Amazin LeThi is a global Vietnamese LGBTQ advocate, keynote speaker, athlete and thought leader. She is a former competitive bodybuilder, entertainment executive and the first Vietnamese internationally published fitness author. Amazin has captured audiences with her story from the United Nations to Google and governments from all around the world. As a thought leader and through conversations, panel discussions and Q&As, Amazin shares her personal journey of homelessness to becoming one of the most visible and influential LGBTQ activists in the world. Her story was included in the It Gets Better campaign and the first White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Asian anti-bullying campaign Act to Change.
In this interview Amazin shares her story of being raised in an intensely anti-Asian environment. This episode will make you want to finish construction on your time machine to go back and back hand some folks in young Amazin’s defense. If you are able to do that let us all get in on that.
It's heart breaking to face how much trauma some of us have survived at the hands of white supremacy culture, how much of the racism we internalized and how many years we’ve had to dedicate to recovery.
The beauty of the story is that Amazin not only survived, but found a way to repair her self-worth and actively work to fight systemic oppression and shield the most vulnerable from abuse and bigotry.
This episode we discuss:
🌈The transracial adoptee experience
🌈Discovering the empowering nature of body building
🌈Recovering from low-self worth and internalized racism
🌈Intersectional activism and fighting AAPI hate
Episode Resources
Connect with Amazin
www.amazinlethi.com
www.twitter.com/amazinlethi
www.facebook.com/amazinlethi
www.instagram.com/amazinlethi
I'm so excited to have you on the show. I've been listening to your interviews all over the place, and I think your story is fascinating.
And even though it it's very unique, I think so many people can relate to how you must've felt growing up, having that difficulty, finding your place. A lot of queer folks experienced that feeling of not belonging and a lot of folks of color experience, that same sensation, but your story of particular sounds like an extreme version of what a lot of us have gone through.
So can you tell me. What it was like for you being raised in Australia, not looking like most Australians.
I was a transracial adoptee, and you know, we have this issue already with white supremacy when you're coming from your own native background, but imagine, you know, growing up in it and living in it, you know, transracial adoption is such a difficult form of adoption because you're taking a child from a different background and trying to assimilate it into yours.
But, you know, as I grew up, you know, identity is so important. You take for granted that you wake up in the morning and you see someone that looks like you. But imagine tomorrow for 24 hours, everyone didn't look like you everywhere you went. No one looked like you and they never acknowledged. Your difference and your culture and your identity.
I mean, I grew up in a time in Australia when Asians were just coming into the country and, you know, the government was like the Trump administration. It was very vocal of how it felt about foreigners and particularly the Asian community, because Australia is the closest Western country to the continent of Asia.
And, you know, we had different Asian groups coming in, the Vietnamese, Japanese, the Chinese and the government, and people said publicly, we don't want to be Asianized. We don't want to be invaded by the Asian community. So, it was very confusing for me. Living in a society that hated me so much for being me and me.
Just not understanding why. And at the same time as a small child, being also confused about how I felt inside with my sexuality, but not having a name for how I felt. You know, I never saw an Asian person in the media at all. I never saw an LGBTQ person in the media, so I never had anyone that represented who I was.
I had to try and navigate this from my own experience, which was really difficult. I suffered a terrible amount of bullying as a, kids and discrimination and a horrendous amount of racism. I had, you know, so many Asian slurs that have been said at me, and it's traumatic as a child. It's like that flight or fight mode that doesn't stop because you're constantly on guard.
I remember an incident when I had to walk through a tunnel to the train station as a kid, and the tunnel just had all these horrible Asian slurs inside the tunnel and on different buildings. And I remember asking the Train Master, if he could paint it, if they could paint it over, because I found it very traumatic and they just kind of shrug their shoulders and said, it's going to be up there the next day.
We don't bother anymore. So, this kind of blaséness with racism and, you know, kids used to hide at the end of the tunnel around the corner and jump out at Asian kids. So, there was kind of always that kind of feeling as you're turning the corner that a group of kids would jump out at you. And they did numerous, times, and I was kind of bullied a lot at school.
I didn't really have too many friends, so I used to go to the library as a kid., my only kind of, you know, finding a way to find people that were different was through reading. You know, I read about Walt Disney and I read about these, you know, ingenious people who are extremely creative that created different things from their mind.
And this kind of gave me a place where I could just kind of. Lose myself and go into this dream world where I could create some kind of possibility for myself, you know, I never met a Vietnamese person until I in my late teens. I always had a very bad image of being Asian because of what society told me.
And I just remember as a kid, you know, going to, you know, into the bathroom and literally trying to scrub the Asian away and looking in the mirror, thinking, gosh, I'm still Asian. And for many transracial, adoptees were brought up as whites as well, which is very confusing when your whole sense of identity is erased, but then you look in the mirror and you see something else or when people talk disparagingly about Asian people in your presence, because you've been that somehow erased your Asian-ness yeah. Brought you up as part of their community. So, they, I mean, it's so strange to verbalize this to someone that they literally don't see you anymore for who you are, but you see yourself when you look in the mirror.
And I remember as a kid my father, driving through the Vietnamese part of town, it was a summer sunny day. The windows were down. And as we stopped at the traffic lights, he said I think you shouldn't wind your windows up because this is an unsafe area. You know, it's Vietnamese, they live in the bad part of town.
You know, a Vietnamese person could grab you or steal something from the back of your car or just hurt you in some way. And I just remember thinking that I'm forgetting to me like being very confused by that comment. Even now I S you know, I meet parents who have transracial, adoptee, children and they still struggle because there's a lack of support network.
