In 2020...

As a mixed race person of Muslim Indo-Guyanese and Ashkenazi descent, I and my family are rarely central to the expression of our communities' experiences. Hate is a Virus came up in a wave of renewed understanding of the AAPI label as a pan-ethnic racialized group, formed as a political coalition for the protection of the identities under this label. The new wave of AAPI activism is grounded in decolonizing our communities at every level - disintegrating who we are from the inside out in service of the work and pain our ancestors gave to survive. 

We knew we were fighting systemic, historical structures that were built to make us feel alien in the ways we were meant to feel at home, but this is the work of love beyond the interpersonal - it gives us room to breathe, to see people as they are, and to someday grant ourselves the grace we give so generously to others. 

My research spans scale, from in depth critical qualitative content analysis to big data scraped en masse until it yields generalizable patterns. There's a marvel in seeing the scope of knowledge we can reach, how we can watch ourselves completely outside the agency we wield in our own lives. But this needs to be a reminder that we don't create truth through our work - we only discover it.