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Catechists and Asian Catholic community leaders point to core faith teachings to help head off racism

A woman in Oakland, Calif., is seen during a rally and vigil March 23, 2021, to protest violence directed at people of Asian descent. (CNS photo/Brittany Hosea-Small, Reuters)

The mass killing of mostly Asian women at Atlanta-area Asian-owned businesses March 16 drew a sharp focus on the hostility, racism and violence that has plagued Asians and Pacific Islanders, especially over the last year.

Several members of the Washington-area Catholic Asian and Pacific Islanders community told the Catholic Standard that a key to addressing racism and violence toward their families and cultural groups lies in the core Catholic teaching: to treat everyone with respect and love.

Sister Leilani Dumaliang, minister of religious education at St. John the Evangelist Church in Clinton, Maryland, said in that multicultural parish the baseline approach to educating about racism is to focus on the equal, innate value of every human being – which is always taught as the key element of Catholic teaching.

“We inculcate how to respect each other,” she said. Sister Leilani is a member of the Missionary Catechists of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, an education-focused religious order based in her native Philippines. She said she hasn’t ever felt threatened or been subject to overt racism herself, though at times when out in public she catches a hint of something disrespectful in comments about her accent or questions about her nationality.

The killing spree in Georgia at three spas or massage parlors left eight people dead, including six Asian women, one white woman and one white man. A Hispanic man was wounded. A suspect has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault. Hate crime charges are being considered, but as of March 24 had not been pressed.

The attacks came after a year in which Asian Americans across the country, notably in the San Francisco Bay area and New York, have been physically attacked in public places, with some people requiring hospitalization. The assaults came amid heightened hostility to people of Asian appearance at a time when some national figures, including former President Donald Trump, blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic.

In the days that followed the Georgia shootings, thousands of people joined protests in Washington and other cities to raise concerns about anti-Asian attitudes. Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory spoke about racism in depth March 20 at a conference on cultural diversity in Burke, Virginia.

Among his extensive remarks, he said the Catholic Church “has the responsibility to call all of our people to see with the eyes of Christ. We are obliged to challenge our society and any institution within society that supports, defends, or promotes racism or inter-cultural hostility. An important component of our Christian identity is our ability to be peacemakers.” The coincidentally timed event was hosted by the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia.

Jane Zilles-Soberano, faith formation director at the Shrine of St. Jude in Rockville, Maryland, said at the parish she also focuses on core Catholic teaching. “I don’t have racism ‘workshops,’” she wrote in an email exchange. “I just insist that all the kids respect one another as a child of God.”

Soberano described some of the conversations about racism she’s had with her own culturally diverse family. “I have two Vietnamese children and three biracial Vietnamese grandchildren. My Vietnamese son and his family are now living with me…. Yesterday he said at the dinner table he finds more racism or rather ‘ethnicism’ among Asian Americans than racism from outside.”

Soberano said her two biracial children (Black/White) and their children “have experienced far more racism than my Asian offspring.” But she also noted that bias tends to be subtle against Asian and Pacific Islanders, “not the pushing down of old people or saying, ‘go back to your country.’”

Ben OuYang, who chairs the young adults committee of the Asian Pacific Catholic Network for the Washington area, said the group has had lively conversations about racism recently. OuYang was born in the United States to Chinese immigrants and was raised in upstate New York. He’s active in Our Lady of China Catholic Mission in Washington.

He said conversations among the young adults group, his friends and family have focused on how to help vulnerable Asians, especially elders, to be safe in a hostile environment. For example, OuYang said, one person was pursuing volunteering to accompany seniors from a retirement apartment building in Washington’s Chinatown on their errands. Others, including he himself, were debating getting pepper spray for their loved ones to have on hand for self-defense.

Unlike in the Chinatowns of New York and the San Francisco Bay area, where there have been multiple physical attacks on people, in this area it’s more a problem of racist comments, he said. But people feel threatened and are on guard.

A girl in Koreatown in Los Angeles writes a message on a window March 19, 2021, during a protest to denounce hate against the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities following the deadly shootings March 16 at three Asian day spas in metro Atlanta. (CNS photo/Lucy Nicholson, Reuters)

He said one step that should be taken among Catholic parishes is praying for victims, as well as praying for the perpetrators of hate crimes to have a change of heart. But an important role also could be for faith communities to educate and encourage elderly people and victims of crime to speak up about racist acts.

“People are reluctant to make waves, especially elderly people,” he said. Many Asian cultures discourage discussing anything unsavory outside one’s own family or close communities, he explained. Churches where older people feel at home might be successful in teaching them about standing up to hostile words and actions, he said. And more people who witness inappropriate or hostile words or actions ought to stand up and say something.

OuYang remembered as a student at a Jesuit high school watching one student picking on another. “A football player saw this and called him out,” he said. The harassment stopped and everyone else left the picked-on student alone. “I still have so much respect for what that football player did. He set the example.”

There also ought to be more concerted efforts by churches to help their members get a sense of different cultures, OuYang said. Cardinal Gregory’s message about celebrating each others’ cultures is important, he said.

“An effort by parishes to increase cultural understanding and our different experiences would help,” he added.

A second member of Our Lady of China, catechist Patrick Cheng, wondered if he has been inattentive to subtle forms of aggression because of his Chinese heritage. Recent events made him wonder that because, he said, he’s never felt targeted on the basis of his race. Born in Taiwan into a U.S. military family, Cheng was largely raised in the United States and moved to Virginia in middle school. The location was chosen by his parents in part because there was an active Chinese Catholic community, he said.

He echoed OuYang’s concern about Asian cultural traditions of discouraging people from reporting crimes to authorities. A professional therapist, Cheng said he doesn’t have many Asian patients, in part, he believes, because of the strong cultural bias to “keep it in the family,” even when it comes to painful emotional struggles.

And he concurred with his counterpart religious educators Sister Leilani and Soberano in addressing racism with essential church teaching.

“In class, it’s all about God and human dignity,” he said. “The messages we send are about all people – we’re all children of God and we should treat everyone equally.”


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