Why Asian American solidarity with Black Americans is so important

I am an Asian American woman. To be more exact, I am a light skinned queer Chinese American woman. I have a white boyfriend. But the thing is, I am still a follower of Black Lives Matter. I still feel pain when I see a continuous onslaught of media coverings of the latest black victim of police brutality. I still feel fury as the list of illogical reasons for the police to murder a black person continues to grow. Why? Because I believe in solidarity.

The summer before I started my first year of college, I went to my first major protest. That protest was Black Out DC. I wasn’t terrified or nervous that day. I wasn’t shaking when standing under a tree in front of the White House holding a sign taller than me. I wasn’t scared at all of the police. If anything I was ready. Yes, I am a person of color, but to a certain extent light skinned East Asian Americans hold a privilege in our society that Black Americans don’t have. Even though we are also victims of white supremacy, we will never be shot down and killed by the police state at the rates Black Americans are.

According to ProPublica, young black men are 21 times more likely than their white peers to be killed by police –drawn from reports filed for the years 2010 to 2012, the three most recent years for which FBI numbers are available.

I’m not going to say none of my fellow Asian Americans are doing anything. Because that isn’t true. I’m going to say this though: we aren’t doing enough. Not enough of us go out there and “shut shit down.” Not enough of us go out there and show the media that we give a shit about our black brethren. Why?

Maybe it’s because we’re scared. I’ll say this right now, it’s OK to be scared. But we can’t let that fear overpower our sense of right and wrong. There is something very wrong with America’s treatment of the Black community, and we can’t just stand there and let it happen.

We need to stand up and say we won’t take it anymore. Why? Because our community is also being attacked by the police state. It’s true we’re not being assaulted at the rates the black community has been. But our people are also sometimes victims of police brutality. In 2014 an Asian American salon owner was assaulted by a group of Chicago police officers. If we share a similar narrative to Black Americans, shouldn’t we speak up when they’re being mistreated too? I’m not saying that we can’t focus on our own issues. I’m saying that it’s time we all worked collectively.

We stood with Black Americans during the civil rights movement. But also Black Americans stood with us. We marched together on Selma. In fact, one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches was on the topic of the Vietnamese war, “Beyond Vietnam” expressed solidarity with the Vietnamese people.

In addition, Asian Americans had a large play in the founding of the Black Panthers. Richard Aoki was one of the founding members of the Black Panthers. Regardless of him possibly being a FBI informant, he still had a huge play in creating one of the only groups that could and would protect Black Americans.

The Asian American community cannot forget how much the Black community has done for us and how much we’ve done for them. We must continue on with that solidarity. We cannot abandon solidarity for the false benefits that white supremacy dangles in front of our eyes. We’re bigger than that.

When we do things like publishing open letters on the importance of Black Lives Matter to the Asian American community. We say to the world that we will always remember the importance of solidarity with the Black community. We cannot let white supremacy tear us apart. As the letter says, we should all have a hope for an American Dream not just for one’s own children, but for all.

Although the Asian American community needs to do more, the media also needs to give more exposure to our actions of solidarity. How will Asian Americans see how important it is to be pro-black with increased focus on actions such as protests in support of Peter Liang ?

Finally, I end this article with four words, Black Lives Fucking Matter.