Steps Towards Black & Asian Solidarity — DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL
by Aiken Chau
This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative II, a collaborative program between the 24th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.
When I was very young, I loved to watch a bootleg Disney DVD with a collection of musical shorts. There was a song sequence that scared me so much that I would hide and cry behind my mother until it was over. It was a musical performance of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” with James Baskett as Uncle Remus in SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946). He portrays a cheerful plantation worker in America through the lens of white filmmakers, and although he was smiling and happy, something put me at unease.
Looking back at this sequence, the first few seconds with Baskett’s floating head emerging from the dark feels like something out of a horror movie. The production team did not do him any favours, giving him such a close and uncomfortable introduction shot. My parents would laugh off my fear of a Black man, and I was quickly taught how to fast forward to the next song and forget about this experience entirely. Watching DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL recently recalled this memory in my process to unearth how I might have been raised to fear and separate myself from the Black community just as many members of the Chinese community in New York do within this documentary.
DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL by Ursula Liang was the opening night film at Reel Asian Film Festival 2020. It follows the case of the 2014 shooting of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn, New York, highlighting the tensions and stories between the Black and Chinese communities. Peter Liang, a rookie Hong Kong American police officer, was patrolling the stairwells of the Pink Houses with his fellow officer Shaun Landau, where the lights were broken. While Akai was walking down the building stairs (the elevator was out of service), Peter fired a shot at the wall after he was startled by a sound in the unlit stairwell. This shot would then ricochet and go on to hit Akai. Despite realizing that someone had been shot, the officers did not perform CPR on Akai, leading to Akai’s death on scene, another Black life unnecessarily lost to police. Akai was a father to 3-year-old daughter, Akaila Gurley and his death left their family broken. Peter Liang would be brought to court for manslaughter, while his partner Landau would have no charges.
The film follows the aftermath of the situation from both sides.
The Black community of New York, headed by Akai’s aunt Hertencia Petersen, rallies to demand justice for Akai Gurley and for the NYPD to take responsibility for the incident.
At the same time, the Chinese community prepared their own demonstration in support of Peter Liang’s innocence.
In February 2016, rallies of thousands of Chinese citizens in New York and across America gathered for this cause. It was personally overwhelming to watch this documented scene of thousands of Chinese protesters mobilized under such conviction that they were fighting for “true justice”. They believed that Peter was being used as a scapegoat and that giving him jail time would be an easy way for the NYPD to clean up their act for previous police officer shootings, including the death of Eric Garner. It seemed as if they wanted Peter to be given the same treatment as other white police officers before him who were shielded from indictment.
The community went on to vigorously sign petitions to lighten Peter’s sentence and donate money to help Peter hire a top attorney for his case. I can understand the intentions of these Chinese American parents and elders in rallying together to push back against the indictment. In my experience, my own Chinese parents have been quick to welcome other Chinese people and create communities ranging from meeting at church masses to parents with elementary school children who become friends while watching their kids in the mornings. When you are a first-generation Chinese immigrant who may not have an outstanding fluency in English, finding others who share the same language and history as you in a multicultural environment is very comforting. Many Chinese parents also have a vigorous shared goal of raising their children to be academically successful. To follow the rules, go to university and have stable jobs in their adult life is the standard. The Chinese community understands the struggle and sacrifice that it takes to raise a child and integrate into American society. To see Peter, a Chinese son who could be their own, be convicted for an accidental murder is a painful experience. A single mistake can undo all the hard work put into raising a successful family.
In a powerful poem by Franny Choi titled “For Peter Liang”, she argues against Peter’s self-victimization. If there is another victim of the situation it is not Peter, but Akai’s mother and his fiancee. She states that Peter can be brought back and Akai cannot, criticizing Peter for not calling in the Chinese community to stop labelling him as a scapegoat. Choi ends her poem stating that, “If there is a second victim, it is not you [Peter]. It is what was lost between two communities in pain. But unlike the first victim, this one can be brought back.” Reparations are not made by pretending to be the victim. The pain within the Black community and Akai’s family caused by Peter’s actions is what Peter’s community of supporters should be repairing in order for both parties to find healing and move forward in solidarity.
The film comments on the idea of how Chinese Americans stay quiet and try not to create trouble in hopes of fitting in with American culture and become successful as immigrants to give the next generation a better life. Yet a better life should mean advocating for the safety and opportunity of all BIPOC people rather than protecting the current structures of racial disparity in favour of white supremacy. Therefore, to see people who could be my uncles and aunties protesting in support of Peter was troubling.
It was comforting to learn that Asian youth such as the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence spoke out against Peter Liang supporters and stood in solidarity with Akai’s family. This made me wonder if many Chinese leaders and spokespeople within my own community would have taken Peter’s side. I did a quick Facebook search (the only social media where I would be connected with elders in the Scarborough/Markham community) within my circles to see if anyone I knew spoke on the matter back in 2016 when the case was circulating online, and surprisingly there were only a sparse number of posts from my millennial-aged acquaintances which in fact, demanded justice for Akai. Social media such as WeChat and Weibo have been powerful pathways for Chinese-Americans to share word-of mouth news and opinions within their networks, and this was true when organizing in support of Peter Liang. The community built and amplified frustration with each share for him, and in turn, fortified the structures of white supremacy by feeding the belief that the lives of their own are more important than others. This skewed perspective leads to misguided actions like the protests in support of Peter Liang and creates a cycle of blame and self-victimization. It is important to seek out and listen to Black voices online and hear out their stories so that we in turn can come to understand their situations and support these views within our own online and in-person circles to call in our communities and families and keep them accountable.
