Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans

Yun Ting (Claudia) Chao

ASA Section 2

Week 2

Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans

While the title of the article states “why Ferguson matters to Asian Americans”, I feel that a better suited title would be “Why Ferguson matters to me – an Asian American.” The author’s first point caught my attention, but then it completely lost me when she used Korean culture to show how it relates to the incident. While I am an Asian American, I am not Korean so I cannot relate to her reasoning. The author’s second reasoning also started off strong but then felt like it got muddy when she said that Asian Americans fall in a chasm between white and black. She said that “claiming our place in America means that we must take a position when faced with the separate but unequal worlds of whiteness and blackness. We are either left or right of the color line. There is no sitting that out.” I disagree. I do not see our world as simply black or white or white or black. There are still some people in this world that a see life in color and not simply as black and white. America is known as a melting pot for a reason. What point is there to being a melting pot if we are going to be clouded by our rage and regress back to a world of just black and white?