Dougherty Arts Center
Consistently Consider
RECEIVED Wed., July 6, 2022
Dear Editor,
News of the Chronicle’s sponsored content about mail-order brides recently came to my attention. You rightly pulled the ad and apologized for the content, saying, “Going forward we will not host any mail-order bride sponsored ads…” Great. But if I may, I’d like to go back for a minute.
My hope is that you’re not completely unaware of or willfully ignorant to the heightened level of violence the AAPI community has faced since the start of the COVID pandemic. Data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism show that anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 339 percent in 2021. From March of 2020 to December of 2021, Stop AAPI hate received 10,905 reports of hate incidents against AAPI people. A majority of those hate incidents (62%) are reported by women.
However, the underlying violence and aggression towards AAPI persons does not start and stop with the pandemic. Nor does the subjugation of AAPI women, who have long been fetishized and reduced and owned for other people’s pleasure. So when we see the ads - or even just stories about them - the messages we receive from those posts hit us deeply. And painfully.
What also troubles me is this: What if no one had called you out on those ads in the first place? Would they still have a home on your site or in your paper today? And if there’s a slight possibility that the truthful answer to that question is “yes” or even “maybe,” then I respectfully request that you go beyond apologies and sensitivity training and indefinite moratoriums on questionable ads. Going forward, I ask that you consistently consider the role your actions have in sending harmful messages that uphold dangerous systems of belief and oppression, and what more you can do to change them.
News of the Chronicle’s sponsored content about mail-order brides recently came to my attention. You rightly pulled the ad and apologized for the content, saying, “Going forward we will not host any mail-order bride sponsored ads…” Great. But if I may, I’d like to go back for a minute.
My hope is that you’re not completely unaware of or willfully ignorant to the heightened level of violence the AAPI community has faced since the start of the COVID pandemic. Data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism show that anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 339 percent in 2021. From March of 2020 to December of 2021, Stop AAPI hate received 10,905 reports of hate incidents against AAPI people. A majority of those hate incidents (62%) are reported by women.
However, the underlying violence and aggression towards AAPI persons does not start and stop with the pandemic. Nor does the subjugation of AAPI women, who have long been fetishized and reduced and owned for other people’s pleasure. So when we see the ads - or even just stories about them - the messages we receive from those posts hit us deeply. And painfully.
What also troubles me is this: What if no one had called you out on those ads in the first place? Would they still have a home on your site or in your paper today? And if there’s a slight possibility that the truthful answer to that question is “yes” or even “maybe,” then I respectfully request that you go beyond apologies and sensitivity training and indefinite moratoriums on questionable ads. Going forward, I ask that you consistently consider the role your actions have in sending harmful messages that uphold dangerous systems of belief and oppression, and what more you can do to change them.
Atalie Nitibhon
