America Still Sees in Black & White
Courtney Luk
13
- I, as an Asian-American, fail to see how incarcerating Peter Liang would “be detrimental to us as a people,” much less “an injustice against a minority culture.” Anti-blackness IS a large problem within the Asian-American community and holding Liang accountable for the actions he took directly brings that discussion on anti-blackness within non-black people of color communities to light.
- There has definitely been discussion surrounding the scapegoating effect of convicting minority officers for targeting and fatally shooting black people while white officers get off scot-free for committing the same crime; if your conclusion is that any officer regardless of race should get the same privilege as white officers and not be convicted, I don’t see that so much as a path towards justice and equality than a path towards excusing manslaughter and murder.
- I don’t recall the Asian-American community banding together to save Daniel Holtzclaw, nor have I heard any accounts of the Latinx community protesting to save George Zimmerman. What I do remember is 2008 when news spread of the police shooting of Korean-American Michael Cho, and how the articles I read at the time also detailed the 1997 shooting of Taiwanese-American Kuanchung Kao as well as rampant police harrassment and racial profiling within Asian-American (specifically Cambodian and other Southeast Asian) communities. And yes, there were protests and petitions then from the Asian-American community. The American police system is broken, and I see you agree with that, but Liang is receiving too much attention as a victim when other Asian-American lives have ended alongside black lives through a system that Liang has been more or less complicit under.
- Viewing racial discourse in America as a black-white binary IS a direct result of white supremacy. The hyperattention towards black issues and the relative lack of attention towards issues regarding non-black people of color are two sides of the same white supremacist coin. The black community has often heard criticisms of being too whiny or are derailed for not allowing other minority groups their chance to speak, while non-black people of color don’t feel listened to. In both communities, their painful experiences are invalidated by the gas-lighting, white supremacist mindset that makes both groups believe that they simply don’t have it as bad as they claim.
- An analogy I’ve found helpful: if the white hegemonic institutions that be have an entire pie to themselves, and they decide to give all minority groups a collective 25% of the pie while keeping the 75% to themselves, minority groups have often shown that they will fight amongst each other to obtain a larger portion of the 25% rather than fighting the white hegemony for a larger piece of the 75%. We are hurting each other when we compare ourselves to other minority communities.
- I can tell from this post that you feel a lot of pain and a lot of anger and that you haven’t been listened to nearly as often as you should have in the past. I would like to think many of your fellow workshop peers feel the same way. Perhaps the comments you received sounded accusatory to you; I think there is a way in which you can re-approach them differently as an entry point towards greater discussions for alleviating the pain that you have.