Our Humanity Is Linked.

Earlier this week, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was murdered by a white police officer. George Floyd’s death is a continuation of the long history of criminalization, dehumanization, and oppression of Black lives in our country since its founding. As immigrants to the U.S., my families may not have always understood or talked about racism, but we inherited its legacy, and our communities – communities of color have benefited from Black freedom struggles that paved the way for our own fights for freedom and equal treatment in America.

And that is why in THIS moment, it matters that WE, the communities of color and our allies, commit to Black liberation and raise our voices to say that #BlackLivesMatter, and that WE demand ALL the policemen who murdered George Floyd be put behind bars.

That is why WE are out on the streets – protesting, so that WE can continue to amplify the demands from George Floyd’s family and community for justice.

However, anyone who thinks racism exists only in America are willfully blind to the racial inequality and oppression that exist in their country. What is happening now in the U.S. is the tragic consequence of hundreds of years of structural racism and unchecked oppression against ethnic minorities – a devastating impact of colonialism, and much of the bigotry also exists around the world.

Trump is merely the symptom and a reflection of a racist society guided by right-wing extremism, political zealots and racial scapegoating. And when you support political leaders or a political party that hold the same ideologies and perpetuate policies that seeks to disadvantage and eliminate ethnic minorities and migrants, you are upholding the very same  system of oppression.

That is why in this painful moment, I am asking everyone to examine and challenge the systems of oppression in your own societies against ethnic minorities and migrants, and commit to the ongoing work of addressing and standing against racism and discrimination.

Prejudice and inequality still shape much of world. However, we can channel our justifiable anger and empathy into peaceful, sustained, and effective action.

Our children will hear our silence.

When parents don’t talk about race and racism, we end up raising the Amy Coopers of the next generation. When parents remain quiet, Our silence teaches our kids the best response to racism is to avert one’s eyes and avoid conflict at all costs. If we want to raise antiracist children, we must engage, even when we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. And talking about how it went down with our children can itself be a form of antiracist learning.

Silence is a message and has many forms. Sometimes it sounds like “everybody’s equal.” Sometimes we parents tell our kids, “be colorblind.” Sometimes we even say, “celebrate diversity!” (We say this while failing to notice we’re expecting children to be magically immune from the same racism-induced tensions that get in the way of adults successfully navigating diversity and sustaining interracial relationships).

As parents, we have two choices: We either go along with the racism-enabling flow of silence or we decide to stand up against it.

All Life Is Interrelated

All life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

– Martin Luther King Jr.