When footage of the murder of George Floyd began to circulate on social media in 2020, I remember feeling distraught. A part of me knew what I was going to witness by watching the video — the trauma of seeing someone that looked like my loved ones killed in broad daylight.
But what I didn’t realize was that I would be faced with rage not just against systemic racism, but also against a part of my own identity. As the left knee of Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, remained wedged against Floyd’s neck, Tou Thao, a Hmong officer, stood idle. According to footage of the incident, Thao motioned to bystanders to stay away from him and his colleagues while two other police officers restrained Floyd.
I am of both Black and Asian descent. At that moment, I felt betrayed by Thao. It felt confusing that someone of color could be blind to their standing in society — blind to the fact that they will never be proximate to whiteness. I felt uneasy in grappling with this tension not just within my own identity, but between two communities that I was a part of.
In the past few years, I have noticed a shift in the air regarding the standing of those of Asian descent in conversations of race. The murder of George Floyd, the growing number of violent crimes against Asian Americans in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Supreme Court hearing in October about the use of affirmative action by higher education institutions have all brought to the forefront the complicated nature of what it means to be Asian American.
Within this realization, the historical tension between Asian and Black communities in the United States has been revisited. But in moments of division, we must remind ourselves of our history of shared solidarity, because that solidarity is an essential foundation for recognizing our common enemy: white supremacy.
The tension between Black and Asian Americans did not start with George Floyd and Tou Thao. The murder of Floyd echoes a pivotal event in this history: the Los Angeles Riots of 1992.
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King, a Black man, was brutalized by a group of police officers in Los Angeles. Like Floyd’s, his interaction with police was documented on video, and similarly brought to the surface generations worth of frustration towards our nation’s law enforcement and justice system.
That same month, Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old Black girl, was shot in a small corner store. The owner — a Korean woman — said Harlins was attempting to shoplift, and that she felt endangered enough to shoot her for self-defense.
Instantly, the streets of Los Angeles were flooded with protests for the deaths of both Harlins and King. In response, other Korean store owners armed themselves against Black rioters, initiating an unspoken racial standoff. As time went on, this animosity was passed on from generation to generation in both communities, and racist notions of the other began to solidify.
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During the pandemic, this history has been leveraged against the Black and Asian communities. Because some of the recent crimes against Asian Americans were committed by Black people, some observers intentionally tried to reduce the situation to an exaggerated Black and Asian divide, intentionally ignoring the epidemics of xenophobia and white supremacy that had brought our nation to that point.
But the fragmented relationship between my two communities has seen occasional glimpses of healing. During the Black Power movement, Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X stood allied, supporting each other’s struggles for civil rights. Seconds after Malcolm X’s assassination, Kochiyama held his head in her lap.
And at a 2021 Black & Asian Solidarity rally in New York City, protesters called out acts of Asian hate in response to Covid-19 while holding up picket signs saying “Black Lives Matter.”
Together and unified, individuals chanted: “Show me what community looks like. This is what community looks like!”
At this rally, members of my two communities were able to acknowledge their differing experiences with race in America. This approach not only respects the privileges that one has over the other, but prevents us from equating the difficulties of the Asian American experience to the Black experience. From America’s sin of slavery to its xenophobic immigration policies, both the Asian and Black communities have faced and continue to face our nation’s white supremacist roots.
Instead of continuing a pattern of complacency, it is time that we acknowledge the true fight at hand — together. The struggles of Asian American and Black communities in America are certainly not interchangeable. But both struggles derive from the same system — a system that continues to thrive off our division.
In the words of activist Frannie Lou Hamer: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
Lauren A. Kirkpatrick ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Thayer Hall.
This piece is a part of a focus on Asian American and Pacific Islander authors and experiences for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
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May 05, 2023 at 02:00PM
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