Collins 2024 Asiatiquesdefrance Confronting Anti Asian Racism in Contemporary France Through Digital Media

Elizabeth M.
Collins
“#AsiatiquesDeFrance”: confronting anti-Asian racism in

contemporary France through digital media
“#AsiatiquesDeFrance”
Anti-Asian racism and violence have escalated around the world,

coinciding with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, in France, racially
motivated violence against people perceived as “Asian” was already
on the rise, even before the pandemic. Frustrated by the lack of public
outrage and the inaction of government authorities, people of Asian
heritage in France – who have come from a diverse range of countries,
over several generations – have begun mobilizing collectively in new
and more ambitious ways. Young people, in particular, have taken to
the internet. Using social media platforms, they have not only organized
in-person events, including protest marches in central Paris that have
numbered in the tens of thousands of people, but have also cultivated
online communities focusing on racial solidarity with just as many
followers. Social media accounts, hashtags, YouTube webseries, podcasts,
and internet-based projects aiming to combat anti-Asian racism while
also promoting intersectional racial justice, have thus proliferated in the
past few years. This article examines a few prominent examples of these
works, including the viral video “#AsiatiquesDeFrance” (2017), to argue
that all of these forms convey common messages that deal explicitly with
issues of cultural assimilation, national belonging, racial othering, and
racism faced by people of Asian heritage in France.
Le racisme et la violence anti-asiatiques se sont intensifiés dans le monde

entier, coïncidant avec le début de la crise sanitaire. Pourtant, en France,
les violences à caractère raciste contre les personnes perçues comme
“asiatiques” étaient déjà en hausse, avant même la pandémie. Frustrées
par l’absence d’indignation publique et l’inaction des autorités politiques,
les personnes d’origine asiatique en France – issues de divers pays, depuis
plusieurs générations – ont commencé à se mobiliser collectivement de
manière nouvelle et plus ambitieuse. Les jeunes, en particulier, se sont
tournés vers l’internet. En utilisant les plateformes de réseaux sociaux,
ils ont organisé des événements en personne, y compris des manifes-
tations dans le centre de Paris qui ont compté des dizaines de milliers de
participants. En même temps, ils ont également cultivé des communautés
Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 49, no. 1 https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2024.1
Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

For personal use only. No other uses without permission.
Copyright © 2024 Liverpool University Press. All rights reserved.
2 CONTEMPOR ARY FR ENCH CIVILIZATION
en ligne axées sur la solidarité raciale avec autant de followers. Des

comptes de réseaux sociaux, des hashtags, des webséries sur YouTube,
des podcasts et des projets en ligne ont pour objectif à lutter contre
le racisme anti-asiatique tout en promouvant la justice raciale intersec-
tionnelle. Les messages dans les plateformes ont ainsi proliféré au cours
des dernières années. Cet article examine quelques exemples marquants
de ces œuvres, comme la vidéo “#AsiatiquesDeFrance” (2017) qui est
vite devenue virale. L’auteure suggère que toutes ces formes véhiculant
des messages communs qui traitent explicitement des questions
d’assimilation culturelle, d’appartenance nationale, d’altérité raciale et de
racisme auxquelles sont confrontées les personnes d’origine asiatique en
France.
On 26 January 2020, as COVID-19 was beginning to spread around the

world, a regional French newspaper, Le Courrier picard, ran the headline
“Coronavirus chinois: Alerte jaune” on its front page. A photograph of
an Asian woman wearing a face mask accompanied the headline, and
an editorial entitled “Nouveau péril jaune?” (Muraz 40) also featured
within its pages. The headline and the editorial were roundly condemned,
first on social media and subsequently in the press (“Stop au racisme
anti-asiatique!”), leading the newspaper to apologize publicly (“À propos
de notre une”).
The day after the incident in Le Courrier picard, a French woman of
Asian descent anonymously launched the hashtag “#JeNeSuisPasUnVirus”
to counter pandemic-related discrimination against, in her words, “les
personnes ‘asiatiquetées’” (@OrpheoNegra). A portmanteau word of her
own invention, “Asiatiqueté e” combines “Asiatique” and “étiqueter”
in order to describe individuals who are labeled (“étiqueté”) as Asian
(“Asiatique”) on the basis of their appearance, regardless of their nationality,
birthplace, or personal preference (Gun 04:00). “Je souhaite lancer ce
hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus aussi parce que j’ai l’impression que d’une
manière générale, y compris dans les milieux militants décoloniaux, le
racisme anti-asiatique est souvent minimisé voire pas du tout abordé” (@
OrpheoNegra), she wrote in a post, a photograph of which she then asked
her friend, afro-feminist Amandine Gay, to share on X, or Twitter as it was
known at the time, and Instagram on her behalf (Figure 1). The hashtag
struck a chord and not just in France. Within days, it had been taken
up, translated (#IAmNotAVirus, #IchbinkeinVirus, #NoSoyUnVirus,

“#asiatiquesdefrance” 3
Figure 1 #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus, 27 Jan. 2020.

