Week 9 Lauren Velasquez

Lauren Velasquez
Week 9

                  The article, Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans by Soya Jung, talks about the importance of solidarity of Asian American groups with other minority movements, like Black Lives Matter. First, Jung points out how that “Japanese and Chinese organizations… were active in creating the model minority myth, and embraced anti-blackness” (Jung 2014). This shows historically how absent Asian American communities have been with solidarity with other minority movements. In the past, Asian American organizations would turn against other minority groups for their own benefit of trying to become “closer to whites,” so that they could be recognized and have the same privileges. Obviously, this didn’t work, because Asian Americans are still seen as a minority, no matter how well they do on test scores or how much they achieve in higher education. This is dangerous for many reasons, but for the main reason that this helps society draw outlines of how to look at other races. For instance, “America normalizes and indulges in black death in service to a dehumanizing narrative of black criminality… Asian Americans as a model minority reinforces this narrative” (Jung 2014). It’s important to fight these narratives for our black and brown brothers and sisters. It perpetuates the imaginary split between the minorities. Not only is it important to fight for black justice, but the Black Lives Matter movement helps Asian Americans in the way of all minority rights. There is an “invisibility of Asian death, and the denial of any form of Asian American identity that doesn’t play by the model minority rulebook” (Jung 2014). The American society doesn’t want to give any image of an Asian American other than what the “model minority” shows. American society continuously dehumanizes black deaths and Asian deaths.

The picture below shows Asian Americans students at UC Davis supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and showing solidarity with the Ferguson community.

Question: What other ways can we incorporate acts of solidarity into our curriculum?

Student Community Center. (2014, December 11). Asian Solidarity with #Ferguson[Photograph found in Davis]. Retrieved May 28, 2017, from http://www.seeding-change.org/asiansforblacklives/ (Originally photographed 2011, December 11)

Jung, S. (2014, August 20). Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans. Retrieved from https://www.racefiles.com/2014/08/20/why-ferguson-matters-to-asian-americans/