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@Nytopinion—June 19
GUEST OPINION Who Will March For Us? After experiencing a racially motivated assault, former New York County prosecutor May Hanover wonders where are the allies for Asian Americans after the recent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes.
@Nytopinion—June 19
“Three months ago, a man tried to attack me on a subway platform. ‘Go back where you came from, Chink bitch.’ I imagined falling to the tracks. I could have died, another tragic story for the front page of the Post. I found myself thinking, but wait, I’m from Indiana.
@Nytopinion—June 19
“Hate crimes against Asian Americans have surged and no one seems to care. In 2020, anti-Asian hate crimes in 16 of the country’s largest cities increased almost 150% over the previous year, even as the overall number of hate crimes reported to police declined.
@Nytopinion—June 19
“Scores of Asian American elders have been senselessly assaulted by random strangers on the street. These are painful statistics and stories—especially when it feels like no one cares.
@Nytopinion—June 19
“It’s clearly no coincidence that the surge in anti-Asian crimes has occurred in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, when politicians unapologetically invoked terms like China-virus and kung-flu. But the bridge from anti-China sentiment to attacks against Asian AMERICANS…
@Nytopinion—June 19
“…is a manifestation of the xenophobic ‘perpetual foreigner’ stereotype, in which even native-born citizens are viewed as unassimilated outsiders.
@Nytopinion—June 19
“And xenophobia and misogyny often intersect. To my assailant, I wasn’t just a Chink or a bitch, but the most despised combination of all: an Asian American woman.
@Nytopinion—June 19
“With every casual ‘me love you long time’ or ‘happy ending’ joke, our culture hypersexualizes and dehumanizes Asian American women.
@Nytopinion—June 19
“Having marched in my share of streets, I am left asking, who will march for us?” Read the full opinion at GUEST OPINION Who Will March For Us?
@AABAofNY—June 19
GUEST OPINION Who Will March For Us? So sorry this happened to our board member. Thank you @mayhanover for finding your voice to tell your story and ours.
@UnapologeticallyOpinionated—June 19
GUEST OPINION Who Will March For Us? TERRIFIC op-ed by hate-crime victim about rise in anti-Asian violence. We are all allies!
@NotABot—June 19
GUEST OPINION Who Will March For Us? Who will march? I will! Anyone else?
@Eatinpizzalikeaboss—June 20
You guys, this GUEST OPINION Who Will March For Us? is by May HANOVER? Married name maybe, but snarky question: Are we sure she’s even Asian?
@BradPittsNextWife—June 21
@Eatinpizzalikeaboss And she’s a former prosecutor, putting black and brown people in prison, claiming she has “marched in her fair share of streets”? I smell BS.
@Amateursleuth—June 21
Okay @eatinpizzalikeaboss @bradpittsnextwife, y’all sent me down the rabbit hole. Found her LinkedIn. Looks Asian in her profile pic, but probably mixed (explains last name). Fancy private summer camp for the arts, Harvard undergrad, Columbia Law, DA. Marching in streets-LMFAO.
@PixieSticks—June 23
@Amateursleuth I also sussed out her LinkedIn. Says she starting as Associate Professor Fordham Law this year.
@LaVidaDavina—June 27
Ok wait for it. Pretty sure this woman GUEST OPINION Who Will March For Us? is the same crazy woman I filmed cuz she was bugging out. Subway platform in March, so timing lines up. Looks like her. Context matters?
@LaVidaDavina—June 29
Wow! Guess that video blew up. For those asking, I started recording cuz she scolded every maskless person she saw. Man made the mistake of trying to win her over. Look at her screaming her ass off like the black man’s murdering her while giving the white racist a pass. Lol.
@LaVidaDavina—June 30
Oh lord, y’all are NOT calling her Asian DA Karen. I’m dead. #AsianDAKaren
@JaydensMom—July 1
@LaVidaDavina. That does look like the op-ed author. Not to make excuses for her, but is it possible she yelled at the wrong person? Maybe she thought the other guy was the one who said it?
@LaVidaDavina—July 1
@JaydensMom. Except that’s exactly what you just did—make up an excuse. And gee…I wonder why she’d just assume that of all the dudes on the platform, HE was the one she should scream at and sic the police on?
@PixieSticks—July 2
Wonder if @Fordham knows its new law prof @MayHanover is #AsianDAKaren.
@PixieSticks—July 3
Oh, interesting, everyone. Look what you find when you pull up the profile for #AsianDAKaren:
@mayhanover THIS ACCOUNT DOES NOT EXIST
The first two days after the publication of May’s guest op-ed felt heady. She was glued to her devices, soaking in the adoration from the atta-girl texts and emails pouring into her phone, retweets by former law professors she had worshipped, and an invitation from The Washington Post to contribute any other essays she had in mind about the Asian American or mixed-race experiences.
But as she had learned during her first year of teaching, there’s a reason some professors never read their evaluations. Seventy-eight students might love you, but it’s the words of the two critics that sting. Despite all the positive responses to her op-ed, she was offended that total strangers began to question her motives based only on her non-Asian last name, mixed-race appearance, and the fact that she had been a prosecutor. Josh had to talk her out of replying to each individual troll.
It wasn’t until the account called LaVidaDavina posted a video from the subway platform that things really got out of control, though. The clip showed what had happened to May from a completely different point of view. It made it look like she had instigated the entire confrontation with the African American man she had described as her assailant. It made her look absolutely unhinged and insane. And worse than anything, it made it clear she had accused the wrong man.
