Immigrants, Racial Tension & Protests

The events in 'Elmhurst' by Han Ong, published in The New Yorker on July 18, 2022, are familiar yet unfamiliar to me. There's a racial edge, but there's a class distinction filed away by many racial groups when it comes to perspectives of immigrants. 

Born in the Philippines, the author moved to America when he was 16 years old and now calls Manhanttan, NYC, home. He based his story loosely on an actual protest that happened in Elmhurst, Queens. 

In March 2021, a racist, anti-Asian sign posted in the window at Dulles Cleaners in downtown Elmhurst resurfaced (the sign was taken down five months ago), and that went viral. It unearthed the was bitter discord between Asian families, black and Latino shelter residents. In an interview, the author said that he wrote the story because, 

It’s the kind of heartbreak that I habitually absorb, file away, and maybe, in due course, turn into a story, but, for the longest time, the heartbreak remained just that: disappointment and puzzlement, as well as anger, that groups who should, by rights, find themselves in common cause failed to recognize that they were natural allies. There was also a more recent example of this, when a couple of plans to open homeless shelters in Manhattan’s Chinatown were scuttled by activists—although those protests were more fraught than the Elmhurst one, given how traumatized the community was from the spate of anti-Asian attacks during the pandemic, and given the anecdotal link between those attacks and perpetrators with histories of transience and housing instability.

Protagonist Shara is all of fourteen, and is involved in a street protest, courtesy of her parents and grandfather. The community didn't welcome the sudden move by the city that housed homeless families in a two-star old hotel. Neighborhood businesses and residents complained of an increase in vandals and thieves. At the protest in front of the hotel, Shara has to hold up a placard in Chinese words that read "Kick the Devils Out of Our Neighborhood!" The street protests lasted for two weeks and then months with no end in sight. 

We get an introduction to Shara's family, her quiet younger sister, relationship with her mother, and her parents' rocky relationship and frequent fights, and a bland description of her grandfather who does equally bland tasks now, like looking out of the window at the streets below. Money is tight, and family bonds are fraught with tension. 

The restaurant where her father works is hosting a meal for the homeless families, an event instigated by Shara’s mother’s nemesis, the South Asian community organizer, and backed by Shara’s father’s boss, who is comping the evening’s costs. The protesters have been invited, too. A brokering of peace, if the protesters want it. Shara’s mother knows all about her husband’s boss, that traitor. He had turned a deaf ear to her church, being one of the few neighborhood-restaurant owners who did not provide for the protesters—the other proprietors made an occasion of their donations, transforming the otherwise grim gatherings into sidewalk festivals, with heaping portions of restaurant fare scooped out of giant aluminum trays and onto flimsy paper plates that necessitated speedy eating. These businessmen understood that their rights, too, were being fought for by the church. Meanwhile, her husband’s boss declared that his loyalty was with the TransAmerica families. During his first years as an immigrant from China, he himself had been homeless, and no one had helped him. He knew what such abandonment felt like.

The ending sort of veered away and lost me. Perhaps that was meant to be how Shara sees the protests versus how her life unfolds, marching along to the pace of school exams and summer breaks, and tutoring obligations to a visitor. I blinked at the sudden mention of 'White Rabbit Candy'. Seriously. That is sooooo..... ubiquitously Asian, and very Chinese.  

The interview with the author asked some pertinent questions about a community's attitude, hypocrisy and values. These are shades not immediately obvious to many who don't live within a community. It's very much like how some Singaporeans are prejudiced against new immigrants, forgetting that many of us are only second or third generation offspring of immigrants. 

The Chinese protesters in the story belong to a church. How do they square their resistance to housing the homeless with the basic Christian value of charity? Why do they despise the homeless families, when they themselves have suffered exclusion?

We’ve seen this time and time again—supposedly Christian churches and organizations pushing the most uncharitable agendas, their members always outside some pro-gay or pro-choice or otherwise liberal venue holding outrageous placards with Bible quotes and screaming vociferously. And always, always, the certainty that their antagonists will end up in Hell. Clearly, in such instances, Christianity is not putting forward its best representatives, and it is most definitely not squaring its malevolent inhumanity with the directives of charity from the man the faith is named after. To be clear, I say this as a lapsed Catholic. A very, very lapsed Catholic.

In answer to the second question, I’m sorry to say that a kind of Darwinian principle of “If somebody else is beneath me in the social hierarchy, then I’m not doing too badly” is partly at work.