The Peter Liang case is particularly upsetting because it breaks the tacit agreement that privileged Asian Americans and white Americans have:
Asian Americans will behave as model citizens. They will work hard and assimilate into white-dominant culture by adopting the way the majority class speaks, dresses, and behaves. They will maintain their Asian identities only to the extent that it does not make the majority class feel threatened. They will be happy to share their culture and food as exotic examples of diversity but confine it to specific neighborhoods and foods that are comfortable to the majority palate. Asian Americans will even make jokes about the model minority and perpetuate this myth themselves through publications such as Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. They will be Asian Uncle Toms without even knowing it.
In return, white folks are supposed to treat Asian Americans like they are not a racial minority.
The conviction of Peter Liang breaks this covenant.
However, the reality is that this covenant has never been followed. Asian Americans make up 21.5% of the scientists at the National Institute of Health but only 4.7% of lab or branch directors. A survey done in 2009 found that almost 10% of Americans would feel uncomfortable voting for an Asian American for president. The percentage that felt uncomfortable voting for an African American candidate was 4%.
The sense of security that some Asian Americans feel is superficial and misleading. And in the process of believing it, they've turn their backs on their less privileged Asian brother and sisters.
So what about Peter Liang?
It's upsetting that Peter Liang is getting treated differently from his white counterparts. And yes, it is because of his race. However, just because white police officers are going unjustly unpunished for murder doesn't mean that Officer Liang should too. As Ta-Nehesi Coates lays out in in his recent book, people of color pay more for their mistakes.
What outraged Asian Americans should be doing is not rallying around Officer Liang, a murderer, but rallying themselves into a political awakening to support Asian American and other minority issues that actually have a just cause. We must stop distancing ourselves from other communities of color. We must stop listening to messages from the majority class and instead listen to the stories and facts that actually represent the true Asian-American experience.
We must realize that white America cares just as little about Asian lives as they do about black lives.
Peter Liang is a much-needed wake-up call. Peter Liang is a cautionary tale, not a movement.
JESS GUH, MD, is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site. Her work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, DAVE LINDORFF, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
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