From the New York Times:
How Should Asian-Americans Feel About the Peter Liang Protests?Kang doesn’t seem aware that the first victim of Michael Brown’s fatal crime spree in Ferguson was an Asian store clerk, but maybe he doesn’t count because he was South Asian?By JAY CASPIAN KANG FEB. 23, 2016 121 COMMENTS
Every public thing that happens to Asian-Americans — whether the unexpected ascent of a Harvard-educated basketball star, the premiere of a network family sitcom or the conviction of a 28-year-old rookie cop who shot and killed an unarmed black man in the stairwell of a housing project — doubles as a referendum on the state of the people. This sounds unfair, but it happens because Asian-Americans are so rarely in the national conversation, especially within the sludgy arena of identity politics. As a rule, we seldom engage in the sort of political advocacy and discourse that might explain, or even defend, our odd, singular and tenuous status as Americans. This is how it has always been for immigrant populations who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are on a quick march toward whiteness. …
On Feb. 11 this year, Liang became the first N.Y.P.D. officer convicted in a line-of-duty shooting in over a decade. Many Asian-Americans felt that Liang had been offered up as a sacrificial lamb to appease the ongoing protests against police violence that started two summers ago in Ferguson, Mo.
The pro-Liang protests, in turn, sparked small counterprotests by black activists, who argued that justice had been served and that a killer cop was a killer cop, period. A discomforting paradox lay beneath the whole confrontation, one that cut straight across the accepted modern vision of Asians and their adjacency to whiteness: If Liang (and, by extension, all Asian-Americans) enjoyed the protections of whiteness, then how do you explain his conviction?Maybe your whole model of White Privilege needs a rethink?
Kang goes on for some time after this, not getting any clearer even in his own head what he wants to say.
