These Young Asian Americans Felt Helpless, So They Turned to Online Activism

Growing up, Erin Suh, a 20-year-old Korean American from Manhattan, remembers stressing about whether she was smart and quiet enough to fit into the “model minority” stereotypes she thought were expected of her. Jadenne Radoc Cabahug, an 18-year-old Filipino American from Southern California, remembers wishing she were white. Arin Siriamonthep, an 18-year-old Thai American from Greenvale, New York, remembers believing that the best way to deal with racist slurs or taunts was to “just let it go because there’s no need to cause some sort of argument.” These three young people had always seen their country through the lens of watching their immigrant parents or grandparents settle into the US by working hard and striving to assimilate. But amid the racial justice protests and surge of hate crimes against Asian Americans in the last couple of years, Suh, Cabahug, and Siriamonthep have come to see the US’s problems more clearly, and they are now entering adulthood trying to figure out what they can do to help fix them while warding off the sense of helplessness caused by these converging crises.