The Future Of Pride Is In Chinatown

At some point during the past several years, so many Pride celebrations turned into a corporate affair. While marching in parades alongside nonprofits providing life-saving health care for queer people, we’d also see floats paid for by banks, fast food chains and petroleum companies. To some queer people, this feels like progress — or at least a belief that the LGBTQ community’s mainstream visibility would equate to permanent protections.

This year, however, something’s changed. Corporations such as Target, Comcast and Mastercard have pulled out of Pride celebrations around the country, citing “shifts in priorities.” Given this administration’s blatant rejection of diversity, we know what that means.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from these pivots, it’s that corporate and state-sponsored Pride is fragile, simply because whoever is in power changes every few years. We now live in a country where the majority of voters chose a president who holds staunchly anti-trans views, and where it’s become financially risky to publicly support queer people.

These changes have made something click for me: We must root the future of Pride celebrations in communities that have resistance ingrained in their DNA, and divest from our desire to be “celebrated” by corporate America. Sometimes, that means searching in places you wouldn’t necessarily expect. At the end of May, San Francisco’s Chinatown quietly threw its first ever Pride celebration, which asserted the neighborhood’s long standing history of resistance.

When I first heard that a Pride celebration was going to be organized at a Chinatown, I was admittedly surprised. To me, Chinatowns have always been places of cultural and familial comfort. It’s where my mom would go to buy groceries for a Lunar New Year potluck, where I’d get cheap haircuts as a college student or chat with the aunties while they played mahjong. They were never places where I felt I could bring or express my queerness openly, well aware of my elders’ reverence toward the nuclear family.

At Chinatown Pride, I learned that the true history of most American Chinatowns are deeply radical. San Francisco’s Chinatown, for example, has always been at odds with the world around it. In the mid-1800s, hundreds of Chinese migrants went to California in search of opportunities, where they found jobs in railroads and factories. There, they faced xenophobic hate ― even lynchings.

San Francisco was a haven for Chinese workers, but even in that liberal city, there were restrictions on where Chinese people could rent property, leading to the creation of a Chinatown. As San Francisco grew, developers tried to destroy Chinatown to make way for real estate, and cited concerns about the neighborhood being a site of moral corruption and filth.

Chinatowns have always existed in their own world within Western cities, and have provided fertile grounds for radical and creative underground communities. Those communities are still very much alive today. This year’s celebration was organized by several key players involved in preserving San Francisco’s Chinatown and its history, including Edge on the Square, an art hub that celebrates local artists; GAPA, an organization that uplifts queer Asians; and the Rice Roquettes, an AAPI drag trope.

On May 24, a small crowd congregated in front of Edge on the Square. Among them were drag queens in kimonos, activists dressed in fabulously colorful suits, and politicians. The theme of the event was “We are Immortal,” a rallying cry tying us to our ancestors’ fight for visibility.

“We are in San Francisco Chinatown embracing diversity when the goons in the White House are trying to erase it,” said Danny Sauter, who serves as member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in District 3, where Chinatown is located. “It sends a message throughout this country for those who need it most, those who need the love, to know that they belong in San Francisco and in this country.”

It sent reverberations of 2020’s activism, a time when many of us were filled with hope that America could actually change and reckon with its difficult past. And while that was a pipe dream, this rally provided a view of what once was and what could potentially be again.

While neon pink and green lion dancers strutted through the crowd, I spoke with Kiki Crunch, a drag queen and activist, about what makes the AAPI queer community in San Francisco special. “Asian folks really value close family ties even if we’re not blood,” she said. “We create our own family, we protect our own family, and we build our own home in the queer API community that we have.”

Another thing that surprised me was that there were a lot of elders in attendance. “I think a lot of misconceptions about Chinatown and what it can be is other people imposing their views on the community, because there’s a lot of queer elders here, a lot of stories here that haven’t been told,” said Jenny Leung, the executive director of the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco.

One of the main goals of Chinatown Pride was to raise awareness about how the neighborhood has been a site where queer and trans people thrived for decades. The procession made stops in front of places with little-known queer history, including a former telephone exchange on Washington Street, where female phone operators would flirt with each other in secret; the I-Hotel, where Filipino gay activist Gil Mangaoang and other queer Asians would organize; and Grant Avenue, where underground bars were welcoming places for queer people.

Chinatown Pride reminded me of other Pride celebrations that have warned us about relying on corporate Pride for years. Famously, the Dyke March in New York has long pushed back against the corporatization of Pride, with a protest with no permits or corporate sponsors that takes place on the last weekend in June.

There’s a vision of smaller, community rooted Prides popping all over the country in response to corporations turning their backs on the queer community. “I hope to see Chinatown Prides across this country and all around the world,” said Juicy Lui, a drag queen and activist. “I want to see more Prides beyond Chinatown. I want Japantown Pride, Little Saigon Pride, Manilatown Pride.”

Pride has always been a protest, and this year, I foresee it getting closer to its roots. San Francisco’s Chinatown Pride taught me that it should remain a multi-generational place of concrete action and education. These might not be the types of Pride celebrations that feel like a blackout party, but it’s the type of Pride that feels rooted in something real — not the whims of those who love us only when it’s easy.