Screenshot by author. Image reproduced here with the kind authorization of
Amandine Gay and Kim Gun.
#NonSonoUnVirus, #NãoSouUmVírus, #TôiKhôngPhảiLàVirus, #我不

是病毒), and re-Tweeted by social media users the world over, even making
headlines of major francophone (“#JeNeSuisPasUnVirus”), as well as
anglophone news outlets in the United States (“‘I Am Not a Virus’”) and
the UK (“Coronavirus: French Asians Hit Back at Racism”).
This chain of events is compelling for a number of reasons. On the one
hand, it lays bare the contradictions of life as a visibly racialized person
in France, a nation that prides itself on its universalist principles of equal
inclusion of citizens without regard for such factors as race or ethnicity, yet
evidently struggles with its colonial legacy. Le Courrier picard portrays people

of Asian origin in France – who have come from a diverse range of countries,
span several generations, and speak many languages – in racial terms based
on perceived similarities in their appearance as a single homogenous group.
One that, for that matter, might represent a threat. To characterize that
threat, the newspaper turns to “Yellow Peril,” a racist ideology born from
European colonialism that perceives immigrants from Asian countries as
“exotic, barbaric, and alien” (Lowe 4). The ease with which Le Courrier
picard resorts to colonial-era rhetoric of racial scapegoating indicates that
anti-Asian racism is not a new phenomenon but the latest expression of a
historically derived racial animus that has been reactivated by the circum-
stances of the pandemic.
On the other hand, the author of the hashtag, who has since identified
herself as Kim Gun (@kimgun59), achieved more than vindication of her
own frustrations. From the obscurity of the periphery and under the cover
of anonymity, she successfully changed the terms of the global conver-
sation taking place both on social media and in more traditional forms
of media surrounding the mistreatment of people of Asian descent. With
the help of a comrade’s vast network of followers on social media (Gay
has 35,300 followers on X (Twitter) and 22,600 followers on Instagram
as of March 2024), Gun was able to harness a sense of collectivity from
the racial homogenization of “les personnes asiatiquetées,” effectively
crossing borders to assemble a diverse group of individuals, whose only
commonalities might be a visibly Asian appearance and, crucially, a shared
experience of racial discrimination, not just in France, but in countries
across the globe.
As Gun soon realized after posting her hashtag, she was not alone, neither
in the racism she was experiencing, nor in her turn to online activism in
search of racial justice. Social media accounts, hashtags, YouTube webseries,
podcasts, and internet-based projects aiming to combat anti-Asian racism,
while also promoting intersectional racial justice, have proliferated in the
past few years. Accounts on platforms such as X (Twitter) and Instagram
that focus on these issues are numerous in France, with content posted very
day – from playful posts and ironic jokes; to PSA-style calls for the end of
racial injustices and “call outs” of powerful entities perpetrating racism;
to publicity for upcoming films, art exhibitions, and book publications;
to restaurant recommendations; to press coverage of legal advances in the
justice system (Figures 2–4). The interactive and communal nature of these
forms of media offer a therapeutic function as well, enabling contributors to
receive support from like-minded users when expressing pent-up emotions

Figures 2, 3, 4 Sample
Instagram posts by
@asiatiquesdefrance. Figure 3
was originally posted by
@steve_tran and re-posted by
@asiatiquesdefrance on 26 July
2019. Figure 4 was posted by
@asiatiquesdefrance and shared
with @femin.asie on 15 Oct.
2020. Screenshots by author.
Images reproduced here with
the kind authorization of
@asiatiquesdefrance.

and recounting traumatic experiences, as was the case for Gun. The vast
majority of these posts convey common messages that deal explicitly with
issues of cultural assimilation, racial othering, and racism faced by people
of Asian heritage in France.
In this article, I will examine a few prominent examples of works of
digital media that explicitly seek to combat anti-Asian racism in France in
order to understand how they have contributed to the emergence of a new
collectivity of diverse individuals who have begun to identify themselves
as “Asiatiques” or “Asiatiques de France.” For Asians of France, the interest
in gaining increased visibility through an online presence focused on racial
justice activism is considerable, particularly among younger generations
(Chuang, Une Minorité modèle 214; Lahmar). Commonly referred to as
“la ‘race’ invisible” (Pérez 1) because of their perceived “discretion” and
their apparently concerted efforts to melt in “le creuset français,” Asians of
France have been largely excluded from the public sphere. By organizing
collectively in new and innovative ways – through the creation of digital
media that is promoted by hashtags and shared over social media networks
– “Asiatiques de France” have gained greater visibility, thus enabling them
to be recognized as a cultural force, a recognized political identity, and
formidable counterpublic in contemporary French society (Chuang, “Le
racisme anti-Asiatiques” 199–200).
However, this is not to say that activism through digital and social
media is uniformly “good” for racial justice. Social media is not a source
of political liberation in and of itself and increased visibility in the media
does not necessarily translate into political gain or empowerment (Lopez 3,
7). To be sure, the internet is a hostile place, and in many instances social
media has enabled the perpetration of cyberbullying, which often dispro-
portionately affects women and minorities (Kuo, “#FeministAntibodies”
3). In the fall of 2020, for example, calls to “agresser chaque Chinois” and
“tabasser” French Asians appeared in numerous Tweets. After le ministère
public opened an investigation, the hateful messages were taken down
and their authors were identified, but they had already been re-Tweeted
and liked over 3,000 more times (Cebron). The correlation between such
examples of online harassment to in-person abuse and violence can be
difficult to prove legally, but the potential for the transition from discourse
to action is unmistakable. Nevertheless, when racist acts take place online,
social media can serve as a discursive public record, albeit a difficult one to
behold; when the harassment that so often goes ignored in real life is made
visible for all to see, it becomes impossible to deny that it exists.

