Gentrification, Identity and Activism as an Asian Woman in San Francisco

Written by Stef Che

Where I live doesn’t define who I am nor does it define the person I can be. With gentrification, many are being forced to leave home and relocate to places they’ve never been to, or face the complications and desperation that comes with a life on the street. It feels like a loss of your identity to move away from where your memories were made. The faces of your community become featureless. The owners of the local liquor stores you went to, the crowds that surrounded you on your many MUNI rides become distant memories. 

The first time I was evicted from San Francisco was in 2002 when I was 14 years old.

I used to love bonfires on Ocean Beach, getting lost, finding my way back to wherever I was supposed to be in the first place. The relief of graduation, and indecision of choosing a life worth living comes crashing down upon your shoulders as the graduation caps ascend into the air. To quote Vitamin C, “as we go on, we remember all the times we had together.” 

The first time I was evicted from San Francisco was in 2002 when I was 14 years old, and the family I lived with lost our housing due to inflation and the original tech boom – known then as ‘the Dot Com boom.’ We moved two hours north to Mendocino County. History appears to be repeating itself. Moving is normally dreadful and frightening, but during a global pandemic and the innumerable amount of crises facing California, it seems like no matter where you go the world is always a potential shit storm. 

There are many people doing good work in the Bay Area, but there are also people using the oppression of others to fuel their own narcissistic need for unearned admiration. 

In Fall 2019, I moved back to the Bay Area. I had spent the previous nearly two decades going to college, living coast to coast, city to city, but I always had an internalized shame about the Bay Area; I felt I didn’t deserve to go back because it had spit me out before. However, in November of 2019, I made the move back. I had previously spent many hours volunteering with nonprofits in the areas I had previously lived, and now I was in the Bay Area, a place supposedly full of activists. I thought to myself that I had finally made it back home.

Instead I was met with a rude awakening, that, as Broke Ass Stuart so eloquently put it, a lot of the progressives and activists were more like “LARPers” who sought employment in fields of activism or engaged in social justice only to be hypocrites in their own personal lives. There are many people doing good work in the Bay Area, but there are also people using the oppression of others to fuel their own narcissistic need for unearned admiration. 

I’m Asian. In my experience, as a person of East Asian descent, any racial injustice I faced would not be taken seriously. East Asian and South East Asian women have historically been treated as comfort women and Asian men have been emasculated in popular culture. We’re dehumanized by our ‘model minority’ status. This history of dehumanization has allowed for people to not take oppression against Asians to heart because we are perceived to be robotic workers; gracious for any small crumb of opportunity. Also, American Imperialism has been successful in portraying Asia as uncivilized, yet admirable and stoic, so instead of hearing true stories about life in Asia, those unfamiliar paint the narrative that being in the USA is better than being in Asia, therefore my human rights being violated fell on deaf ears, as I was lucky to be here, such a progressive and tolerant place. Even the people who said they loved me would shrug with disinterest whenever I tried to explain the plight of our relative communal silence.

Despite the stereotypes, I am not quiet or subservient. Nor am I the offspring of a rude landlord (another stereotype of Asians in SF,) I am a girl who was forced to move by economic forces, something that I think connects me to many who were born and raised in the City, but when it’s my turn to speak, the auditorium empties and all I’m left with is an echo of my own voice reverberating off the walls of an empty room.

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