Vote!

If you want change, real lasting change,

If you want policies that are more equitable, fair and just,

You need to VOTE for people who represent your values!

Not just for a Presidential candidate,

For EVERY school board member,

EVERY city, state leader,

And District Attorneys, who hold the key to justice reform.

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.

Coronavirus reminds Asian Americans like me that our belonging is conditional.

Growing up as a child of an immigrant, we never talked about racism or even entertained the thought in our family, as we were fully entrenched in the “model minority” myth that if we worked hard enough, race would not disadvantage us. Sadly, history has proven that our acceptance of this illusion of “raceless-ness” will not protect us – nor will make people accept us as “American”. There’s nothing more American than speaking out against injustice, and it’s admirable to see John Cho using the platform he has as an actor to speak out against racism … #RESPECT!