An Open Letter to Our Asian American Families About Black Lives Matter

Hundreds come together to create a multi-lingual resource to talk about anti-Blackness and police violence.



Sometimes, believe it or not, the internet works together for good. That's what happened this week in the wake of news that yet another Black man, Philando Castile, had been killed by police during a traffic stop in Minnesota, following the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling by police officers in Louisiana.

On Thursday, hundreds of Asian American internet users came together and organized via Google Docs -- YES, GOOGLE DOCS -- to draft a crowdsourced open letter to our own Asian American families addressing the shootings Castile and Sterling and the urgent issues of the Black Lives Matter movement.

It can be difficult to find the words and contexts to talk about these issues with our Asian parents and relatives. Sometimes there are language barriers. Sometimes it's hard to explain the common ground in our struggles. Too often there's simply the impulse to ignore another community's struggles and look the other way.

The letter aims to help start that conversation. It began as a series of tweets from Christina Xu, who'd seen how Asian Americans had reacted negatively to previous police shootings of black Americans -- particularly, the shooting of Akai Gurley in New York City -- and wanted to do something proactive to change their perspectives.

Dear Alton,

By Alton Wang. Cross-Posted from Unhyphenate.



Dear Alton,

It was startling seeing your name across my feeds when I awoke a couple days ago, as the name we share isn't particularly popular in this country today.

But that's all that we share in common -- a name. We have incredibly different backgrounds, different stories, and are perceived wildly different by the people around us, including the police. We couldn't be more different.

I have never feared for my life around a police officer. Growing up, my parents and elders taught me that the police were my friends, people who would help me when I needed it. You were probably taught the opposite.

I have never fallen asleep without a confident, nearly guaranteed assumption that I would be able to fall asleep in that same bed -- a week, a month, or even a year later.

I have not needed to publicly affirm that my life matters.

But this -- clearly -- isn't about me. It's about you. It's about Philando Castile. It's about the countless black individuals who can no longer breathe because of a system built against them.

Video captures aftermath of police shooting in Minnesota

This is not someone else's problem.



In Minnesota, police shot and killed a man during a traffic stop Wednesday evening, in the second fatal encounter between police and an African-American man to gain national attention this week.

32-year-old Philando Castile was shot by a police officer in suburban St. Paul. Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, streamed video of the incident on Facebook Live immediately after the shooting, showing Castile bleeding from a wound to his chest area and the officer with his gun still visible through the window.

Reynolds had been riding in the car with Castile and her 4-year-old daughter. In the video, she said Castile was stopped for a broken tail light, had informed the officer that he had a gun in the car and was licensed to carry, and was reaching for his wallet at the officer's request. And yet he was still shot.

Details are still emerging, but in the video, Reynolds says the police officer is Asian.

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