Back to my experiences at NSAC.

One of the things that I’m always frustrated about are the concurrent workshops – 3 or 4 at the same time. Too many to choose from, I want to go to them all. While I usually learn a lot from the workshop I’m attending, I always wonder if I’m missing something else equally informative.

On another note, I am very grateful to have choices, something I didn’t experience a lot growing up Asian and a survivor of sexual, physical and emotional abuse.

At this conference, I gravitated towards the round table leadership discussions: women of color caucus and Asian Pacific Islander   – all practitioners in the field of sexual assault.  I felt such a close connection to these participants, as we spoke about some of the specific issues that people of color face that Caucasian practitioners/survivors do not.Unlike Caucasian survivors who deal with sexism, women of color deal with sexism and racism. Men of color survivors deal with racism.  Both “isms” have to do with power, of one group of people having power over another group. It is an institutionalized, a collective system of power wielded against one group over another  because of the latter’s  race, gender or sexual orientation.  This power limits the disadvantaged groups access to products and services, i.e., health care, education, housing, etc.

It is different from personal bias or prejudice. For instance, if an individual in a disadvantaged group has a prejudice towards someone, s/he does not have the collective power to limit that person’s access to the above products and services. That’s the difference between racism/sexism and individual prejudice.

The impact of sexual assault is compounded for women of color survivors who not only have to deal with the trauma of the assault, but with the trauma of racism and sexism as well.  If they are lesbians, then the traumatic impact is tripled, having to deal with homophobia as well.

My personal experience as an Asian-American and a survivor of child sexual and physical abuse, I didn’t have a safe haven at home or outside. I lived in terror all the time. If I weren’t being abused at home, then every time I stepped out the door, I faced racial abuse which, at times, became physical.

There was no place I could go for help, given that when I arrived in the late 1940’s, there were much less social services to help the disenfranchised. And, even if there were, the Chinese culture teaches to keep things private, that it was a great shame to have to seek outside help.

Because of these institutionalized “ism”, there is less funding for this particular population.  The consensus of the participants is that most of the research done on sexual assault focuses on Caucasian survivors. Therefore, the  research does not address issues that are specific to people of color.

The small number of people of color in this conference bears out this premise.  With over 1000 participants, people of color represented a small fraction of the attendees.  I don’t have an actual count, but I would be surprised if we even had 100. And, within the women of color caucus, Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans expressed that they felt that, even within the people of color group,  their specific issues were largely ignored.

For example, Asian Pacific Islanders  are lumped together, yet there are so many countries included with its own language and culture. Because of inadequate funding, it is challenging to hire translators for the myriad of languages: two major Chinese dialects, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Cambodian and languages spoken for Pacific Islanders. Again, I can’t speak for other states, but in the Los Angeles area, credentialed Chinese-speaking social workers are very hard to find.

I always find conferences such as these exhilarating. I come home on a high, as do many other participants. But, what gets done after that? We go back to our daily lives and our work, and does anything really change other than what we can individually do with the new information that we’ve received?

I don’t know the answer to that. What do you think? Please comment, especially those of you who were at the conference. If nothing else, staying connected and giving each other support is crucial.