And obviously you always think that you're doing the best thing for your child where, you know, you think, well, love is enough. And it's like, well, actually love isn't enough, you need to celebrate their identity and their culture, because it's just so important because it's so much of who I am. I that's something that can't be taken away from me.
I ended up in sports as a kid because I wanted to find that sense of community. You know, I struggled with my sexuality. I was getting bullied. And then when I went into sports as a child, particularly teams, sports, you know, being the only Asian kid in sports I instantly saw, then how the sports community treated Asian people that you see today in terms of, you know, Asian people are slow. They're geeky, you know, we’re not built like other you know, people or other ethnic backgrounds.
Were there not any other Asian kids and your school system by the time you were old enough to participate in sports?
See the thing about being a transracial adoptee is that you're in this kind of odd limbo, where there were Asian kids from Asia who could come over into the country because of their parents working. But I was just too different for them because they see that you're just really complete the, the comments is, is that your, your yellow on the outside, but your banana inside because they can't understand why, well, why aren't you eating Asian food? Why don't you speak our language? And they all also stuck to their own groups as well from the countries of origin. Yes. So, you, you kind of just kind of felt like an outsider. And then, I mean, transracial adoption, they had no idea what that was like.
They couldn't get their head around, you know, why would a white person adopt an Asian kid? Like, you know, it doesn't happen in the Asian community because relatives just look after children. Yeah. That doesn't really happen. And then obviously your white friends, you know, they see you as white, but with the wave of racism, they kind of turned on me as well.
So, for me, my kind of Haven, I thought, well, I'm into sports, but I was just bullied in sports by my team members, by my coach, by the other teams. I loved sprinting, but I was the slowest in sprinting because the other girls had longer legs. They would just fast. It just the way it was. And, you know, they would tease me as they would kind of come around the sprinting circle.
And, you know, my coach pulled me aside and said, you know, Asian kids aren't designed for sprinting. You would be much better in long distance running because you're just slow and Asian kids, you know, just a slow you're geeky. You don't have, you know, your limbs are different. You're physically incapable of this kind of speed.
So, I was pushed out of sprinting and I ended up and I kind of enjoyed long distance running cause I actually was good at it. So, I kind of, I ended up kind of feeding into that narrative, but also it was then an individual sport. It was something that I can do alone.
When you look back as an adult, do you think that some of the things that you were told repeatedly had a big influence on what you were physically capable of doing? Because we all hear a lot of assumptions about particular racial groups having an aptitude in one sport or another. But then when we look at race science, almost all of that has been debunked. And so, there is really no such thing. There is no scientific reason to believe that somebody with this skin color would be better at a certain sport, but it seems like sometimes when you're just repeatedly told something, it becomes real.
And then there are those coincidental things where you're told like, Oh, you, your people can't do this. And then coincidentally, you happen to be better at the other thing that they recommended. How do you process all that? When you look back, do you think the messaging is affecting people's ability in sports?
It really is. I mean, you know, when you're, when, when I speak to so many Asian adults now around sports was that's my background. I will always hear the same story that, Oh, I love to play sports, but I was bullied at sports. I was told I wasn't good enough. Then I dropped out as a kid and I never got back to it.
And until now, like I'm just playing tennis socially. You know, when you're a child, you're like a sponge and you know, if someone's repeating something over and over again, then you will just stop believing it's. But also, I had no choice because I was pushed out, even if I wanted to stay in the sports that I loved and do the things that I did, you know, when an adult is just kind of pushing you out and you, you know, you're when you were like a seven-year-old kid, you don't, then you don't have that voice.
But you know, I, I do think, I mean, we look at what's happening now with the anti-trans bills that whole thing around, you know, trans athletes are better that particularly, you know, but it's this continual just policing around women, not trans men, but if you say it's, I mean, I think this comes down to, when you look at hate, you know, you say it's enough times people will believe it's that it's, it's the repetition of saying it consistently.
You know, but I went into bodybuilding at six, very unusual for a girl, for kids, for an Asian kid. And that really helped change my mindset. And it was really just. By accident, you know, there was some dumbbells laying around the house. I just kind of thought, why not? I had no idea what I was doing. I would literally do a hundred dumbbell curls a day plus crunches and sit ups.
But I noticed that my, I got stronger. My body started to change and also my mind felt different as well. It, it was a sport in a way that other sports didn't do for me because I had very low self-worth as a child, just this constant kind of beating down on someone's worth. And, you know, I had mental health issues.
I, I hated being Asian, you know, obviously very confused about my sexuality and I just needed something to latch onto. And bodybuilding gave me that sense of confidence. But it's through me very quickly into then the adult male sports arena. And I started going to the gym, you know what? I was kind of under 10, when I started going to the gym, a local gym,
Were there any other children allowed in there, or there was just no rule about kids?
I mean, now you have chain gyms, like a seven-year-old kid, couldn't go into an LA fitness and say I'm not paying, but I'm coming in for an hour. They'd just say where is your mother? Absolutely not. But you know, it was literally just a local gym run by a guy who, you know, lived locally. He said, yes, I think in his mind he was like, she's only coming once.
Okay. Yes. Yeah. Like, yes, he just let me in, like didn't care.
So, wow this was a different time because just think of all the liability concerns people would have now, they'd be like, absolutely not. You're not coming in here. You're gonna break your little fingers. No.
Yeah. And then my mother used to use it as a babysitting. Like she would be like, okay, I'm going to the shops. You can just like, knowing that I just wouldn't leave. And I just remembered just kind of walking in. And I think at that age as well, cause I had obviously no sense of fear or concept or anything. It was like, Oh, this looks interesting. I had no idea what I was doing.