My mom said that she had not heard about Peter Liang when I asked about her opinion on the case. This year we had watched and discussed news surrounding the Black Lives Matter protests after the shooting of George Floyd and the looting in Atlanta. She acknowledged that the police went too far but she also disapproved of the destruction that was taking place. I asked her to compare this situation to the hurt and anger that she felt for the Hong Kong protesters who were fighting against the Chinese police force. The conversation between us ended there.
Anti-Black sentiment is a large part of Chinese American upbringing, and recognizing our own anti-Blackness helps us move toward dismantling racism. An important point that director Ursula Liang does not address enough in the film is the racism within the Chinese community towards the Black community. During the live discussion at the festival, she said that she hoped to portray both sides of the situation as fairly as possible and did not want to demonize either side of the communities. For me, many times growing up, it was implied that Black people are dangerous or untidy, and that you should marry someone white, if not Asian. I went to school in Scarborough, and if you were Asian, you were part of the majority. With few to no Black friends to prove otherwise, I would subconsciously accept these biases to be true and avoid forming meaningful relationships with Black classmates and coworkers. By labelling the Black community as Other, it gives us an excuse to see their lives as inferior. If it were another Asian man that Peter Liang shot, how would the community have reacted? Or a white man? The support for Peter Liang definitely would not have been the same
Throughout the film, Director Liang does her best to present the multidimensionality of the Black community and we are given a look into the inner challenges and work that it took to organize and demand justice for Akai. There is a moment where organizers debate over what slogans they should use during their protest. One woman states “We cannot use the same phrases that they use to put us down, or else we will just be like them.” We are also shown two Black men on the street with different points of view on the situation: One believes that Akai deserves justice and that the abuse of police power must stop while the other’s stance is that the police were ‘just doing their job’. We are reminded that communities themselves have their own inner tensions and the individuals have their own nuanced viewpoints on how justice should be handled. There is a moment of relief amongst the Gurley family and protestors as they share a meal in a restaurant after a day of organized protest and enjoy each others’ company. We hear their laughter and conversation as they continue to make plans on how to move forward in future demonstrations. By showing moments of their vulnerability and disagreement in private amongst the collective outwards community strength, it highlights the vast effort it takes for organizers like Hortencia Peterson to bring a group of people together with a collective message for change.
In the end, Peter Liang was sentenced to 800 hours of community service and 5 years on probation with no jail time. There is a moving scene where as crowds of Chinese citizens cheer outside of the court upon hearing this result, one of the organizers grabs a megaphone urging them to stop, “No cheering! This is not a win! We have to be respectful to Akai’s family too.” It is hard to personally say if I wished upon Peter his full 15-year jail sentence. The publicity of the case has tarnished his career path and record for the future but to not be given any jail time because he was a cop, is disrespectful to Akai Gurley.
At the post-screening panel, Syrus Marcus Ware explains what he believes accountability looks like. Policing that targets the Black community is the result of the belief that being Black is dangerous. To be accountable, we need to call for the defunding and abolition of police. Money should be reinvested in Black communities, so that they have resources to keep their own communities safe, to be able to keep their stairwells lit. Since our legal and carceral systems are not able to bring justice to Akai and the Black individuals who have been murdered by the police, we need to do our part to demand these changes to the system and contribute to restorative justice solutions that are community-based.
The case and documentary has been captivating to me as someone who wants to learn more about the specific history of the Black Lives Matter movement. I acknowledge that it has been difficult for me to educate myself on the cases of police violence against Black communities other than what I’ve encountered on my social media timelines and that I have had the privilege of tuning them out because I felt that they didn’t directly relate to my identity. A difficult question I subconsciously ask myself is, why I should care about Black communities and how I can personally create change? Seeing the Chinese community victimize themselves within the film has given me a personal stake as I want to educate myself further so that I can share my opinions within the Asian communities that I belong to. DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL has helped me realize that documentary is a good vehicle for me to learn about complex issues by humanizing and characterizing the people surrounding these spheres.
Black communities are being discriminated against; they can’t be the only ones protesting for their rights. It takes the support of other communities behind them to create change and for those in power to re-evaluate what justice should look like.
We know that the Chinese community can be powerful in their collective voice. We can come together and organize to demand and fundraise justice for Peter Liang, to criticize the police rule over Hong Kong, and to protest against the increase of anti-Asian violence related to COVID-19. DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL ends with a montage of images of Black and Asian protesters rallying together in the past, urging the viewer to remember that the struggles our communities face are very much intertwined. Moderator Nataleah Hunter-Young began the post-screening panel by reminding us of the 1997 shooting of Edmond Yu in Toronto. In this situation, both Asian and Black communities alike demanded justice for this act of police violence. In order to move past our internalization of the model minority narrative, we are asked to do the work within our own community to hold our members accountable for their actions and to use our collective power to not only support ourselves, but also the communities of those who have supported us in the past. Action is more than just posting information within our own circles of friends on social media who already have similar mindsets, but also through informing our families, peers and elders on their viewpoints and asking them to take action with us. We must listen to the Black communities around us, so that we can use our collective power to demand for abolition to stop police shootings of Black people like Akai, and to prevent Asian people like Peter from being in a position to misfire. Standing together will benefit us all.
Aiken Chau (He/Him) is an animator and budding filmmaker who enjoys experimenting with movement and emotion in all mediums from 2d hand-drawn to stop-motion to 3D computer-generated art. Currently based in Markham at his parents’ house, his recent work explores and dramatizes the everyday family dynamics within a Chinese-Canadian household. He has collaborated on a number of short films, music videos and zine projects and enjoys dissecting the impact that the latest animated blockbuster films have on the internet art community. You can find him online @aikenbacons.
