Just yesterday, I witnessed not once, but twice, an occurrence that has been, until recently, as commonly sighted as a Sasquatch: a Black woman coupled with an Asian man.
Sighting 2 – Saturday evening: one such couple, dressed something akin to royalty, standing in the concessions line during intermission at the Metropolitan Opera’s closing performance of Champion, an opera composed by Terence Blanchard, first performed in 2013. Perhaps relevant to this article is the fact that Blanchard is a Black man born in New Orleans, and his opus was conducted by Kensho Watanabe, a Japanese man born in, well, Japan.
Sighting 1 – Saturday afternoon: another such couple, sighted several hours before, emerging from a vehicle which my fuzzy brain recalls as a ruby red Corvette, a few blocks west of Pier 40. They were not dressed to the nines, perhaps to the sevens, but hey, they had wheels.
Sighting 0 – Saturday midday: me, and a woman who I will call Sapphire. That is not, in fact, her name. But let’s pretend it is. Let’s pretend that she grew up in South Carolina and now works in finance. We met near Penn Station and treated our taste buds, and our stomachs, to ‘the best Korean fried chicken in NYC.’ This propaganda on the storefront was, apparently, not BS. If it was, only slightly. Sapphire taught me to savor, and thoroughly enjoy, extra spicy fried chicken wings. I have long looked askance at chicken wings – nearly half skin, nearly half bone, nearly no meat. But Sapphire, who just might claim the title of ‘chicken wing connoisseur,’ taught me to love, deeply, this avian appendage. If that were the only result of this first date, I’d call it a success. Happily, it wasn’t.
Why do I include this as a ‘sighting’? Sapphire is Black, specifically African American. In case you didn’t catch it from my byline, I am Japanese, specifically Japanese American, specifically 四世 – Yonsei, fourth generation, post-internment, Hapa, half White.
I didn’t ask Sapphire out on a date with the intention of it fueling the play I’m currently writing as a member of the Civilians R&D group. It may, it may not. I thought she was cute. But it may fuel a future scene or two.
Of late, I’ve seen a scattering of Black women holding hands with Asian men. Two within fifteen minutes of one another, right by Prospect Park. I spied another couple eating dessert in Magnolia Bakery in the Upper West Side. I fought the urge to barge in there and interrogate them – all in the name of art!
The play I’m writing concerns Asian-Black love connections, and the search for them. One of my objectives is to counter the false notion of racial monoliths. The Black women in the play will reflect the incredible diversity of Blackness in NYC – I’ve met Black women from Jersey, South Carolina, Chicago, Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, the UK, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania. I’ve met Asian men from Minnesota, Toronto, Shanghai, Osaka, Manila, Busan. My interest in writing this play was sparked by my own experiences, and a chapter in Issa Rae’s book The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, titled ‘Black Women & Asian Men.’ Ms. Rae writes:
“If dating were an assortment of Halloween candy, Black women and Asian men would be the Tootsie Rolls and candy corn—the last to be eaten, if even at all. […] Why will over 45 percent of educated Black women never get married? Why are Asian men so high in supply but so low in demand? […] Educated Black women, what better intellectual match for you than an Asian man? […] Asian men, your women are ditching you at an alarming rate […] so why not cross over to the Black side?”
Issa Rae’s words tapped into, and perhaps paved way for, a growing subculture focused on spaces where Black women and Asian men (BWAM) can connect. This subculture exists in the digital realm – I have connected with people in BWAM Facebook groups – and in the physical realm – I am a member of an AMBW meetup group in NYC. Through this meetup group, I have made new friends after having my winter coat unintentionally filched at a bar, celebrated members’ birthdays over BBQ, and attended an extremely well-attended convention of Black comic book creators at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem. While one of the only Asian people in attendance at this event that, based on how cramped it was, needs a larger venue, I was struck by the prevalence of anime, and its clear influence over many Black comic illustrators. It made me wonder if the Black women-Asian men scene is an expression of a deeper Afro-Asian connection that stretches backward through time. I think of the Bandung Conference, held in Indonesia in 1955, where representatives from 29 African and Asian countries convened. I think of the friendship between W.E.B. DuBois and Yasuichi Hikida, that between Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X, and of Paul Robeson’s affinity for and support of the People’s Republic of China.
The above examples of Black-Asian connection center around liberation from colonialism, civil rights, and the then cutting-edge politics of Maoism, all movements that, in their time, imagined a better tomorrow. While our connections may be old, is there something about Black and Asian people putting our minds together that sparks innovative thinking and points toward the future?
Sapphire and I had our own brush with the future as we walked down the High Line, our bellies filled with chicken and fried batter. We were invited to enter a gallery down below those abandoned and then repurposed raised tracks. It was an art exhibition of works created by a fancy new artist. We entered, and after perusing the canvasses, which featured short multicolored brushstrokes arranged into a box, met glances with the artist. She was a robot, with cameras for eyes and AI for a brain. She was watching everything, watching us. What was she thinking? Did she find us novel? Exotic? Apparently, others did, for Sapphire commented on the stares that some people cast our way. Let them. They should get used to it. We are the wave of the future, after all.
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