And I spent, I remember the first time just spending a few hours just kind of walking around and I think what I noticed as well. It was just like, there were no women here, just all men, all adult men. And I think they just kind of thought it's this like random Asian child that's walked in. I think in their mind, they must've thought, Oh, the mother must be at like an aerobics class.
So, the child was just kind of like, just wandering around. So, at first, I think no one kind of thought anything, but then I started to come back, and I think that's when it started to train because men felt so threatened by like this eight-year-old kid coming into their space. And you know, this whole thing of, you know, Trump and the Trump administration around the locker room talk.
I mean, I experienced so much misogyny as a child. People still targeted those types of things as, as a child. I mean, I look back and I'm horrified by what men said to me. Wow. They're like, you would never think of saying that to anyone, but let alone like a kid and they would say it, you know, they would come up to me and say it to my face.
Or then I would be like doing something, doing an exercise beside them. And they'll be saying it to their friends, but me just standing there. So, I could always, it was always in hearing distance.
Was it more like hyper-sexualized things or was it more just disrespect? Like women don't belong in this type of space or a mix of the two mix of the two?
Like if I could go back and start thinking in my mind, like if I could take you back into that moment, you would be horrified. Like I look back and think how horrified that I even went into that space and then received that much of misogyny and sexism. But yeah, it was just horrible kind of locker room talk.
And I, and I learnt a lot about men. I mean, I spent so much time just kind of sitting and observing them and thinking, you know, how does one gain respect in these very male dominated environments? And as a child, my kind of only thinking that came out of it was that gosh, men are such simple creatures.
Like they don't really talk that much about many different topics. It's usually like two topics that they talk about. It was really quite fascinating as a child observing this. And I, you know, I, but I loved. It's so much it, the sport gave me so much self-confidence and belief in myself. And I think it was something that I chose that I could do on my own, but I had to make that decision because I was encountering just so much misogyny.
And this was pre-earbuds. So, you wouldn't have even been able to block people out. I mean, maybe you could have worn a Walkman or something. What was the tech option, like for blocking people out?
But you need to remember that I'm like eight-year-old kid. So, I don't have the sense of awareness that you have now when you go into a gym and a man kind of says something, you know, there's a reason why, when a woman goes into the gym, she's like, got headphones on.
She's got a book it's this whole blocking out and creating this wall that men don't seem to understand that this is, you know, this is the reason why when you enter into a gym, you see more women on the cardio than in the weights room. And if they go to the weights area, they usually do it in groups because of the fact that know just men.
I mean, even now as an adult, there are some days where I just think the weights area's just so busy because I know exactly what it's going to be. Like. If as soon as I walk into that space, the amount of guarding that one has to. Do to prevent men from just coming up to you constantly, or even just the way that they look at you because you have all these mirrors, and you can see that.
And as a child, you know, I was, there was, there was nothing. I didn't even think that I could do something in my mind was how do I stand my ground? And I spent a lot of time observing, like I have mirrors, they look, I can see them watching me do everything. And it was just one simple thing. I had to lift as much as them, or more than them to gain respect because of how I observed how they were with each other.
And, you know, if I wanted to stay in this sport, I had to stand my ground and it took me a long time, but I think after a while they noticed that one, she's not leaving. She just keeps coming back. And two, because I was so young, I had no awareness of strength. Like a guy would go to machine and you'd have a hundred pounds.
So, in my mind, I'd be like, Oh, I can do that as well. And then wonder why the machine fell on me.
Oh, my goodness. How did you do, safety-wise like physically, it sounds like because you were so young, you didn't feel physically unsafe around so many men, but then when it comes to injury and trying to match what a man could do, how did you not get hurt?
I remember one incident; I was on a cable and I was kind of doing a tricep push down incorrectly. And the only came around and said, you're not doing that correctly. And he noticed, I was like trying to lift like half the stack because I noticed another guy lifting half the stack, and then he just put it to like the top weight and he goes, try it now. And I was like, oh gosh it’s so light and I tried to go back. Like, that was my, my only interaction with the owner of trying to strike. And he wasn't even trying to show me something correctly. He just kind of said to me, you're doing it incorrectly and just lifted it, put it, you know, put the peg to like the top plates and then just walked off.
I learned through watching men. I just, I did a lot of observing where I would literally just sit around and watch. I mean, yes, there were incidences. And I remember very clearly, I went to there was a guy using a squat machine and he must have had. I think 40 pounds on the squat machine. And he was obviously doing it easily and then he left, but left the plates there and I thought, Oh, I can do that.
As soon as I went on, the squat machine fell on me and I went right down to the ground. I kind of had to try and Crow. I still remember that moment of just trying to crawl out of the squat machine. It was so heavy. I just had no concept. And I think it was actually a really good age for me within the sport, because I had no concept.
I had absolutely no fear. And I think if I did it as a teenager, because of that, you know, critical and natural thinking and awareness, it probably would have been a little bit harder for me, but I also spent a lot of time in because I had no idea what I was really I was doing on the weights floor. I spent a lot of time in reception reading the bodybuilding magazines.
So, I learned. You know, that was my anatomy and physiology in terms of, you know, going through how to do exercises correctly, because I just read about all of that through the magazines that showed you all these different exercises. I read about these stories and, you know, I'd latched on to, and he became my role model, but it was so far removed from who I was, but it was his difference, Arnold Schwarzenegger because through all the bodybuilding magazines, I would read about this person that I couldn't pronounce, who came from this far away land, but used the platform of sports to get where he wanted to get and have conversations through sports. And it was that difference of seeing someone who looked different, had a strange name, had a different accent, came from a faraway place, but use that difference to celebrate himself and to levitate himself. And I think that was for me, my epiphany moment, where I realized that I needed to start loving who I was and I could, my difference was something to be celebrated, not something to be hated.
