Asians live in the Beloved Community, too.

As one retired woman in tech, I speak for a quiet minority population of east, south, and central Asians in tech who I have known who are weeping at these times.

Also, Mandela, please keep in mind that “Asian” is a white European construct, and not all of us are that tarball you wrap us in have no feeling for racial issues, or are advantaged.

My family is from all over the Silk Road, the ‘Stans, the pawns of empire in the period of history actually called “The Great Game” between the British Empire and the Czar, and later the US and USSR (and by “later,” I am referring to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the situation in Crimea -- all continuations).

No one here in America reads the history of the people in Iraq or Afghanistan any more than they read the history of your ancestors in Africa. (I recommend Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game -- long, but reads like amazing historical fiction. Real life Game of Thrones, lol.)

But there isn’t even a census category for us. We are not European. Perhaps some Iraqis consider themselves to be middle eastern, or some from Afghanistan might say South Asian, but the US does not believe, as a bureaucracy, in Central Asia.

They just bomb us.

So, I mark “Asian” on the forms. My family has been here for generations. My father was a Unitarian Universalist minister who worked night security for the SCLC and Dr King on the Salem/Montgomery March and other actions, and was considered “white.” In a sea of mostly black faces, he was.

There are fair skinned people in Central Asia. The Celts invaded from there, 6000 years ago. The world is more skin-diverse than most people think, and race-by-color is peculiar, race by name-on-a-map often has leftovers of old bad empires.

What counts, is compassion, and that can change in a lifetime, in a heart and mind, regardless of what skin it is wrapped in. I believe this. It takes a miracle for some people, lol, the grace of God and a touch of epiphany or tragedy or both.

But it is always, always, the content of their character, not the color of their skin that brings a person to knock on the doors of The Beloved Community.

Namaste. May we all come through this as one community, shining with the beauty of our pride in our heritages. We shall overcome.