Asian Americans should be inspired to be better allies to us as they grow to realize that, despite our differences, Black Americans have shown up to defend Asians and their rights to life and liberty since at least 1869, when renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave his “Composite Nation” speech, in which he delivered a moving argument in favor of Chinese immigration to America.
Meanwhile, it’s 2021 and I can’t get this specific image out of my head: Asian-American Minneapolis Police Department Officer Tou Thao stood watch while then-Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes before killing him.
And I don’t know how many viral videos I’ve seen in recent years showing Asian male store owners and managers violently attacking Black women they’ve accused of stealing or otherwise disrespecting their business.
Black Chicagoans were literally just boycotting Asian-owned beauty supply stores and nail salons on the South Side for perpetrating violence against Black women patrons— the same Black women who generate billions of dollars every year for the Korean-run Black hair industry.
While white supremacy barred Black Americans from owning and operating our own businesses, it allowed Korean and other Asian immigrants to open up shop in our “economically disadvantaged” communities. So, yes, white people created the conditions for Black-Asian tension, but that doesn’t absolve the Asian-American community from any accountability for choosing to treat African Americans as cash cows and criminals instead of comrades.
The Asian-American community encompasses a lot of different ethnicities and various cultures that I won’t pretend to know a whole lot about, but still— I said what I said.
“African American” isn’t a monolith either. And even though I’d never want to be known as the “model minority,” characterized as reserved and opposed to resistance in the face of white domination, I know the trope works to privilege all Asian Americans over all African Americans.
Asian Americans are the highest-earning racial and ethnic group in the U.S. Yep, collectively they’ve amassed more wealth than the whites in this country—although they also have the widest intraracial income gap.
So while there’s crazy rich Asians, many of whom arrived in the U.S. with skill-based visas, there’s also devastatingly poor Asians who arrived as refugees and end up working in places such as massage parlors and nail salons. It seems to me that those on the lower end of the income spectrum need to be calling on their wealthy counterparts to be better AAPI allies.
The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is observed annually on March 21, marking the day South African police killed 69 peaceful protestors at a demonstration against apartheid in 1960. On this year’s #FightRacism Day, the New York Times published an article about a Latino man who survived the shooting at Young’s Asian Massage, only to be racially profiled, handcuffed and detained by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office for four hours while his wife, Delaina Yaun, laid dying.
This tragic shooting and its aftermath highlight two things: no one in the U.S. is exempt from the fight against white male supremacy and no one in the U.S. is safer when police respond to crimes against us.
The AAPI community, the Black community, the Latino community, the Native American community and the white liberal community have been called to action to collectively confront racial discrimination, sexism, economic inequality and police ineptitude. We all have plenty of work to do within our own respective communities, and that’s where each of us should start.
Then we should all meet up on the frontlines at the next Movement for Black Lives protest, where the most marginalized among us are centered but all are welcome, to convene as co-conspirators in common cause against white male supremacy. See you there, revolutionaries.