Discovering racial justice activism through social media
The speed and magnitude of the spread of #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus hints at

how many people have been affected by anti-Asian racism and violence,
particularly since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. As the pandemic
spread to every continent, incidents of racial harassment against individuals
perceived as Asian soon followed. A survey in France noted that as of
October 2020, 32.8 percent of Chinese and Chinese-origin respondents
had experienced “at least one discriminatory act” since January of that
same year (Wang et al. 7), while reported incidents of racially motivated
discrimination in the United States numbered in the thousands, with more
than 2,500 cases of verbal and/or physical attacks recorded between March
and August 2020 (“Stop AAPI Hate National Report”). Though this
trend was likely exacerbated in the United States by high-ranking public
officials, including the then-president, who persistently used racist rhetoric
to designate the virus as “Chinese” (Chiu), similar trends were recorded
elsewhere, and Chinese and Chinese-heritage people were hardly the
sole targets. In the United Kingdom, hate crimes against South and East
Asians were up 21 percent as of May 2020 (Grierson) and in Australia, 377
incidents of anti-Asian racism were reported over a span of 47 days in the
spring of 2020 (Roche). Japanese nationals in Indonesia, South Koreans in
Canada, people of East Asian descent in Chile, to name just a few more
examples, have endured abuse, ranging from verbal harassment to grievous,
even fatal, physical assaults (Roche; Chung). There is even a Wikipedia
page, “Xenophobia and Racism Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic,”
dedicated to enumerating the incidents by country, and new entries are
added all the time.
It is thanks to the algorithmic construction of the hashtag that the
anonymous author’s individual Tweet quickly reached far beyond her
immediate community in France to connect with a diverse global audience
in real time, going further, faster, and having a greater impact than Le
Courrier picard could ever imagine achieving. As Rachel Kuo explains,
“Twitter allows for discursive interaction with similarly identified people.
With all of its algorithms constantly tracking and weighing trends, Twitter
provides a digital place for people to congregate around interests and issues”
(Kuo 5).
For those interested in racial justice activism, hashtags, such as
#JeNeSuisPasUnVirus, serve multiple purposes. They promote awareness

of racial inequities by aggregating and disseminating similar messages,

which increases their public visibility and builds credibility and influence
(Kuo 2–3, 5). Racial justice activist hashtags also document the injustices
of racism and connect them to create a common understanding based on
the individual experiences, thus cultivating a sense of collective identity
(Kuo 1–3). When that collective identity is based on race, this can result
in what Kuo calls “racial enclaves” (Kuo 5). From these “racial enclaves,”
groups “perceived as ‘invisible’ within the public at large utilize hashtags
to make their presence and message more visible to publics dominated by
whiteness” (Kuo 5–6). In this way, as Andreas Bernard explains, “hashtags
have become the nodal points of a new media public that allow members
of the population who are accustomed to being misrepresented by others
to describe their own experience directly and more truthfully, to raise their
own voices without any interference from the distortive filter of the mass
media” (53).
The use of social media networks, hashtags, and other forms of digital
media for activist purposes in pursuit of race and gender justice has
been widely studied by scholars of media studies – particularly in the
United States where the worldwide movements of #BlackLivesMatter
and #MeToo were first formed from hashtags launched on X (Twitter).
In #HashtagActivism (2020), for instance, Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey,
and Brook Foucault Welles interrogate the centrality of the hashtag to
social movements. Hashtags, they argue, are but the twenty-first century
version of the communicative tools long deployed by historically disenfran-
chised populations who come together to form a counterpublic ( Jackson
et al. xxxiii). Given that the ability to shape public discourse has always
been restricted to those with power and privilege, Jackson, Bailey, and
Foucault Welles explain: “counterpublics, the alternative networks of
debate created by marginalized members of the public, thus have always
played the important role of highlighting and legitimizing the experiences
of those on the margins even as they push for integration and change in
mainstream spaces” ( Jackson et al. xxxiii). Through X (Twitter), members
of a counterpublic are able “to make and remake reality in the face of
dominant discourses that represent them as undeserving of full inclusion in
civil society” ( Jackson et al. xxxviii).
Focusing specifically on the Asian American context, Lori Kido Lopez
connects media activism, including the use of digital and social media, with
the desire to achieve greater inclusion in the United States through what
she calls “cultural citizenship”:

[B]attles over representations of Asian America reveal the way that activists
seeking to improve the representation of Asian Americans in entertainment
media are engaging in a fight for cultural citizenship, or a deeper sense of
belonging and acceptance within a nation that has long rejected them. (4)
Though the use of digital and social media in racial justice activism is
relatively new, the pursuit of cultural citizenship through collective action
in the name of shared Asian identity dates to the birth of the term “Asian
American” at the height of the Civil Rights movement, in 1968 (Nguyen
4–5). Since then, writers and artists of diverse origins, as well as the scholars
who study their works, have joined together under the banner of “Asian
American” to shape public conversation, particularly with regard to issues
of race and racism, and find a place at the heart of American culture.
This said, the concept of a common “Asian American” identity has also
been widely contested and often criticized as artificially categorizing a
heterogeneous population. Organizing collectively as “Asian American,”
though politically advantageous to an extent, brings with it inherent
risks, as Lisa Lowe argues: “not only does [Asian American culture]
underestimate the differences and hybridities among Asians, but it may
also inadvertently support the racist discourse that constructs Asians as a
homogenous group, that implies that Asians are ‘all alike’ and conform to
‘types’” (71). It is thus vitally important, Lowe explains, to consider the
identity of “Asian American” as based in “heterogeneity, hybridity, and
multiplicity” (66).
Interestingly, as Kim Gun’s differentiation between the terms “Asiatique”
and “Asiatiqueté·e” indicates, the creation of a collective Asian identity is
similarly complicated in France. By distinguishing between these two
terms, Gun draws attention to the problematic nature of grouping people
with diverse backgrounds together according to essentialized similarities in
appearance and culture; for example, a Chinese national who has recently
immigrated to France and a French citizen of Vietnamese heritage might
both be “étiqueté·e·s” as “Asiatiques” in spite of their differences. Her
insistence on the term “Asiatiqueté·e” implies an ambivalence at being
assigned an identity based on the perceptions of others and perhaps seeks to
reserve the term “Asiatique” as an identity that is voluntarily claimed. Yet,
as Gun’s own hashtag exemplifies, such terms can also be used to powerful
political ends when deployed strategically to unite people who experience
similar forms of racial oppression. Lowe ultimately concurs, suggesting
that by tapping into what Gayatri Spivak has called “strategic essentialism,”
racial justice activists like Gun can effectively subvert essentialism by

