Like many people, Ellen Roe Hoffman was shocked and heartbroken by the shooting death of a black teenager, Michael Brown, at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer 10 years ago this month.
A month later, Ms. Hoffman, who is a regional associate director for the national campus ministry InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, hosted a meeting at her home near Seattle for a discussion with all of her employees of color. The defining moment for the Chinese American progressive came when a black staff member asked, “Are Asian Americans on our side?”
“At that moment, I felt like I was caught. I felt like I was being called out in the right way,” Hoffman recalled. “He was really asking, are you on our side, are you going to work with us, or are you just going to be a bystander?”
Asian American staff expressed regret, renewed their alliances with their black colleagues and vowed to “lead the way.”
“This is a statement to our Black colleagues that we stand with you, and it's a choice to leave aside our fears, our insecurities and any cultural practices that may prevent us from truly standing with you,” Hoffman said.
Brown's death and the treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters in the days that followed prompted inward reflection among many Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, inspiring groups and individuals of all ages to come off the sidelines and show solidarity through statements, demonstrations, and educational talks.
These incidents galvanized a generation of young Asian Americans who had not previously participated in larger movements. The ripples of these experiences have been felt again in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the rise in anti-Asian hatred caused by the pandemic. Today, many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders continue to speak out not only for themselves, but for other groups as well.
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This story is part of a continuing series by The Associated Press exploring the impact, legacy and repercussions of what are widely referred to as the “Ferguson riots,” which sparked nationwide protests against police violence and calls for broader solutions to deep-rooted racism.
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Greg Orton, president of the National Asian Pacific American Council, a coalition of more than 40 Asian Pacific American organizations, looks back on that summer in 2014 as a pivotal moment.
“It felt like a moment for the Asian American Pacific community to collectively examine and interrogate who we are as to what it means to be united,” said Orton, who worked for Democratic Rep. Al Green, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
At the time, about three weeks before Brown was killed, New York City residents were still coming to terms with the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black man who died after a Staten Island police officer used a banned chokehold on him. His cries of “I can't breathe” became a civic mantra.
In December 2014, Beatrice Chen, then director of programs at the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, organized a panel on the history of race and police brutality in a topical context in the wake of the deaths of Brown and Garner. Panelists included journalists, social justice advocates, and college student activists. Chen remembers that evening as being well-attended and proving the weight of the issues, showing that even institutions like museums can't always remain neutral.
“We realized that people were not necessarily coming at it in a confrontational way, but were willing to talk about the issues and hear other people's opinions,” Chen said. “For many of them, this was like the first time they were able to talk about the issues in an open forum with people they didn't know.”
Chen, now the president of an immigrant-support nonprofit in Manhattan's Chinatown, has also seen many young Chinese Americans try to educate their immigrant parents about the importance of the issue.
“Their cultural and historical references are still Asian. They still read Chinese-language newspapers. They don't necessarily read mainstream media or English-language media. And I think the younger generation comes from a different societal view of race,” Chen said. “Some activists in their 20s have tried to explain, interpret and translate 'Black Lives Matter' in Chinese.”
Orton said these conversations are almost like a harbinger of what's to come in 2020. He noted that we're starting to see much stronger and more noticeable efforts to engage people in the community.
“I think the collective response to COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism was a moment for our movement where people really came together and organized a little bit differently,” Orton said. “There was kind of an existential situation with the pandemic looming over all of us, and I saw this as a moment where we took our next big step.”
The worst of the past decade, such as the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that left eight people dead, including six Asian women, reignited the Asian American and Pacific Islander advocacy movement. People who had never stopped to think about visibility, representation, and safety joined protests, attended bystander workshops, and started their own advocacy groups. Just two days after the Atlanta attacks, California education officials approved the nation's first statewide ethnic studies curriculum for high schools. Since then, states such as Wisconsin, Florida, and New Jersey have passed bills mandating Asian American history in K-12 education.
In addition to demonstrations, data has also been an effective tool. Organizations such as AAPI Data have tracked information such as socioeconomic status to uncover trends and disparities among Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander groups. Historically, federal, state and local governments have ignored some subgroups as “statistically insignificant,” according to AAPI Data.
Orton said another big win was a directive from the Office of Management and Budget in March to better disaggregate data among Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, as well as the elimination of outdated language like “Far East.”
“We're still going through growing pains,” Orton said, adding that younger people want change now, but older Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who have been activists for years are moving at a different pace.
“We're just figuring out how it fits in,” Orton said.