And I think that gave me so much confidence in myself besides, you know, doing bodybuilding as well. And I, you know, I started to compete as a teenager and yes, throughout the years, I, I did gain respect from the men because. Obviously, I just did not leave. And I just made a point of lifting as much as I could.
So, I was stronger than them and actually was a very good sport for me. Cause I realized I was naturally very strong, but I think as well, just that visual presence of seeing men lift a lot. And I thought this is how I'm going to gain respect from them.
That's really, really fascinating because even now, I mean, of course recently I haven't been to the gym, but as an adult at the gym, when I was a younger woman, the issue was just the harassment and people constantly trying to chat you up or help you when you don't need help.
Things like that. But as I got a little older and maybe started looking more matronly, I don't know. Then people just seem irritated that you're in their space. So, the messaging always says like, if a woman isn't there to be sexualized or objectified, if you're not available sexually, then it's like get out the way.
Right. Type of thing, which is such a common theme with male dominated spaces and finding men getting sassy or aggressive if you move the pins down, like a lot of gyms have their own culture and they'll tell you like, Oh, well, when you're done, you need to just leave it as you found it. And then there are others where you just leave it at the weight that you were working at and the next person moves it the way they Huff and puff when they have to move the weight up, because it was at a lower weight that's safe for me to lift just the drama and being a paying customer not being there as a child, just all of the disrespect, like the assumption that this space belongs to us when it's not a gym dedicated to men, they just dominate that part of the gym. That has been a real issue. But as an adult, like you say, you have all these ways of putting up the barriers, you know, how to speak up for yourself, or, you know, when you don't have the energy for that, and you can put your headset.
And I just, it's fascinating to think of a child going in and navigating that space and to be inspired by someone who has such a different background from you, but still his visibility was important. He kept his name as it was at. Let people just finally figure out how to say it correctly. Right? That's another way that people erase.
People’s uniqueness when they're coming from other cultures is refusing to learn how to say people's name correctly. I love the idea that you could be an inspiration to a child who isn't coming from exactly the same background as you, but just being visible and being different could be a life-changer for someone that's just, that's fascinating to me.
Yeah. And I mean, it's interesting that kind of, you go talk about, you know, what it's like to be in the gym. It's like, I experienced all of that, but I was like eight years old. And when those things were said to me, I was just like, you know, to me, it was like, gosh, that's, that's, that's very horrible.
Obviously, I would look at them, but then I'd, don't get the plates and, you know, still continue. And I think, you know, that was such, that was the irritation and the threat of whatever we say, she's not leaving. Like we’re going to a place that's so misogynistic, so sexist, so horrible. If those men said those things to you in the gym today, they would be absolutely banned and probably be on the front cover of the local newspaper.
But, you know, for them, it was, I could see it in their eyes as a kid that they're thinking that, and I can see it now that regardless of what we say, regardless of how horrible the place we go, she's not leaving,
It’s so interesting to realize that you have that type of power as a child, because I would think that even with the bullies, that, that is disheartening to them to find that there's some people you just, aren't going to be able to break that you can keep it going with all the racial slurs you can come up with, but, you know, you can't get rid of everyone.
Number one, and no matter how much abuse you heap on some people, they're going to find a way to understand their own value, to understand their own worth and. Be unchanged by your abuse.
Yeah. I mean, I think I was just very resilient as a kid, but then looking back the bullying in the school system and how I was treated there actually was the one thing that would make me cry at night at home but going to the gym and receiving the misogyny and sexism because I was lifting weights as well.
And obviously my blood was pumping. I can see myself changing how confident I was. It just kind of made me angrier in terms of wanting to stand my ground and own this space, because this is something that I just loved. And this was the one thing that wasn't going to be taken away from me. And I think because I had this big, why it kept me going as, as well. And obviously I had no money, so I couldn't buy the bodybuilding magazine. So that was another thing that when I go to the gym, I could sit down and, and continually read the story of Arnold. Schwarzenegger. It's like a book that, you know, every month, like a different story would come out that I would learn about.
And then, you know, I, I also notice that a lot of the bodybuilding magazines also started doing stories or, you know, Hollywood stars and celebrities and athletes so it became, you know, it’s a learning experience that I wanted to go back because I wanted to continue to read and learn as, as well.
Why do you think the bullying at school was harder for you? Was it just that there wasn't anything else in that environment to help you feel empowered, like the way the lifting was having that physical effect on you?
I think so. And also, I didn't want to be there either and I didn't feel, yeah, it, there was nothing to latch on to that kind of made me feel empowered where in the gym it was, it, it became something that I just loved and that it gave me the confidence and I felt empowered.
And then obviously there was a section of, you know, being in the reception and the magazines and stuff, and it became like, you know, you're not going to take away. The one thing that I love from, from me.
When it comes to the lack of visibility, when did you realize that you could be a professional athlete and that you could make this thing that you love a big part of your adult life?
Really through my reading of Arnold Schwarzenegger I think if it wasn't for going to the gym and reading about Arnold Schwarzenegger, I never thought I could make an impact. And I knew as a kid, I wanted to make an impact. I had no idea how or what that impact would be initially. It was because of being hated so much a beat because I was Asian, and I wanted the world to know that Asian people were great.