collectively embracing it for the social and political gain of its diverse
constituents (Lowe 82; Spivak 205).
While the category of “Asian American” has structured the fight for
greater political and cultural representation in the United States since the
1970s, the formation of “Asiatiques de France” as a collective identity has
emerged only recently in France largely thanks to participatory social
media platforms, such as X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
“[L]’arrivée des réseaux sociaux a marqué un tournant,” explains Grace Ly,
French novelist and co-host of the podcast Kiffe ta race with Rokhaya Diallo,
in an 2021 interview with popular magazine Marie Claire:
Avant, j’avais beau m’égosiller, si je ne connaissais pas une journaliste
ou quelqu’un avec un accès à un canal de diffusion, je n’étais personne.
Aujourd’hui, grâce à Twitter, je peux m’exprimer en n’étant personne. Je ne
laisse plus rien passer, les petites phrases pour rire, les sous-entendus. Je ne
veux plus de cette France-là pour mes enfants, qui doivent être considérés
comme des citoyens lambda. (Durand 128)
Dissatisfied that her children were facing the same racism she experienced
as a child, Ly has taken advantage of the democratized access to public
discourse that social media affords in order to affirm her children’s rightful
place as “citoyens lambda,” or average citizens, at the heart of the French
national body politic.
As Ly suggests, this powerful, new concept of “Asiatiques de France”
arose from a collective negotiation of racial difference on social media.
It is an artificial identity marker forged from exclusion from being just
“Français·e·s” and the realization of that exclusion. Indeed, the experience
of being labeled as something other than French is a bewildering one for
those who were born and/or raised in France. “J’ai toujours cru que j’étais
française” (Diallo and Ly 04:10) admits Mai Lam Nguyen Conan, author
of Français, je vous ai tant aimés (2012), who goes on to introduce herself as
“Française d’origine vietnamienne” (Diallo and Ly 04:37–05:00) in the
episode “Asiatiques, minorité modèle” (2018) of Kiffe ta race.
Sociologist Ya-Han Chuang corroborates these accounts in Une
Minorité modèle (2021); through extensive interviews with young adults
of Asian heritage born in France, she describes how many of them have
a belated prise de conscience in adolescence that some of their experiences
as children were likely due to racism (185). Chuang attributes this to
the fact that Asians are typically excluded from discussions of racism in
France, yet it nonetheless manifests itself in their experiences: “ils ont du

mal à identifier le racisme dont ils sont victimes, ce qui installe en eux
un malaise qui peut difficilement se dire” (187). Furthermore, this prise
de conscience among Chuang’s interviewees leads to yet another discom-
fiting realization: that the way they look unavoidably disqualifies them
from being perceived as French. One interviewee explains, “On ne m’a
jamais dit que je ne suis pas Française, mais physiquement tu sens que tu
n’es pas comme une Française de souche” (188). For some, this leads to a
newfound dedication to cultivating their own “double culture,” as they
put it, as an attempt to reconcile the “entre-deux identitaire” (Chuang,
Une Minorité modèle 190) that they have belatedly found themselves in,
both connected to and disconnected from France and their Asian country
or countries of origin. To be “Asiatique de France” is thus a sign of
acquiescence and resistance, as this identity expresses a complex form of
agency: a desire to be included in French society, as well as a profound
disillusionment with that desire.
Race, universalism, and the struggle for inclusion in France
An obvious question would be how does this newfound identity of

“Asiatiques de France” play out in universalist France, where, according to
the republican ideal, every French citizen should enjoy the same universal
rights regardless of their background and identity? And yet, as Omar Slaouti
and Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison argue in Racismes de France (2020), “le
racisme structure tous les espaces de la société française: police, justice,
travail, médias, culture, sport, universités, santé, éducation” (11). In spite of
this, to consider the country’s inhabitants in terms of their race is seen as
problematic, so much so that to utter the word “race” is largely considered
taboo in mainstream discourse. This makes antiracist activism a challenging
task, indeed, as Slaouti and Le Cour Grandmaison explain:
Les [initiatives antiracistes], en particulier, celles des personnes racisées des
quartiers populaires qui participent de la construction d’un antiracisme
politique et autonome, sont disqualifiées en raison du radicalisme, du
communautarisme et du sécessionnisme qui leur sont imputés. Par un
retournement classique de la rhétorique réactionnaire, les victimes de
violences policières et de discriminations systémiques, qui se mobilisent
pour les dénoncer, demander justice et réparation, sont accusées de
travailler à la destruction de la supposée “communauté nationale” et de la
République “une et indivisible.” (17)

