasing regularity — including in Pak’s childhood home of Texas, where an Asian man and his two young sons were attacked by a knife-wielding man last year — she said she’s felt compelled to speak up, and not just about the violence.
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are too often overlooked and unseen, she argued. They often lack representation in public office, and even when a city like Tacoma is trying to do the right thing and improve diversity and outreach, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders can sometimes be forgotten, she said.
In part, Pak believes that’s because the broad umbrella that’s often used to to describe Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is really an imprecise blanket term for dozens of ethnicities and hundreds of languages. The simple act of consolidating the most heterogeneous racial group in the United States can act as erasure that hinders the government’s ability to understand what unique populations need, she said.
Pak also believes that “Asians” are often seen as a “model minority,” creating the false sense that because some are doing well, little need exists. Historically, that has been compounded by the tendency of some Asian Americans to stay quiet, she said, because they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves or “rock the boat.”
“I don’t want to sound like I’m ungrateful, or I don’t want to sound like a troublemaker when the City of Tacoma is doing this wonderful thing by passing a resolution. But when I read (the resolution) ... it just made me realize that it’s not enough,” Pak said. “As Asian Americans, we can’t keep taking these tiny little morsels and saying, ‘We’re gonna just subsist upon this.’”
Although Pak acknowledged that there are no easy answers to the issues she sought to underscore — and it’s much easier to condemn violence and hate than it is to correct systemic failures and blind spots — that’s not to say she’s lacking ideas worth strongly considering.
For starters, she said, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders should be encouraged to pursue local office, and, when they run, they should be supported.
Even while noting her admiration for former Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland — the daughter of a Korean mother and African American father who recently became the first Korean American Congresswoman and the first Black Congress member from Washington — Pak said the lack of elected representation is simply “not OK.”
Beyond that, Pak said, the city should examine its hiring practices. Of more than 3,600 total employees in the fourth quarter of 2020, 161 were identified as “Asian,” 87 were Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander while 225 were of an unidentified mix of races and ethnicities, according to city data. Together, Asians, native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders make up roughly 10 percent of the city’s population, according to Census estimates.
Park also said Tacoma must reconsider how input from Asian American and Pacific Islanders is being included in the city’s current Heal the Heart initiative and its ongoing anti-racist transformation effort, which was affirmed by City Council vote last year.
According to Catherine Ushka, who represents Tacoma’s Eastside and South End on the City Council, there’s no denying the validity of Pak’s argument.
It’s something Ushka believes the city’s leadership is committed to, while noting the deliberate work it will take.
“There’s not a single policy that will solve this. It’s us working together to build a community that will behave differently, and have higher expectations and stand up for our neighbors,” Ushka said. “That’s what’s gonna change it.”
Fittingly, Pak ended her time in the City Council spotlight this week by issuing one more challenge.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, she noted and it would make a fine time for the city to start making the strides that she believes are long overdue.
“I think the city needs to really make an effort to engage with the communities,” Pak said.
“If that means that it has to slow down a little bit, or if it means that they have to kind of rethink the makeup of the people who are involved in these planning discussions, I think that is warranted.”
Stop AAPI Hate, End White Supremacy Rally
▪ Saturday, March 27 at 2 p.m.
▪ Chinese Reconciliation Park, 1741 N. Schuster Parkway, Tacoma
