"Do not pretend to extinguish a fire with fire, nor remedy a flood with water", ?Confucius.
University of San Francisco Asian American sociologist Russell Jeung, a professor dedicated to changing the lives of the Asian community in the U.S., took Confucian teaching and applied it not only to a small group of young people in the Bay Area, but to an entire society.
It is said that teachers change people's lives, but how do you teach a class on politics to a group of excited young people after a soccer game?
It would seem that when faced with a denunciation of violence, the normal reaction would be to respond in the same way, but Russel Jeung observed that the needs of the most vulnerable, in addition to denouncing, is to let off steam, just as a teacher would do with a group of students who, after a game, wants his disciples to answer theoretical questions. What to do? Take a break.
Russel Jeung one of the founders of Stop AAPI Hate dedicated to ending hatred against all those of Asian and Pacific Islander origin in the United States (AAPI).
In this space there is a space to write, in different languages, those testimonies full of experiences and emotions where the complainants can explain in detail their feelings.
Jeung also carries Confucian philosophy into his own career and life as, beyond coping with the testimonies of hatred experienced by people in his community, he uses sociology not only as "a way of looking at the world, but it provided him with models for social change".
"We knew from history that Asians are blamed for diseases. Then people attack them with racist violence and racist policies," Russell said in a interview for the University of Southern California.
The academic and activist is a runner and has made breathing, just as an ethical teacher would do in front of a class of excited young people, a routine method that includes what he calls "breathing prayers", "inhaling and exhaling", as he mentions that "running is one of the ways in which he manages to decompress his work".
Jeung is the author of "At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus Among My Ancestors and Refugee Neighbors," in which he tells the story of his family's six generations in California, and how they lived their racialized life against Asians in the United States; and of
"Moving Feet: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies."
He received his bachelor's degree in human biology and a master's degree in education from Stanford University, then, after working in China and at the mayor's office in San Francisco, he earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.
In addition, Russel Jeung co-produced with Valerie Soe the documentary film "The Oak Park Story"(2010), about a landmark housing lawsuit involving fellow Cambodian and Latino tenants.
Stop AAPI Hate
The organization, which he co-leads, was founded in January 2020 in the wake of the impact of the pandemic by COVID-19, which handles complaints and follows up on incidents of hate and discrimination against the AAPI community.
Stop AAPI Hate is led by Manjusha P. Kulkarni, Cynthia Choi, and Russell Jeung, and is comprised of three nonprofit organizations.
In its first week, the Stop AAPI Hate team received hundreds of hate messages describing actions against the Asian community because of the stigma that COVID-19 brought to that social group.
To date, the organization has received close to 11,000 complaints, including verbal harassment, physical violence and hate incidents against women.
Although at first glance the mechanism used by the organization to denounce and follow up on cases seems to be far from the phrase of the Chinese philosopher and educator, Russell Jeung realized that one of the main functions of Stop AAPI Hate is to listen to the outburst of the Asian community that experiences the humiliation of their physical, psychological and emotional integrity, and that is where the answer to Confucius' saying lies.
The group adopts a scientific research approach to collect data on incidents of violence, hate, harassment, discrimination, rejection and bullying of children, analyze them and provide them to the general public through testimonials.
All this from the website of the organization where users can express themselves in the first person and in several languages to describe in detail and at length not only the incident but also their feelings.
The scope of Stop AAPI Hate is not only to denounce but also to generate studies on the behavior of hate speech among Asian society in the United States.
These studies have had an impact not only at the whistleblower level but also at the governmental level, prompting California Governor Gavin Newsom and the State Attorney General's Office to respond to the growing threat of discrimination.
Thus, on February 23, 2021, the California legislature through Assemblyman Phil Ting, chairman of the Budget Committee, enacted AB 85, which includes. 14 million which supports the organization and the analysis and research of Stop AAPI Hate in order to get a clearer picture of the problems faced by the community.
It is worth noting that Stop APPI Hate began as a mechanism to denounce the Asian American community, but today it is also dedicated to ending all forms of structural racism against Afro-descendant, Latino, Native American and Indigenous communities.
The magazine Time included Manjusha Kulkarni, Cynthia Choi and Russell Jeung among the 100 most influential people of 2021.
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