The contradiction here is a salient one; how can racism be fought if to

speak of one’s experience as a member of a racialized group is tantamount
to secession?
What might be called “communautarisme,” or the differentiation of
a particular community from the rest of French society, is, quite simply,
how social media platforms such as X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram
function, by fostering connections between like-minded people with
similar views and interests, regardless of their nationality. In this case, that
commonality begins with, in fact, a homogenizing identity foisted on Asians
of France based on race. Furthermore, what might look like “communau-
tarisme” is actually a diverse cross-section of French society, representing
many socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, generations,
and languages. Saïd Bouamama concurs, contesting the anxious discourse
of “le péril communautariste” that is widespread in mainstream media
and political debates – usually deployed by members of the elite who, if
anything, are the ones who actively “cultivent un entre soi” (Bouamama
254). “Le communautarisme?,” Bouamama writes, “une arme langagière et
politique qui a pour finalité de délégitimer les expériences communes, les
intérêts partagés et les solidarités indispensables de celles et ceux qui sont
racisés et gravement discriminés” (259). To call such a group as Asians of
France “communautaire” is to betray the very color-blind principles upon
which French republican universalism rely, for individuals in this group are
continually, persistently, and detrimentally viewed in terms of their race,
rather than for their commitment to the ideals of the French republic as
citizens and would-be citizens.
Such limitations were evident even before the pandemic. Racially
motivated violence against people perceived as “Asian” was already on the
rise, and the repercussions have been fatal. The examples are numerous:
an assault on guests leaving a wedding banquet in Belleville in 2010 and
two more assaults in Belleville a year later; the murder of Zhang Chaolin,
a 49-year-old tailor, in the streets of the Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers
in 2016; and the killing of Liu Shaoyao, a 53-year-old father of four, by
the police in his own home in the nineteenth arrondissement of Paris
in 2017 (Tran and Chuang 105, 109, 111, 112). While there were street
protests organized by increasingly diverse groups of Asian entrepreneurs
and associations after each of these events, it was the death of Zhang
Chaolin that proved to be a tipping point. In the wake of this event,
people of Asian heritage – from entrepreneurs and activists, to artists,
actors, and writers, older and younger generations – began to mobilize

collectively in new and more ambitious ways (Le Bail 52–53). Young
people, in particular, have taken to the internet, using social media
platforms to organize protest marches in the Place de la République in
central Paris that numbered in the tens of thousands of people (Chuang,
Une Minorité modèle 5–7).
At the same time, works of digital media are also being used as
political and aesthetic forms of protest in and of themselves, giving vent
to frustration with growing trends of anti-Asian racism and violence in
France. Though forms of these works as well as the origins of their authors
vary greatly, they all confront racist stereotypes, speak to the diversity of
Asian experiences in France, and explore the complexities of French-Asian
identities. A few of these works include: “Sécurité Pour Tous” (2016), a
video clip styled as a public-service announcement directed by Frédéric
Chau and posted on YouTube; a documentary webseries by Grace Ly
called Ça reste entre nous (2017); the online magazine Koï (created in 2017);
podcasts like the aforementioned Kiffe ta race (created in 2018) by Ly and
Diallo; music videos shared on YouTube, such as “Ils m’appellent Chinois/
They Call me Chinese” (2015) by Lee Djane, “Saigon” (2019) by George
Ka, and “Chinoise?” (2021) by Thérèse Sayarath.
Affirming national belonging in “#AsiatiquesDeFrance”
To explore the ways that Asians in France affirm their sense of national
belonging through digital media, I propose that we examine in detail one
of the most influential of these works: a two-minute video clip, entitled
“#AsiatiquesDeFrance” (2017). This short video was viewed one million
times within twenty-four hours of being posted on Facebook in March
2017 and has been viewed almost three million times on Facebook and
YouTube to date. Directed by Hélène Lam Trong and financed through an
online crowdfunding platform, the video features a dozen participants who
are French with Asian heritage, including well-known figures such as actor
Frédéric Chau, comedian Steve Tran, actress Linh-Dan Pham, rugby player
François Trinh-Duc, actress and cookbook author Anne-Solenne Hatte, and
musician Monsieur Nov, among others (Trong, personal correspondence).
As the clip begins, the participants appear individually, one after
the other in front of a brightly colored background, to name the racial
stereotypes that they encounter regularly while looking straight into the
camera (Figures 5–8). “Tran? C’est marrant, mon docteur s’appelle Tran,

Figures 5, 6, 7, 8 (clockwise from top left) Sample images from

#AsiatiqueDeFrance, 23 Mar. 2017. Figure 5 was posted by
@asiatiquesdefrance and shared with @AJCF_FR on 30 Oct 2020. Figure 6
features Frédéric Chau, figure 7 features Linh-Dan Pham, and figure 8
features Steve Tran. Screenshots by author. Images reproduced here with the
kind authorization of @asiatiquesdefrance.
tu le connais?” (00:01–00:05), jokes Tran ironically. “Ben alors, Bruce

Lee!” (00:05–00:07), exclaims Chau with an uncomfortable smile. As each
participant takes a turn facing the camera, the epithets start to accumulate
quickly; these range from apparently complimentary – such as “Vous parlez
super bien français!,” “Ce qu’il y a de bien avec vous les Asiatiques, c’est que
franchement vous êtes discrets, travailleurs, vous ne faites pas de vagues,”
and “Tu dois bien savoir masser” (00:07–00:16), – to obviously offensive,
including “Niakoué,” “Nihao, nihao,” and “Chinetoque” (00:16–00:23).
The bright colors of today then give way to black and white archival
footage from the past to show video clips from colonial-era France and
Indochina spliced with text in both French and English under each
succeeding image: “Nous avons été,” “combattants pour la France,”
“travailleurs forcés dans les campagnes,” “enfants des colonies,” and “boat
people” (00:24–00:42). The line, “Nous sommes devenus” (00:43), initiates
the next section, after which a tumble of professions are enumerated, each
appearing one by one in white lettering on a black screen. Higher status