People just like anyone else. We just happened to look a little bit different from you. And then, you know, as I entered into sports and read about how Arnold and other athletes through reading the magazines, you sport, as that platform. It started to make me think differently that I could use sports as for something and create an impact.
And I remember as well once the gym owner said to me, he said, you know, you should start competing because you have that kind of competitiveness in you as well. And then when I read about him competing about how he used being a competitive athlete to lift himself up and see the world and do all these amazing things.
And I thought, you know, this is my path, but I had no idea the path was through sports and I mean, athlete activism didn't exist or, you know, any, any of that stuff.
Yeah. Oh, that is so fascinating that Arnold was such an inspiration. I love that. How did you get to the point where, cause I heard, you mentioned initially you were thinking this could be a way kind of to showcase or validate your humanity as a person who was being subjected to a lot of abuse simply for being Asian.
When did you start to feel a shift and working through your own internalized anti-Asianness so that your work isn't about proving your humanity because you know that that isn't your responsibility? Like people need to get their racism under control. It shouldn't be on you to prove that you are worthy. When did that start to shift?
When I started competing as an athlete, because then it became more than just this. It, it was more about how do I use the platform of sports for, for something, but I'm not quite sure what that's is through. Just kind of having conversations through sports and, you know, I competed, and then I started to qualify as a strength and conditioning coach.
And through that, I could see how sport changed people if they had sports in their life, but, you know, it's like until you can see some kind of pathway to how you use it, you, you're not quite sure, like how do you use sports for something that's beyond obviously, you know, talking about race. Right. You know, and I've kind of always gone back to sports through, you know, I think sports for me was definitely my survival mechanism without having a lifetime of sports.
I wouldn't be the person that I am today. I mean, you know, when I was a young adult, I experienced homelessness for a number of years living in and out of shelter, you know, having severe mental health, feeling very suicidal or living in poverty and seeing how, you know, you're treated when you're on the margins of society.
But, you know, I've always found sports as a haven to be able to, however difficult, just that mindset to be able to pull myself out. And it was the hardest thing that I ever did. And I had a nervous breakdown doing it, but still having that mindset. I mean, even through the pandemic, that's been difficult for everyone, but I keep going back to my mindset of sports, of going past difficult situations of, you know, going past the pain barrier when you're your body's in so much pain, but you need to keep pushing because you know, if you're competing, there's someone else working twice as hard as you.
Yeah. I mean, it only makes sense to me that you would have, have a period of time where the stress just broke you down because the amount of abuse that you were subjected to is far beyond anything I've ever experienced. I mean, bullying here or there, but nothing that intensive. And I was raised in an area with a fairly high black population.
I never felt like that level of fear, walking home from school, knowing that people habitually were jumping out to harass and bully people who look like me, that you survived all that, it almost seems like, of course you had to have a point at which it was just too much.
And with no adults to support and guide you through all of that stress, having to do it all by yourself. That's just, that would be too much for anyone. How did you start to incorporate the multiple levels of support that you needed to get? Well, like the physical activity and probably counseling and other things, did you have to create the structure for that too, on your own, or since you were an adult, were you able to get access to people who had more of an understanding of what you'd been through and what kind of support would make sense for your experience?
I never had that kind of support and you know, I've really struggled as a child and the family that I lived with, couldn't see the racism that I was experiencing, because when you're brought up white in a racist background, I mean, it's like, we talk about white supremacy. Now you think, well, you know, how can they not see BLM?
How can they not see all this stuff, but when it's not a part of your life, you just don't see it. And when it's never, you've never experienced it as part of your life, it's very hard for you to then see it, unless you really, truly want to take that leap forward and really learn from that. And so, I never had that support.
And I remember as a kid, you know, talking about, you know, the amount of racism and stuff, and I don't think they knew what to do either. But they didn't really see it as an issue because you know, the conversation that I had with the train master about the racial slurs towards Asian people in the tunnel, like he just didn't see that as an issue anymore.
Cause he's like, well, it's going to be there the next day. So, we just don't care. And more of that kind of blaséness of everyday racism, but what it means to a person of color and that multiple layers in terms of our, you know, beating down at our mental health. And I really did struggle as a child, you know, I suffered from anorexia and bulimia, I cried a lot at home, but it was so personal and so alone as well.
No one else knew. I would have horrible moments where, you know, I'd have breakfast and then just throw up before school because I just couldn't face it anymore. And, you know, body building became my support network because it became like suddenly my entire world started to revolve around going to the gym and bodybuilding, because it was the one thing that was lifting the up and keeping me sane.
Yeah. Yeah. When did you start to feel that you wanted to work to help other children who had experienced similar things? Not exactly the same, but when did your interest in advocacy come into your life? Was there something that happened that triggered that for you? That now I'm in a better place. I'm an adult. I can create safe spaces for myself and I can even work on doing that for other people.
I never saw myself as an advocate at all. Going back a number of years, there's no way I can share my story like this. It took me so long to get to that point where I can just verbalize it too the world. It was actually when I started to go back to Vietnam many years ago, and I just had this idea that I would start sharing my story to people. And that was my only idea. And maybe someone would listen to it. So, I started just randomly calling up embassies and consulates and asking if people would see me.
And then I would just sit down and share the experience of what it is, is to be Asian and queer and, you know, being bullied and how sports saved me. And it just kind of started from there. I never really kind of had this epiphany moment where I was like, now I'm going to become an advocate. And I think for many advocates, it's an organic process through the journey, any of our life of what we've been through.
