Get ready for a wild ride.
The stories of women of color who are victims of violence are often hidden and shelved away, and the #sayhername project seeks to remedy this absence. But if no name even exists in documented accounts of violence against a woman, what does this say about our country and the the future it offers for women of color?
Her Story
On a New York subway train on December 11, 2018, a 40-year-old white woman by the name of Anna Lushchinskaya attacked a 24-year-old Asian-American woman after the two bumped each other.
Following the assault, the Asian woman, who has not been named, sustained severe bleeding cuts to her face. In the video shared by Juan Ayala on his Twitter account PlatanoMan, Lushchinskaya is shown shouting “f**k off” several times before apparently preparing for her attack by putting her sunglasses in her handbag and tying back her hair. She then lashes out with her umbrella and key chain.
After a nearby Asian man intervenes, Lushchinskaya, who is white, screams “f**king chink,” which prompts surrounding passengers to shout the attacker down. He also received scratches to his body, according to the police report.
The Asian-American victim yelled to Lushchinskaya, “You’re a disgrace to all white people.”
The New York Police Department said that Lushchinskaya, 40, has been charged with two counts of felony assault after the incident, which occurred during the morning rush hour aboard the D train in Brooklyn.
"As I was passing her she stuck her arm out and like, side-punched me with her keys in her knuckles," the female victim told Gothamist. "I stumbled, caught myself, kept walking and turned around because she was screaming at me to leave her alone. She called me a 'psycho (expletive),' and I still had my headphones on so I couldn’t completely catch what she said because I was so taken off guard."
"Coming home, I couldn't breathe," she said. "Every time I have to get a train, I'm really careful where I'm watching."
"They told me because I didn't know who she was they couldn't do anything and if I were to file a complaint it would be harassment not assault."
According to the Gothamist article, when she got out of the train station at Carroll Street, the passenger said she told transit police "through tears" what had happened. "They told me because I didn’t know who she was they couldn’t do anything and if I were to file a complaint it would be harassment not assault," she said, adding that she emailed the transit police on Wednesday night, the day after the incident, but did not receive an immediate response.
Tuesday's episode wasn’t Lushchinskaya’s first brush with police over altercations with fellow passengers. She was charged in June with pepper-spraying a man, also at the 36th Street station.
The Asian-American woman victim wished to remain anonymous. According to New York’s Channel 7 Eyewitness News, she said, “I'm lucky that she didn't have anything like weapons on her – like knife, gun – because it could have got a lot worse.” She also thanked the Asian man who helped defend her when everyone else sat still on the train.
The video of the assault had attracted 4.5 million views on Facebook as of Friday. Some of the more than 1,700 comments included complaints that more people surrounding the attacker did not try to stop the assault.
Why Is This Problematic?
When we consider the implications of the racially charged assaults that women of color face every day of their lives, whether physically or psychologically, we see that these women are often voiceless and, as represented in this story, nameless. The victim’s choice to be anonymous is a crucial point that underscores the invisibility of her narrative. Why did she want to be unknown? Why did she choose to escape the media attention? Perhaps in doing so, she would carry the weight of racial injustice on her shoulders as a survivor of racist violence, the kind of story that the media preys upon and thrives off of. After all, media attention is overwhelming and often inconsiderate of the emotional sensitivities of racial minorities.
For instance, the viral video of Dr. David Yao, who was dragged off a United flight that was overbooked, caused him to hide away in his home for the months. The mounting media attention traumatized him beyond what he wanted to feel. For the victim on the D train, there must have been an equally reasonable thought behind her choice to be anonymous.
Do people only
see racism
when it's labeled?
But perhaps another question we can ponder, is why did no one do anything to help her while Lushchinskaya beat her with her keys and umbrella? Why the uproar only begin after the white woman began throwing racial slurs? This begs the question of Asian-American visibility. Even though she was obviously attacked in front of everyone on the train, no one protested the white woman’s actions UNTIL there was an overt racist remark made to the Asian man who defended her. Do people only see racism when it’s labeled as racism? Will people turn a blind eye when they see violence that is evidently racist, but not obviously stated as such?
For the Asian-American woman, had there only been violence and no racial epithets thrown at her face, would there have been media attention? I want us to think about this question because it highlights the incredible invisibility of Asian-American women in public spaces. Even though we suffer the microaggressions of white-dominated society, our problems are not acknowledged until they fit perfectly into the social media bubble that controls us. Juan Ayala, after all, nearly didn’t step in to help because he thought he could be late for work. In the meantime, he recorded the video to put on Facebook and Twitter, yelling but not stepping in soon enough. Evidently, the video’s popularity attests to the power that “racism” draws, but does not really empower the Asian-American woman whose life was affected by it.
The police reaction to the situation was also extremely underwhelming, and needless to say, very problematic. Until the video was published online through Ayala's twitter, Lushchinskaya was not about to face serious charges. The police's reluctance to respond to the victim's complaint underscores the invisibility of Asian-American women who experience violence. If the police are unwilling to believe a woman of color whose cut-up face is evidence of violence, then how are they to believe any other woman of color? And this is why assaults against women of color persist, because law enforcement fails to do its job to protect anyone who is a victim of white violence.
Relevance to the Text
The lack of naming for the Asian-American woman on the subway train directly relates to Maxine Hong Kingston's chapter "No Name Woman" in The Woman Warrior. Kingston's aunt, who was erased from her family history and whose name was forbidden to be spoken in the house, becomes a ghost in the family past. Her aunt's transgression of the acceptable behavior for Asian women subjects her to violence and ostracism from her community. Kingston's father, who saw his sister as shameful, refused to acknowledge her.
In the same way, the woman on the subway becomes a "no name woman" because her situation puts her into a spotlight that is both condemning and uncomfortable. As the victim, she made the conscious choice to be anonymous because her train incident has the possibility of following her for the rest of her life. Whether or not this is positive, she would receive an unwanted amount of media coverage and attention from people who want to pry into her life. Unfortunately, for a victim of violence and trauma, the increase in public pressure can negatively affect her mental stability.
"Asian American women still remain
in the background and we are
heard but not really listened to."
The incident on the train also exemplifies Mitsuye Yamada's "Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster." She asserts that despite the rise of feminism in recent years, "Asian American women still remain in the background and we are heard but not really listened to" (40). This explains the police's reluctance to charge the white woman with assault because the victim did not know her personally. Had there not been a viral video that spread soon after the event, Lushcinskaya would have escaped severe charges (as she did with the pepper-spraying incident), and if she did get punished, it would only be labeled as "harassment." This comes to show that Asian-American women are still invisible even though we are present and we are bleeding.