George Floyd: Yale student urges Asian-Americans to tackle racism in their own communities

After the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, Yale University student Eileen Huang decided to write an open letter to Chinese-Americans in the United States, urging them to support the Black Lives Matter movement and consider the problem of racism in their own communities.

"I specifically want to address the rampant anti-blackness in the Asian-American community that, if unchecked, can bring violence to us all," the 20-year-old wrote.

"We Asian-Americans have long perpetuated anti-black statements and stereotypes. I grew up hearing relatives, family friends and even my parents make ... racist comments.

"The message was clear," she said. "We are the model minority " doctors, lawyers, quiet and obedient overachievers. We have little to do with other people of colour; we will even side with white Americans to degrade them."

The letter was published " in English, Mandarin and Korean on Chineseamerican.org, and in Mandarin only on WeChat " on May 31, six days after Floyd's death and as mass demonstrations were taking place in cities across the US.

Since then, similar rallies and protests have happened around the world, with widespread calls for an end to racism and police brutality.

Ellen Wu, an associate professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington, said the time was ripe for Asian-Americans to reflect on the roles they played in helping to maintain a system of white supremacy, at the core of which was "anti-black racism".

"The whole system of practices and laws and beliefs, habits and customs are designed to dehumanise black people and hurt them and keep them from the same opportunities that white people enjoy," she said.

Huang said she first talked to her parents about racism after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

Over the years, her parents began to see the problem for themselves, she said, so when she was considering where to publish her letter, she thought WeChat would be a good platform as many older Chinese-Americans " as Mandarin speakers " use it as a major source of information.

It was a good decision. Huang's letter has been viewed more than 100,000 times on WeChat and she has received over 300 signatures for her petition to address anti-black sentiment in the Asian-American community.

Huang said she had received lots of support, with many people thanking her for speaking out and stimulating conversations in their communities, where issues such as racism were seldom discussed.

Renee Chen, a 20-year-old student at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, said that although "anti-blackness" was prevalent in the Chinese community and needed to be stamped out, she was encouraged by the number of young people who were willing to "put their necks out in support of their black friends".

"I think mainly it's because we grew up in a stable environment and weren't scared of competing with other people, or worried about having food on the table ... which allowed us to think about other people," she said.

It was not so easy for people of her parents' generation, she said, "so I can't blame them".

Alexander Yeh, a 19-year-old student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, also published a letter to Asian-Americans on the online publishing platform Medium on May 31, in which he called for people to stand up for the rights of black people.

"I wrote this because it was kind of, honestly, my frustrations building up and basically saying, like, we can't hide and pretend this isn't an issue any more," he said.

"There are still people being hurt or people being killed. Why is this not something that we can fight?"

Committee 100, a New York-based leadership organisation of Chinese-Americans in business, government, academia and the arts, described Floyd's killing as "yet another example of the systemic racism found across many parts of American society".

"We encourage our own community to continue to bring awareness to these issues, and to talk about the issues that we face as Chinese-Americans and Asian-Americans, and to consider the unique racial issues our black brothers and sisters face in America," it said.

Huang's letter did not receive universal support, however. Some people accused her of making generalised comments about Asian communities, while others asked her to apologise.

Lisa, a 30-year-old Chinese immigrant to the US, said she did not support the Black Lives Matter movement because she thought it amounted to racism against other ethnic groups.

"I don't see my Asian-American friends supporting this event because it is really devastating during the pandemic," she said.

Helen Zia, a Chinese-American author and activist, said that some Chinese-Americans who had arrived in the US over the past 20 or 30 years did not really understand the systemic racism towards African-Americans and had not bothered to educate themselves.

"The newer immigrants, many of them, not all of them, are quite uneducated," she said. "The people who came after the civil rights movements don't know why black people in America have to stand up to stop being treated like second-class citizens."

Huang said she wanted to talk to people who were not aware of the history, or who felt the issue was now relevant to them.

"I think people are naturally very interested in growing and educating themselves and becoming better," she said.

Zia said some Asian-Americans might have a better understanding of how black Americans felt after experiencing racist and xenophobic attacks since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which many people in the US " including President US Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo " have tried to classify as a Chinese virus.

"Maybe it is a wake-up call to them and they can't close their eyes to this now," she said.

Yeh said that growing up in San Francisco, which has a large Asian population, he had largely been unaffected by racism, but Covid-19 had showed that Asians can be discriminated against.

"It has made us more aware of the context and the severity of police brutality against black people," he said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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