And me as an adult, looking at sports over the last, you know, five or so years and thinking it's still the same, you know, we don't have the pro professional Asian athletes that we should when we do. And I always cite people like the basketball player, Jeremy Lin, who's one of the best basketball players that the US has had, but he can cite a lifetime of racism throughout his childhood college and even now, and most recently being called Corona virus on the court and just kind of seeing that wow. It, it hasn't changed. And, you know, it may have felt like it's shifted, but there's so much more work that needs to be done. And because I keep seeing myself in what's happening right now and thinking that I now have a platform to be able to say something I'm not competing competitively at the moment.
So, I don't have sponsors that I'm worried that, you know, I say the wrong thing or anything like that. And I think, you know, so many athletes who happen to be Asian, you know, they don't go into sports to be an activist. They go in it for the love of it, but then I can work on the other side around athlete’s activism.
And then I look at, you know, the amounts of bullying and racism that, you know, kids that are seen to be different. You know, we see this with all the anti-trans bills we still haven't broken that cycle. And I think, you know, if I'm have a platform and a voice, you know, I should say something and I should do something because it's, for me, it's about how do we channel change in generation to make it better for each generation that comes after.
Yeah. The amount of damage, the psychological damage that bullying does is really intense. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that it seemed like adults were starting to realize that that's something you have to take responsibility for, but there was no recourse for children who are being bullied in the eighties, the nineties.
So even that is a recent development, but you find that the members of society, that the adults at large are still biased against are receiving the minimal amount of protection or no protection at all. If the bullying is relating to an identity that let's say the government, it's basically also openly disrespecting this group of people, the protection is just not there. So, it's so interesting to me that you pointed out that the government was also facilitating and encouraging anti-Asian sentiment at the time that you were experiencing such a high level of bullying in school.
So, it really seems like the layers to this are it's a lot at what? Where can we have the most impact as individual people when it comes to fight fighting anti-Asian sentiment around us?
Sure. I mean, it is a lot because you know, when you have the government saying anti-Asian things, then society feels like, well, I didn't like them anyway, but now I've been given a ticket to be able to say it publicly.
So then as a kid, you're thinking, well, who's my support network because my support network should be my teachers and, you know, social system they're bullying. I mean, I remember once as a kid, I must've been like seven or something. You know, I was the only Asian kid in class. My teacher made me stand up and in front of everyone and said, this is what failure looked like.
And at most in life I will be the child that fails, and all the kids laughed at me. And I just remember thinking that, Oh God, I can't cry because everyone's laughing at me, including the teacher and
Whoa, the teacher was laughing as well.
And then as I sat down teacher threw the Blackboard erasure at my head, still remember to this day, the wooden bit just kind of hitting me just there and thinking I will never feel this humiliated ever again.
And nor will I ever want any child to experience this kind of humiliation. So, it's like, well, where do I go to? If the system is bullying me, you, you don't have any outlet. That's why I would go home and cry because I'm thinking
Oh, wow. That's so intense.
And that's why bodybuilding saved me in terms of just finding that place, even though I encountered it's interesting because even though I encountered terrible amounts of misogyny and sexism, which was just as bad as the bullying and racism, I had this big why of why I wanted to be there, because it empowered me and how it made me feel and this learning experience, which then helped me kind of overcome all of that's as well.
And I think the difference is, is that I noticed that as I gained respect from the men, misogyny and sexism started to die down. Whereas regardless of what I did, you know, in society of school, the bullying racism didn't die down. So, it was a very different thing for me. And the approach didn't work with that, but it did with the other.
That's just such an intense level. So, the teacher called you up out of nowhere. Like nothing had happened. This is just a random attack. So, there's no warning for you. So, you could be attacked at any time by teachers and students. And you had to deal with that for the duration of your public-school experience.
Yes. And you know, and also, you know, a government that didn't like you, I mean, you know, when I look at the pandemic of what the Trump administration have done and, you know, inciting this anti-Asian racism. I mean, if we look back in history in the US, you know, we can go back to the 1930s of different moments in American history where Asian people have been targeted and used as scapegoats.
But you know, if we're looking now in the 21st century, you're having a government that is attaching and ethnicity to a virus. And what that does is specifically target that community for hate. And we are seeing this wave of hate. I mean, people may laugh and think, but it did come from China so I can call it the China virus and I can call it the kung flu virus.
But you don't understand that repercussion because it's the repetition of then attaching an ethnicity to a virus and then wrapping it up in hates, which is, you know, the struggle. And because people can't tell Asian people apart and we seem to be this whole monolith community, then we're all targeted.
And it's very bad at the moment in the U S particularly towards, I mean, it died down. It seemed to have died down at the end of the year, but then it, you know, at the beginning of this year, it's spiked in a very bad way. And we're dying now.
Did this surprise you at all? Like as a child, did you imagine that things might be better for Asian people in the States? Or were you aware even as a kid that this racism against Asian folks was an issue here too?
I lived in a very. bubble world, and this is a kind of a story of how my world was very much a bubble. So, as I started to become a teenager, I started to go into the inner city to go to the gyms there. And it was like my first exposure to meet, you know, African Americans that lived in the inner city, but also, you know, trained at that gym.
And it was the only community that was nice to me, the only community. And I used to kind of scratch my head thinking, why are people like, and they would obviously tell me the stories of, you know, what it's like to be black. And I could, I could, I couldn't wrap my head. Around.
These were black people who had moved to Australia for some reason.
Yes, and also some black people from the Caribbean and stuff, but they would start to tell me that the history of the black community, but I lived in such a bubble. I mean, obviously the terrible atrocities towards the aboriginals, but I hadn't met that many, you know, outside of aboriginals, any kind of African American people or Caribbean people.
