Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans

Cindy Diep

Section 1

Week 2

This article talks about the Ferguson case in an Asian American perspective. While some might think that the Ferguson case does not quite matter to Asian Americans because it is an African American matter, the case is actually relatable to the experiences of Asian Americans. In the article, Soya Jung gives two reasons why “black rage” is important to her as an Asian American. For one, she understands the rage faced by African Americans because of her inheritance of han, what she called “Korean rage” due to the experiences of war. For her second reason, which I would agree with most, she describes how America tends to normalize in the death of African Americans while Asian American deaths are simply ignored, such as the low-profile death of Singh, who was killed by a white male and called racist slurs. Jung goes on to describe how Asian Americans are simply stuck between blackness and whiteness because we are neither and sometimes, quite frankly, we are invisible.

Question: Why are Asian American deaths in America often ignored by the public?