Week 9 - Yiwen Bao

Yiwen Bao

ASA2 A01

Week 9

          This week, the reading “Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans” by Soya Jung interests me most. It talks about a case that a young black teenage man Mike Brown was shoot by police force in the city of Ferguson. The author saw this case into individual as related to all other people of color and races. As an Asian, the author thought how white normalized black death is very similar to the way they did on Asian death. And black rage was important for her because she born in war and so very much understood how internalized rage could hurt people in close relationships. Also, she felt it was important and urgent to fight against imperialism bought by American white majority, just the same as what blacks experienced. 

          I agree that the issues of racism, alienation of minority, injustice and imperialism could apply to all nations and ethnics that were oppressed. Those said the Mike Brown’s case was only about black’s rights and couldn’t find connections to own victim culture is too narrow-minded. I suggest the biggest reason for those white majorities to be so arbitrary and powerful is that they have a strong belief in mind that it’s their country—we are not part of their country and they want to show power on us minority, as a nature of human beings to show power to ones they believe isolated to main group and powerless. I watched a video on Youtube about Chinese international students studying in America and planning to go back for a job. Many comments posted by Americans said “Going back to your (kind of dirty words) communist home country!” or “Here is never your place, going back to your country!”. The video didn’t focus on and incite any inflammatory comments on Chinese culture, while the comments were so emotional. So it’s sometimes not Asians and blacks that are too sensitive on race and justice issues—it’s the majority group who always see it necessary to defend and protect own interests. Despite the cultural aspect, I also feel scared about the increasing militarized police force epidemic all around the world. Police force might have been given too much authority and power. It’s dangerous when police force don’t have enough knowledge on some topics and mis-use their power to threaten people’s life. Because of theses all, I can see the connection of this week’s topic to the reading: the reading demonstrates reasons why solidarity movements are significant.

Questions:

1. Who should decide how much power police force can have and the level of militarization of police force?
2. Some people of one color might not agree on empathy people of other color feel from their cases and often see their situation as worse. So how could the understandings between minority groups on each other be enhanced to start and strengthen solidarity movements? That is, how could more people of different cultures be unified and powered to fight through solidarity movements?

References:

Jung, S. (2014). Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2017. 

https://www.racefiles.com/2014/08/20/why-ferguson-matters-to-asian-americans/

Meyer. M. L. (2015). We are all One: Solidarity across Movements, from Selma to Karachi. Human Rights Blog. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2017. 
https://gmablog.org/2015/03/15/we-are-all-one-solidarity-across-movements-from-selma-to-karachi/