And when I met them, I couldn't understand why I had come across a community that was nice to me was like the only community that was nice. And I couldn't understand why the black community had gone through such atrocities because I had no idea of the history as, as well.
So, in my bubble mind, I'm like, but you're like the nicest people I've ever met and like you're the first community that I've ever met that's so nice to me. I can't understand why people are so nasty to such nice people. Like that's what I had in my mind. And I actually, at that moment as well, I always thought that whatever I do in this world, I always want to make sure I support the black community because I need to support the community that was there for me when I was younger, the only community there for me.
So, I didn't really have that much an idea. And you know, the also the one thing that people need to understand is the stereotype of Asian people, like, you know, we're, as soon as I'm born, I'm part of this invisible model minority race that has been pushed through white supremacy, that pits, you know, people of color against each other and puts Asian people on this pedestal with this false proximity to whiteness, that this is the good community and everyone else has to aspire to this good community.
I mean, when you watch TV, terrestrial TV, whenever you see like a doctor or a journalist or someone in a safe role, it's always an Asian person.
That's a good point.
Next time you watch a commercial the doctors always Asian, or if there's a TV show and they have an Asian person, it will always be the doctor.
Or the teacher or someone who's in a very safe role. So, it's very perpetrated that we're like safe people. We're harmless, we're geeky, we're quietly spoken. Nothing happens to us. So, what surprised me was I wasn't prepared for the wave of racism towards Asian community with the pandemic, because no one could have thought that the governments, I mean, I suppose we should have realized with the Trump administration, but it's not at the forefront of your head,
I honestly was kind of shocked to, to hear it repeatedly and to hear how people weren't checking it and stopping it. And I think this is where the fact that people are always, or in the States, people have suppressed Asian voices for so long and also people because they are just trying to get by and survive don't speak about their experiences. I did not know how intense our history with anti-Asian sentiment was.
And I had no clue that there were a lot of black people too, who are participating in anti-Asian violence and anti-Asian sentiment, where I grew up, the Asian population was so small. You knew everybody by name. And I observed that too, that the black kids pretty much were like, Oh, well you also are some variation of a person of color. So come sit with us. That's what I saw people doing. So, I really didn't know how common it was to see that conflict between people of color and to see that type of anti-Asian racism among black people. I hadn't seen it firsthand, but it's undeniable when you're looking at some of these attacks in the news, but it was surprising to me. And I've only lived in the United States.
Yeah. And this comes from this history of us being pitted together. But the interesting thing, and this is the conversation that I've been having throughout the pandemic is that the black and Asian community we've always been allies. You know, there's a picture of you can't Oh God, I can't even say her surname.
She's Japanese. And the last person that is holding Malcolm X's head before he died was a Japanese American woman. You know, it wasn't a black woman, wasn't a white woman. Wasn't a Latino woman. It was the closest person to him. And it was an Asian woman. And, you know, you look at Martin Luther King.
He was always very supportive of the Asian community. You know, he stood with so many black soldiers saying that the Vietnamese aren’t our enemies. It's the racism within America. That is, you know, the Black Panther party one of the first and top members who was in a high-ranking position was a Japanese American person.
And through the black empowerment movement, you know, there was an Asian female leader there. So, we can look throughout a history of Asian and black leaders. And I absolutely know if you know, Martin Luther King was alive, he would have stepped up and he probably would have been one of the first civil rights leaders to step up and say something and support the Asian community.
But we've had this riff over the decades. And this has come from mass media of how different communities are stereotyped and pushed the rise of white nationalism and white supremacy of how Asian people are seen. And, you know, you never hear the real stories. I mean, in New York, the one group that has the highest rate of poverty is the Asian community.
And when you look at senior citizens, one of the highest rates of poverty across all senior citizens in the US are Asian senior citizens. I think Margaret Cho said it recently in an interview, which is very telling is that on one hand, the Asian community is being vilified and attacked.
And we're asking people to suddenly turn right now within half a second and be our ally even though they've had this push a different kind of narrative pushed. And then suddenly they go to Netflix and see Bling Empire. That's the narrative that has been pushed for decades. But on the other hand, we're asking you to help us because we're in need.
Yeah. So, people really aren't getting it. I think the problem is too people aren't amplifying the voice of enough Asian folks to even know what's really going on. And the suppression in the news to me has been outrageous. Like the only time I'm learning about a new attack is on social media, from people who are in the community as being targeted or who are actively, you know, working with activists. I have not seen any major media coverage.
And that's been difficult of, you know, those that are speaking up in predominantly Asian high-profile figures, but it's like we need the allies. But the biggest issue is, is that this is very reactive at the moment because the hate crimes are happening in real time.
So, I’m needing you to pivot within half a second. But what we really need to do is the changing of hearts and the mind and the groundwork, because, you know, if I look particularly at the black and Asian community, we've had a lot of pain between our communities over the last few decades with different riots and how we've been pitted together.
So, there's a tremendous amount of healing that we need to do individually, but also together as well. And also, to remember what history, what rich history we've had together for the civil human rights movements as well, but that takes time. And at the moment the Asian community doesn't have that time because we're being attacked in real time.
And we're now fighting against this massive stereotype of Asian people are quiet. We don't need help. We're very wealthy. We don't suffer from poverty because we're always displayed as the good immigrant. That's put up in a pedestal to aspire to. And there's also a lot of lack of data as well.