positions, such as “comédien(ne), chef cuisinier, animateur tv, footballeur,

artiste peintre, chanteuse, génie des algorithmes, journaliste, rugbyman,
compositeurs” (00:54–01:01), are the first to appear. Then, with contem-
porary vocal music playing in the background, the pace accelerates, as
more commonplace professions are listed one by one; “entrepreneur,
agent immobilier, fonctionnaire, avocat, médecin, professeurs d’école,
retraité, coiffeuse, maquilleuse, étudiante, pharmacien, esthéticienne, taxi,
chercheur, éboueur, policier, opticien, manutentionnaire, serveur, cinéaste,
routier, restaurateur, couturier, fleuriste” (01:20–01:27), and so on until the
speed of the professions is so fast as to be an illegible blur. Finally, the list
stops with one word: “Français” (01:30). A few participants – both young
and old, with varying racial characteristics, some wearing the garb of their
profession (lawyer, doctor, teacher), yet all smiling and laughing – appear to
speak to the audience one last time, each one repeating the word “Français,”
for a total of five times in succession (01:30–01:35). “Tu peux changer
les choses,” they continue aloud, “ensemble,” “ensemble, nous pouvons
changer les choses” (01:36–01:40). Returning to the black background
with white text the video ends with, “L’avenir c’est vous qui l’écrivez,” and
“exprimez-vous” (01:41–01:46), before the credits roll.
As the “#AsiatiquesDeFrance” moniker suggests, the hashtag and video
encourage solidarity, not only in their shared racial background, but against
the homogenizing forces of racism that they collectively experience. This
appears to be an example of Spivak’s “strategic essentialism” at its best;
by naming the microaggressions they face as racist, the participants are
actively disputing the discourses that result in the social exclusion of Asians
in France. What’s more, the video clearly presents “Asiatiques de France”
as a diverse group. Interestingly, however, the video does not highlight the
diversity of national and ethnic backgrounds of the participants, but the
variety of professions they exercise as exemplary members of the French
body politic – perhaps relying too heavily on the model minority myth,
which posits Asian migrants as having assimilated more successfully than
migrants of other backgrounds. Rather than emphasize the “heterogeneity,
hybridity, and multiplicity” of their national and ethnic identities, as Lowe
suggests, the participants in the video demonstrate their heterogeneity
as French citizens. The inclusion of archival footage dating from the First
and Second World Wars and the colonial period, along with the repeated
affirmation of French nationality at the end of the video, make the claim
of national belonging particularly overt. These elements emphasize the
longstanding presence of Asians in France and serve as proof of their deep

commitment to the nation and its values. In a way, the participants in the
video are lobbying to be generalized, not as Asian, but as French as univer-
salist doctrine demands – thus calling attention to their ultimate exclusion
from, as well as disillusionment with, the republican ideal of a “color-blind”
society.
The final lines of the video – “Tu peux changer les choses, ensemble,
ensemble, nous pouvons changer les choses” (01:36–01:40) and “L’avenir
c’est vous qui l’écrivez. Exprimez-vous” (01:41–01:46) – bring the political
intentions of the work into focus. By looking directly at the viewer and
addressing them progressively as “tu,” “nous,” and “vous,” the participants
speak to multiple audiences at once, calling not only upon fellow Asians
of France, but also upon fellow French citizens, to see themselves as a
member of a diverse national community, a heterogeneous “nous” that
must work “ensemble” to achieve national unity. The video thus puts the
future in the hands of the viewer on an individual, collective, and national
level, makes them responsible for knowing what racism is, and provides
arguments for how to counter it. Furthermore, the use of second-person
and plural first-person pronouns here suggests a didactic quality, thereby
drawing attention to the pedagogical function of digital media like this
for a universal audience of racialized and non-racialized members of
French society alike.
The creators of “#AsiatiquesDeFrance” are not alone in using digital
media as a means of delivering an alternative education in anti-racism. The
creator of the handle @decolonisonsnous, who goes by the pseudonym
“Frank,” similarly seeks to inspire solidarity through a collective journey
of antiracist self-education that he shares with his over 190,000 followers
through his posts on Instagram – work that Diallo calls “l’éducation
populaire” (Diallo and Ly, “@decolonisonsnous: la lutte connectée” 20:34).
In an interview with Diallo and Ly for the episode “@decolonisonsnous:
la lutte connectée” (2022) of Kiffe ta race, Frank describes himself as “un
homme asiatique de France” (02:51), yet goes on to explain the importance
of the “nous” in his choice of Instagram handle:
C’est un processus… c’est un chemin à prendre, et je pense que c’est une
réponse en écho aussi à l’universalisme qui serait réalisé, et puis le ‘nous,’
comme tu dis, et il est important, parce que ce n’est pas ‘nous,’ personnes
blanches, ou ‘nous,’ personnes non blanches, c’est ‘nous’ dans notre
intégralité, où selon chaque personne, on a des modalités différentes, mais
on a un questionnement qui doit mener à une action précise et spécifique.
(18:45–19:20)

