Let me start by saying I tried everything in my power to not write this article. The fact I even had to think about writing this article is sad enough. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing about issues that I’ve allied myself with-- progressive politics, LGBT rights, and some stuff on cultural appropriation. Tough, dense, and sometimes infuriating stuff. So, in the wake of the shooting death of Alton Sterling, I understood my hesitation upon taking up another article about America’s privilege problems; this time police brutality towards African Americans. So frustrating. So draining.
Sure I've allied with the community, but I myself am not African American. Thus, I’ve tried wholeheartedly to not make myself seem like I'm jumping on a bandwagon or writing for a cause d’jour. I tried and tried to look for an Asian American issue to write about instead.
But after waking up Thursday morning to the shooting death of Philando Castile-- the second such news story in less than 48 hours-- I gave this a second thought. Confounding the situation even more, on Thursday at least 10 police officers were shot at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas.
So to everyone out there, person of color or not: We need to talk. We need to have a dialogue. Because, whether you’re black or not, person of color or not, this affects all of us.
I am a person of color. Even within my circles, issues such as police brutality don’t create the desired dialogue. At best, dialogue badly misses the point. At worst, it reveals our deepest, darkest, unconscious prejudices as a result of our (often unseen) privileges.
So what's missing?
We (and by we, I mean all of us) need to realize that racism is still alive in America. Some of you may read this and think, “Well of course, we know that. C’mon,” but most of us still act as if racism has been eradicated off the face of the earth. Tone deaf messages like #AllLivesMatter (ALM) as a response to #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) just proves this point. Yes, all lives matter. That's why a movement like BLM exists-- because minority lives haven't mattered as much as white lives have.
This is not a repudiation of the white race. Instead, this is a lesson for people who deny structural racism exists, either explicitly or not explicitly, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
To non-black people of color in communities across America: You may have never, and may never have to fear for your life during a traffic stop. For example, I, as an Asian American, might not have to worry about systematically being labeled as a hardened criminal on sight. Consider yourself, in this realm of issues, privileged.
Black Americans however, do not have that privilege. After being tortured for decades by working against their will, and over a century more of oppressive laws to seriously stymie upward mobility (mobility that some people of color, such as Asian Americans take for granted), black Americans are still being labeled the enemy. They are, compared to whites, more likely to be pulled over by police (like Castile was), more likely to be searched by police, more likely to be poor, and more likely to wind up incarcerated. These are just a few of the many hardships black Americans face everyday. Some people of color however might not face these issues every time they step off their front porch. Yet that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
A threat to black Americans’ privilege is a threat to all of us. Just because we don’t see it in our neighborhoods, among our people, or among our neighbors doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Until we realize this-- how vulnerable we could have been if we were born in a different neighborhood, or a different shade of skin, or how powerful or privileged we are with our current skin-- the content of our dialogue on race in this country will always be missing.
