Asian American Race Relations

Race relations between Asian Americans and Black Americans have always been rocky. In order to understand the historical relationship between Asian and Black Americans, it is important to understand the intersectionality of hip hop and how it’s shifted through history. There is so much racial tension between Asian and Black people and hip hop was used both to widen and close the gap between the two groups. Hip-hop for both Asian and Black people has been used as an act of rebellion, but despite this shared interest, tension between the groups still prevails. To move past these differences, we would have to first understand them: Asian hip-hop is different than Black hip-hop, hip-hop brings to light different types of stereotypes for Asian and …show more content…
As explained through Jeff Chang’s book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop hip-hop developed out of gang communities and into a cultural movement. During its origins, music and graffiti and b-boying were for everyone: people of all different races participated in what Chang describes as a “virtuoso display of style” (Chang 118). It didn’t matter what race you were; it was the coming together and showcasing your own personal style, and during this time hip-hop was more easily shared between races because it was just about expressing yourself rather than expressing your people. Overtime, hip-hop became more politicized. Rappers began to be known as “journalists” and increasingly Black rappers became more popular as they were the ones showcasing their lives (Chang 328). As the only rappers were Black, only Black people were able to truly identify with their statements. They began to rap about social issues, such as police brutality, and distanced themselves from associating with other racial groups. Hip-hop as a genre was only identifiable as ‘Black culture’ and left those of other races in the dust: one of which was Asian people. There were few Asian American DJ’s, rappers, b-boyers, and graffiti artists during the time that hip-hop was really developing as a genre, and of those who did consider themselves …show more content…
Hip-hop stemmed from gang culture, which was primarily African-American and Hispanic as it was in the Bronx neighborhood that was the result of white flight. As the genre grew in popularity, so did the number of graffiti artists. Graffiti was easily demonized and pegged as a form of vandalism, but while criminalizing graffiti, they were also criminalizing dark skinned people. The “Profile of a Common Offender” which was established by the Transit Authority in 1976 labeled common offenders as male, Black (then Puerto Rican, then other), aged 13-16 (Chang 135). This led to the profiling of many young people of color, all who fell into the stereotype of what a criminal was: a young Black hip-hop gangster. Even for young African-American people who may not have necessarily even liked hip hop, they were profiled the same way. Hip-hop inadvertently reduced these Black people to a stereotype. But African-Americans weren’t the only ones trying to combat stereotypes. Asian-Americans had the opposite approach; they didn’t fit into the schema of what hip-hop was. The text, Just Another Quick-Witted, Egg-Roll-Joke-Making, Insult-Hurling Chinese-American Rapper, focuses on how the rapper Jin elevated his career in the early 2000’s as a freestyle rapper despite many Asian stereotypes being thrown at him. During rap battles, Jin’s opponents would often make “Asian jokes to which