Asian Women Fearful Of NYC Subway Because of Hate Crimes and Weird White People Performance Art
“Self-defense classes won’t help with this”
June 13, 2021
By: Julia Zhen
With the tremendous increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans this past year, many Asian women have been fearful of using New York City’s MTA subway system in fear of not only hate crimes, but the bizarre street art performed by white people.
“I always carry pepper spray on me,” explains 26 year-old young professional Dawn Wu, “but what the fuck am I supposed to do about those weird skinny white people that are rolling around the subway platform in nothing but a thong and a spiky neck collar?”
Immigrant, mother, and NYC resident, Rashmi Sinha believes that performance art by white people can sometimes be more dangerous than hate crimes against Asian Americans.
“If someone tries to rush towards me in an attempt at a physical assault, at least I have time to react like scream, run away, or take out my taser. But if a white person covered in fake blood, laying down in the middle of the pedestrian walkway starts to squirm around and spew fake blood from their mouth, that is a public health issue. What if they are not vaccinated? I could get COVID-19 or something like Cholera from them.”
Many Asian Americans have turned to self-defense classes or de-escalation seminars to learn more about how they can avoid dangerous situations with hate crime assailants, but resources on how to protect against white performance street art have been minimal. Well known former Wesleyan College arts student, street performer, and reformed bigot, Dean Williams was able to shed some light on the perspective of not only bigoted hate crime attackers but also bizzare, weirdo street performers.
“When someone dislikes an entire group of people because of the color of their skin or ethnicity, we have to unlearn that behavior through things like reading White Fragility by Robin Diangelo, subscribing to The New York Times, or re-watching the Rush Hour trilogy in order to better understand critical race theory. However, street performers come with an entirely different perspective. They are here to be unusual and grab attention. To fend against them, you simply must act crazier than them by outdoing them in their own art. If they’re eating garbage out of the can, you should eat more and faster than them. If they are crab walking down the escalator, you should walk around them down the left side.”
While Williams expressed that some of these actions may seem undesirable, simply spraying them with pepper spray to get out of your way will work too.
Image by Brainbitch on Flickr