It had been May’s first time riding the subway since the shutdown. All she did was ask a few people to put their masks on. The subway mandate was still in place.
Aw, you’re too fine to be wearing that mask anyway, girl…What, I’m not your type? That’s good. It’s cool…Why you looking at me like that?
Please, just stay away from me.
Seriously? You’re gonna act scared because I dared to speak to you?
Yes, you’re scaring me. Step back.
I didn’t step front. You’re tripping.
Stop, go away.
Oh lord, this is one crazy bitch.
She turned her back to him, began walking away—quickly. Despite the distance she was trying to put between them, she heard his next words clearly. Go back to where you came from, Chink bitch.
With those words, she pictured him charging her from behind, pushing her to the tracks, like those other Asian victims she had been reading about in the news. She was next. This was how she was going to die, all because she took the subway. She realized she was screaming, her fists clenched at her sides, yelling as loudly as she could.
HELP, SOMEBODY, PLEASE HELP!
When she turned, bracing for the incoming blow, he wasn’t as close as she had feared.
Are you really acting like I’m threatening you right now? You’re gonna panic like that? He stepped toward her. She had replayed it so many times in her head. She was sure of it. He definitely moved in her direction. That was the only reason she would have reached for her phone.
STOP! I’M CALLING THE POLICE.
Okay, of course you are. You know how that ends for me? Are you serious? She began to scream that awful scream—the one that got snipped and clipped and replayed and memed.
It wasn’t until May saw the video that she realized the voice she had heard behind her as she tried to put distance between herself and Darren Foster, the words she still had nightmares about—Go back to you where you came from, Chink bitch—didn’t belong to Foster. That vile command had come out of the maskless mouth of a white man with his knees spread wide on the bench beneath the poster reminding passengers that masks were still required within the transit system.
But the video made it clear that May leapt to the conclusion that Foster was the culprit. She became yet another woman to weaponize her power as a woman to sic the police on an African American man. She had issued a statement of apology that the Times published, and had tried to reach Foster personally to explain, but the video was more powerful than any words she could offer. The fact remained that May was the one lecturing strangers about masks and then screaming like a murder victim when no one was actually hurting her. And she had topped it all off by writing an op-ed claiming to have been the victim of a hate crime.
The hashtag #AsianDAKaren was a top Twitter trend for nearly a week.
May knew the video must have reached a tipping point in the zeitgeist when even her tech-phobic mother found out about it thanks to some blabbermouth at her church. The frequency of her already frequent phone calls tripled overnight. She said she was “worried” about May to the point where May had to talk her out of flying to New York, but more than anything, she seemed disappointed.
It’s just not like you to be like that.
You need to explain to everyone you weren’t yourself.
What got into you? As if an invasive entity had taken over her brain, voice, and body, because it was so unthinkable that May might lose her temper, or make a mistake, or lash out in a moment of rage.
Josh was more supportive. He made it possible for her to hunker down in the privacy of their apartment, handling the dog walks, running all their errands, and becoming her conduit to the outside world. He even offered to max out his credit cards to hire a publicity consultant specializing in crisis management.
And the retweets continued. She became the latest example of what she learned the internet called a Milkshake Duck—a person lauded online for some admirable characteristic who turns out to be horrible in real life. The guy with the hilarious Twitter thread about a piece of shrimp in his cereal gets called out for being an abuser. The “hot cop” who went viral while helping storm victims resigns when his anti-Semitic Facebook posts are discovered. The camper who jumped into the rapids to rescue a drowning dog is revealed to be a deadbeat dad.
The idea behind the meme is that the whole internet might fall in love with something fabulous like an adorable baby duck who loves to drink milkshakes, but then once the milkshake-loving duck comes under scrutiny, it turns out the duck’s just another piece of crap.
May thought of the meme itself as a duck/rabbit, that famously ambiguous image that can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used it to describe two kinds of “seeing.” From one perspective, the Milkshake Duck was a misanthropic trope: Don’t meet your heroes, as they say. Even the delightful duck might be awful, because you can’t vouch for anyone in this world.
But from May’s perspective, it could also be seen as an observation about the current culture, fueled by social media. Put yourself out there on the internet, and the mob will find a reason to take you down, even if you’re just a sweet baby duck trying to eat some ice cream.
May’s phone had rung in her hand almost immediately after she hit the final button to confirm that, yes, she really did want to delete her Twitter account. She was terrified it would be the dean of the law school, calling to revoke her job offer. Instead, it was Lauren, who gave her exactly what she needed at that moment, asking if she was okay, promising her it would be all right. She, too, knew what it was like to be judged and vilified by total strangers.
Those strangers don’t know your truth. Only you do.
Unlike her mom and Josh, Lauren didn’t judge, and she didn’t try to solve May’s problems. She was the one to convince May that Twitter wasn’t the real world, going so far as to send her the statistics to back it up. May didn’t need her 780 SAT math score to realize that only a fraction of the population had heard anything about either her op-ed or the unwanted attention that had fallen upon her in the aftermath.
And then Lauren had reached out to Kelsey, and May had both of them to remind her that life does move on. By the time the law school semester started, even her students didn’t seem to care that the brand-new professor was the same woman some of them must have heard about over the summer. From what May could tell, they had their hands full adjusting to classes after two years of virtual education and were only interested in material that would be on their final, although they did seem fascinated whenever she shared an edgy story from trial practice. If she had to guess, they didn’t expect anything about Professor Hanover to be edgy.
The entire subway incident, all things considered, was behind her. But it wouldn’t remain that way—not if it all happened again, this time because she couldn’t leave a man alone for stealing a parking spot.