As Frank suggests, the fight against racism might transcend race itself,
because racial justice and true inclusion demand engagement from “nous,”
regardless of our racial background. As we have seen through the various
collaborations in digital spaces discussed in this article – from shared
efforts of Amandine Gay and Kim Gun on the publication of the hashtag
#JeNeSuisPasUnVirus and the call to arms to “tu, nous, and vous” in the
video “#AsiatiquesDeFrance,” to the work of Rokhaya Diallo and Grace
Ly on the podcast Kiffe ta race and Frank’s efforts in “Décolonisons-nous”
– antiracist activists are actively working together in an attempt to redefine
what it means to be French today. Digital media, in its many forms, aids
in this by creating the possibility for these collaborations. As Ly explains,
“L’espace publique numérique est un terrain de combat aujourd’hui”
(Diallo and Ly, “@decolonisonsnous: la lutte connectée” 21:06).
By claiming their place as citizens of the nation, the creators of these
works seek to maintain their commitment to the tenets of French univer-
salism, as well as demand that others do so as well. As Julien Suaudeau and
Mame-Fatou Niang argue, this kind of antiracist engagement should not be
viewed as contrary to universalism: “Et si antiracisme et universalisme, loin
d’être des entités irréconciliables, forces antagoniques de la tragicomédie du
déclin français, traduisaient en réalité une seule et même exigence vis-à-vis
la République?” (Universalisme 7). Rather, they suggest: “L’antiracisme est un
combat de longue durée, qui va de pair avec l’engagement républicain: nous
devons être antiracistes par universalisme, universalistes par antiracisme,
citoyen·nes français·es pour qui la république est à tout le monde” (Niang
and Suaudeau, “Pour un universalisme antiraciste”).
Conclusion
The recent profusion of popular digital media of and by “Asiatiques de

France” speaks to the very real harm caused by racial discrimination and
the vital need for collective action. Works of digital media shared over
social media accounts created by those of Asian origin in France often
explore such bewildering experiences of rejection in spite of their own
commitment to French nationality, language, and culture. In this light, it
is all the more crucial to consider race with regard to individuals visibly
recognizable as Asian, as racism against such groups is too often considered
to be tacitly permissible even as it is stigmatized for others. By means of this
article, I hope to therefore spur further consideration of the struggles of, and

collective solidarity among, “Asians of France.” Additionally, I seek to draw

greater attention to how aesthetics and digital and social media converge to
create expedient political tools as well as poignant artistic statements that
exemplify the changing nature of France today. In light of racist headlines
like that in Le Courrier picard, it is obvious that the stakes are high.
University of Pennsylvania
Works cited
“A propos de notre une du 26 janvier.” Le Courrier picard [Picardie, France], 26 Jan.

2020. Web.
Bernard, Andreas. Theory of the Hashtag. Translated by Valentine A. Pakis and Daniel
Ross, Polity, 2019.
Bouamama, Saïd. “Communautarisme: ‘un spectre qui hante la France.’” Racismes de
France, edited by Omar Slaouti and Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, La Découverte,
2020, pp. 251–262.
Cebron, Valentin. “Les agressions contre les Asiatiques, dramatique confirmation d’un
racisme amplifié par le Covid.” Slate, 2 Dec. 2020. Web.
Chiu, Allyson. “Trump Has No Qualms about Calling Coronavirus the ‘Chinese Virus.’
That’s a Dangerous Attitude, Experts Say.” Washington Post, 20 Mar. 2020. Web.
Chuang, Ya-Han. Une Minorité modèle? Chinois de France et racisme anti-Asiatiques. La
Découverte, 2021.
—. “Le racisme anti-Asiatiques, entre oubli et mépris.” Racismes de France, edited by
Omar Slaouti and Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, La Découverte, 2020, pp. 199–214.
Chung, Amy. “In 2021, Asian Canadians Document Hate Crimes to Be Believed.”
HuffPost, 1 Mar. 2021. Web.
“Coronavirus chinois: Alerte jaune.” Le Courrier picard [Picardie, France], 26 Jan. 2020,
front page. Web.
“Coronavirus: French Asians Hit Back at Racism with ‘I Am Not a Virus.’” BBC,
29 Jan. 2020. Web.
Durand, Catherine. “Grace Ly, L’auteure antiraciste: ‘Je ne laisse plus rien passer.’” Marie
Claire, no. 823, Apr. 2021, pp. 126–129.
Grierson, Jamie. “Anti-Asian Hate Crimes up 21% in UK during Coronavirus Crisis.”
The Guardian, 13 May 2020. Web.
“‘I Am Not a Virus’: France’s Asian Community Pushes Back over Xenophobia.” NBC
News, 4 Feb. 2020. Web.
Jackson, Sarah J., Moya Bailey, and Brook Foucault Welles. “Introduction.”
#HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, by Sarah J. Jackson, Moya
Bailey, and Brook Foucault Welles, MIT Press, 2020, pp. xxv–xliv.
“#JeNeSuisPasUnVirus: la communauté asiatique dénonce une vague de racisme à son
encontre.” FranceInfo, 29 Jan. 2020. Web.
Kuo, Rachel. “Racial Justice Activist Hashtags: Counterpublics and Discourse
Circulation.” New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 2, 2018, pp. 495–514.
Kuo, Rachel, Amy Zhang, Vivian Shaw, and Cynthia Wang. “#FeministAntibodies:
Asian American Media in the Time of the Coronavirus.” Social Media + Society,
vol. Oct–Dec. 2020. Web.