It's only really now through the pandemic, they're gathering a lot of hate crime data towards the Asian community, so they can really track the hate crimes across the nation of where the hotspots are. And also, a lot of the crimes aren't being seen as hate crime because that person has to say something racially motivated to say it's a hate crime, but then when you are dealing with the, you know, elderly, Asian people who may not speak English, who have a lack of understanding of English, may not be able to say to you,
or report that yeah
They are just going to report well, can you not see I've got this big gash on my head, but you know, they may not have been able to understand what the person was saying as well.
So, it's a difficult moment for our community. And I know many people that say the same as you, that they haven't heard of these reports. And why are they not? Because they're very serious. I mean, after what happened to George Floyd a few months afterwards, a Filipino man died at home by the same kind of incident, but it didn't get the exposure that the George Floyd case did.
And I think people need to realize that our communities may look different. We may have things that are obviously very different within our communities, but what's happening to us is very similar because at the root of it, it's white supremacy of where this is all coming from and how it kind of separated us apart.
Pitted us against each other to put Asian people on a pedestal and still kind of, you know, churning the winds, so to speak.
Yeah. It's so true. And then I feel like you with your work with supporting the LGBTQIA+ community and focusing on trans women's rights too, you see this theme that once we're all free, then we can relax. But if you're in a group that isn't being targeted at the moment, your work is not done because as long as anyone's human rights are up for debate and you can be attacked just for being as you were born, no one is secure. It feels like a lot of people still aren't getting the importance of intersectionality.
No, and I think that's the issue as well, because a lot of people are going well, BLM happened last year. Everyone rallied around this. Now it's kind of the Asian turn. And then other communities like, Oh, I can breathe easily, glad it’s not me. But it's like, this is not a, we're taking it in turns thing.
Right, exactly.
And we really do need to understand. And I think this is why learning art history. Isn't so important because there is no national Asian American history museum. In the US you can go to the African American museum in DC and learn about your history, but there's not the same for the Asian community.
And they're looking at building and museum in DC. And I think we have to have intersectionality and how we learn our history, because you can't learn about Martin Luther King or the black Panthers, or Malcolm X without learning about the Asian, civil rights leaders that stood beside them as well. And without learning about other communities that stood there as well.
And I think once you understand that, then you need to, then intersectionality becomes a little bit easier, and I think we are really working in our silos at the moment and there's that, you know, definitely around trans women's rights in sports, you know, we have siloed that out, that women's rights and trans rights are two different things, but they're definitely, they're the same thing.
It seems like it's misogyny that makes people so hostile toward anyone who wants to do feminine things. So that ends up meaning a lot of people get targeted, even if you're a cisman who is not being masculine in the way that people want you to be. It all is fallout from the misogyny that's everywhere. And I don't know if trans masculine folks are experiencing the same level of abuse or if people are staying under the radar to survive. But I would just imagine, well, from the trans masculine folks that I know personally. They have said that the experience of presenting as a man has been a major upgrade as far as public abuse goes.
And I don't know if everyone is experiencing that. It could also be related to how people aren't clocking that they're trans maybe that is influencing their experience too. But it just really seems like trans feminine people are so hated and abused because people hate women and all things feminine.
And it threatens male masculinity as well. Because then a man has to question his manliness and his masculinity, and then he questions then his sexuality on top of this. And this is obviously as well, again, being perpetrated via the media, but also when we take it away, it's just continued this continual policing around women. And I think Serena Williams said it so well that she said, you know how I'm policed around my outfit, but then the men, they take their tops off and rub themselves.
They're half naked and they're sitting by the court side and no one's saying anything, but dare Serena Williams wears tights because this is what helps her physically, because of, you know, whatever situation has she has going on. What she decides to wear, then it's all over.
There are so many layers. Can you tell me about what you're working on right now the project you're focusing most of your energy on now and how the audience can connect to you, support you, what you most would like for us to be doing?
Sure. All the conversations that I have around racial equality and equality in general are through sports.
Since the pandemic started it's given me a very special moment to have a conversation with the world goes, no one needs to fly me. I'm literally having a conversation with the world. I mean, I'm very happy, full on ambassador to five organizations. And soon in March it'll be six organizations, mainly sports organizations.
And so, I have this intersectional conversation through the lens of sports of how we can use sport as a platform for, you know, changing hearts and minds, but also equality. And then I also use this platform to discuss the challenges and barriers that Asian people face in sports and life, because many people don't get to hear from an Asian person that has experienced what I have because Asian people, you know, are far and few between in terms of sharing our stories in this way. So, people don't get to hear that. And I think, you know, the pandemic has given us a very special moment where we can stop and take stock.
And I think we need to really check in with ourselves in terms of the language that we use, our behavior, our unconscious bias as, as well, because, you know, Words do hurt. We think about the past year through the Trump administration, how he's just weaponized the Asian community around a virus and how much that's hurting the, our community and the trauma that's it's causing.
I mean, I find it traumatic when I read about all these reports. People can follow my work on social media at Amazin LeThi and they also can find me on www.amazin.com as well.
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your story, because I really doubt that most of my listeners have ever heard of anything this intense and my audience is queer folks of color. And still, I can't imagine that that many people have ever had a teacher physically assault them and they knew there was no recourse. Like that is that's next level. I'm glad that you survived. And that now you're here to model for the rest of us that we can't be broken, and intersectionality is where our energy needs to go because we aren't free until everyone's free.
Yes. And, you know, I'm not just one thing. I, you know, I'm Asian, I'm queer, I'm an athlete, I'm a woman. And when, when, when we think of, you know, typically about our behavior and policy change, you have to take the whole person into account, not just one thread or who they are.
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's so powerful. Thank you.
Thank you.
Finding Your Strength with Amazin LeThi | Episode 21