The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) recently announced that its president, Nancy Yao, is stepping down to become the founding director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. We are happy to say so long to their disastrous president. In the MOCAs announcement of the news, the museum thanked Yao for all she has done to put MOCA in a position to speak the “truths about what it has meant, now means, and will mean, to be Chinese-American.” One has to wonder what kind of “Chinese American” she was telling the truth about.
In 2018, when the entire Chinatown community united against former Mayor de Blasio’s plan to build a 40-story prison in the district, the largest in the world, Yao was the only one standing, her hand outstretched, asking for a reward. As a result, Mayor de Blasio gave MOCA $35 million as part of the community OK for the mega-jail.
During Yao’s tenure, MOCA supported the move by choosing Jonathan Chu, Chinatown’s largest landlord, as co-chairman of the board. As our community recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, the developer and his father, Alex Chu, moved Jing Fong Restaurant, the largest Chinese restaurant on the East Coast and the last unionized restaurant in Chinatown, putting 180 workers out of work and cutting off the beating heart of Chinatown’s economy. Jing Fong has now moved to a much smaller space across from MOCA and without enough room for most former workers to return.
Meanwhile, MOCA keep promoting the view that displacement is inevitable and that Chinatown may disappear, but it can be forever commemorated in museum exhibits. With the $35 million prison money, the museum is now planning a fancy new building that will cost $120 million, designed by architect Maya Lin. MOCA dons its Chinese face to be the mouthpiece for the city’s racist displacement program. It makes the Chinese community so cheap, creating the impression that we can easily be bought off, and therefore contributes to the anti-Asian violence that is on the rise today.
Our community is furious with MOCA and Chu for selling and moving Chinatown. The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side — a coalition of various groups — has organized a picket line outside MOCA for two years. We have been call for boycott of the museum and other Chu family businesses, and we continue to gain support. Last winter, hundreds of Chinese home attendants joined the picket line and protested in front of MOCA, condemning the management of the museum and Chu’s racism and the destruction of the neighborhood where many Chinese seniors live and are cared for by these workers.
As if MOCA’s racism against Chinatown wasn’t apparent enough, Yao proudly became the figurehead of discrimination. First, when she confronted elderly protesters at the reopening of the museum, she threw cheap tote bags to them. After refusing his bribe, she accused the older women of being paid protesters and claimed that the Chinese getting paid has been a “historical trend.” At the same time, it covered the costs of its staff sexual harassment against young female picketers, and later call the cops on eight picketers, all of whom are Asian. Load? Drum over buckets of soy sauce as they protested. It was undoubtedly ridiculous and the charges were all dismissed, but the message of his move, as well as his support for the prison, is clear: the people of Chinatown are criminals.
One thing we have to admit is that Nancy Yao was a good teacher. She showed us by example what a 21st century racist looks like in the most progressive city in the country: you can be a person of color and still despise and sell out your community, climb the ranks of racist systems while trampling your own people, provide symbolic cover for anti-Asian discrimination and simultaneously claim that Chinese Americans are making progress. Nancy Yao and the Chinatown elites she promotes, like the Chu family and those who profit from the exploitation and displacement of Chinatown, are the new faces of Asian hatred. This is the culture that MOCA chooses to promote and tries to pass on to the next generation.
And they cowardly escape responsibility, as Yao can’t stand the heat of the community and flees to DC, instead of seeing his ash legacy through. Chinatown is just her checkbox to become the queen of performative identity politics. By elevating the president of a racist museum, is the Smithsonian Women’s History Museum simply trying to be a national version of MOCA, falsely celebrating a different kind of identity?
Contrary to what Yao, MOCA and Chu want, Chinatown, the Lower East Side and other surrounding neighborhoods are organized and united to fight against the city’s displacement agenda. We are currently pushing the City to adopt community plans like the Map of the Chinatown task force stop real estate speculation that causes displacement and build truly affordable housing. To be part of the fight against racism and displacement in our community and to ensure that the next generation will not follow in Yao and Chu’s footsteps, please join our continuous picket line in front of MOCA, Thursday through Sunday each week, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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