Lahmar, Amina. “Une Nouvelle génération de Français d’origine asiatique veut nommer
le racisme, et résister.” Bondy Blog, 24 Mar. 2021. Web.
Le Bail, Hélène. “Actions culturelles engagées: discours et mobilisations contre le ‘racisme
anti-asiatique’ en France.” Migrations société, vol. 33, no. 183, 2021, pp. 51–68. Web.
Lopez, Lori Kido. Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship. NYU
Press, 2016.
Lowe, Lisa. Immigrants Acts. Duke UP, 1996.
Muraz, Daniel. “Nouveau péril jaune?” Le Courrier picard [Picardie, France], 26 Jan.
2020, p. 40.
Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Race & Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. Oxford
UP, 2002.
Niang, Mame-Fatou, and Julien Suaudeau. “Pour un universalisme antiraciste.” Slate,
24 Jun. 2020. Web.
Pérez, Ariane. “Asiatiques de France: la ‘race’ invisible?” Les Possibles, no. 21, 2019. Web.
Roche, Gerald. “Anti-Asian Racism Is on the Rise in Australia – and It’s Coming
From the Top Down.” Jacobin, 7 Feb. 2021, Web.
Slaouti, Omar, and Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison. “Introduction.” Racismes de France,
edited by Omar Slaouti and Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, La Découverte, 2020,
pp. 9–21.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography”
[1985]. The Spivak Reader, edited by Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, Routledge,
1996, pp. 203–235.
“Stop AAPI Hate National Report.” StopAAPIHate.org, 5 Aug. 2020. Web.
“Stop au racisme anti-asiatique!” Editorial. Mediapart, 15 April 2020. Web.
Suaudeau, Julien, and Mame-Fatou Niang. Universalisme. Anamosa, 2022.
Tran, Emilie, and Ya-Han Chuang. “Social Relays of China’s Power Projection?
Overseas Chinese Collective Actions for Security in France.” International Migration,
vol. 58, no. 3, 2020, pp. 101–117.
Trong, Hélène Lam. “Re: Anti-Asian Racism in France through Digital Media.”
Received by Elizabeth M. Collins, 13 Aug. 2023. Personal correspondence.
Wang, Simeng, Xiabing Chen, Yong Li, Chloé Luu, Ran Yan, and Francesco Madrisotti.
“‘I’m More Afraid of Racism Than of the Virus!’: Racism Awareness and Resistance
among Chinese Migrants and Their Descendants in France during the Covid-19
Pandemic.” European Societies, vol. 23, 2020, pp. 1–22. Web.
“Xenophobia and Racism Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Wikipedia.org. Web.
Media
Chau, Frédéric. “Sécurité Pour Tous.” YouTube, uploaded by fred77msg, 4 Sept. 2016.
Web.
Diallo, Rokhaya, and Grace Ly. “Asiatiques, minorité modèle.” Kiffe ta race, episode 4,
Binge Audio, 2018. Web.
—. “@decolonisonsnous: la lutte connectée.” Kiffe ta race, episode 86, Binge Audio,
2022. Web.

Djane, Lee. “Ils m’appellent Chinois/They Call me Chinese.” YouTube, 24 Feb. 2015.
Web.
Gun, Kim. “Covid-19: un révélateur du racisme anti-Asiatiques.” YouTube, uploaded by
Atelier d’histoire critique, 25 Apr. 2020. Web.
Ka, George. “Saigon.” YouTube, 21 Oct. 2019. Web.
Koï. Le média de société des cultures et communautés asiatiques, 2017, www.
koimagazine.fr/.
Ly, Grace. Ça reste entre nous. YouTube, 2017. Web.
@OrpheoNegra. “Je partage le texte et le hashtag créé par une camarade adoptée qui ne
souhaite pas que son nom soit mentionné afin d’éviter le harcèlement et le racisme
anti-Asiatiques qu’elle dénonce. Merci de relayer sa parole. – #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus
#coronavirus #RacismeAntiAsiatique.” X (Twitter), 27 Jan. 2020, 3:09 a.m. twitter.
com/OrpheoNegra/status/1221706803836280832.
Sayarath, Thérèse. “Chinoise?” YouTube, 11 Feb. 202. Web.
Trong, Hélène Lam. “#AsiatiquesDeFrance.” YouTube, uploaded by AsiatiquesDeFrance
LeClip, 23 Mar. 2017. Web.


Collins 2024 Asiatiquesdefrance Confronting Anti Asian Racism in Contemporary France Through Digital Media

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Collins 2024 Asiatiquesdefrance Confronting Anti Asian Racism in Contemporary France Through Digital Media

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Elizabeth M.

“#AsiatiquesDeFrance”: confronting anti-Asian racism in

Anti-Asian racism and violence have escalated around the world,

Le racisme et la violence anti-asiatiques se sont intensifiés dans le monde

Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 49, no. 1 https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2024.1

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

en ligne axées sur la solidarité raciale avec autant de followers. Des

On 26 January 2020, as COVID-19 was beginning to spread around the

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Figure 1 #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus, 27 Jan. 2020.

#NonSonoUnVirus, #NãoSouUmVírus, #TôiKhôngPhảiLàVirus, #我不

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Discovering racial justice activism through social media

The speed and magnitude of the spread of #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus hints at

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

of racial inequities by aggregating and disseminating similar messages,

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Race, universalism, and the struggle for inclusion in France

An obvious question would be how does this newfound identity of

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

The contradiction here is a salient one; how can racism be fought if to

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Affirming national belonging in “#AsiatiquesDeFrance”

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Figures 5, 6, 7, 8 (clockwise from top left) Sample images from

tu le connais?” (00:01–00:05), jokes Tran ironically. “Ben alors, Bruce

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

positions, such as “comédien(ne), chef cuisinier, animateur tv, footballeur,

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

The recent profusion of popular digital media of and by “Asiatiques de

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

collective solidarity among, “Asians of France.” Additionally, I seek to draw

“A propos de notre une du 26 janvier.” Le Courrier picard [Picardie, France], 26 Jan.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

Downloaded from www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk by Trang Nguyen on May 6, 2024.

You might also like