Educating Asian Parents about BLM

Vina Nguyen, Contributor

As a child of an Asian immigrant, I have the responsibility of educating my family and others around me about the Black Lives Matter movement and why it is so important. Immigrants come to America for a better life for themselves and their families but what they don’t realize is that it is not all that great here. Racism is still a big issue that we deal with today, especially racism towards black people. This topic needs to be acknowledged and addressed.
America was built from racism and colonization by white people. Black people have gone through many years of discrimination and oppression. Although both Asians and African-American people are minorities, Asians are more privileged than black people. Asians don’t get followed around when they are in the store. Asians don’t have fear when they are stopped by the police. Asians can run freely in their neighborhood without anyone questioning them if they’re from around here.
Growing up in the Bay Area, I have always been around different people that come from different cultural backgrounds and that’s all I’ve known. Even though that was the case, I still grew up going told that I should avoid black people because they’re dangerous and thugs. I was taught to hold onto my purse a little tighter when I was by a black person. I was taught to lock my car when a black person was around. The older generation of Asians can be very anti-black and teach their children to not like black people. This shows that racism can be taught.
Some immigrants come to America and don’t understand the English language so they rely heavily on news sources that are in their language. The problem with that is that not all of the news being told may be true and bias. It is easy for Asian parents to be fooled when reading news online.
For example, Tinn Hanh Today published an article on their website full of false information for their readers. The headline of the article was “Nail Salon Owner Killed by Black Looters and Protesters in Dallas, Texas”.
As I looked at the cover photo they had for the article, I realized that it was from a video that involved a White man charging at a group of protesters with a sword. The group stopped the man and hurt him. The White man was just a civilian, not a nail salon owner. The group of people in the video were not all black either.
Within my own perception, I thought that this article was making black people look like murderers and thugs. With false information like this online, it makes readers feel a way about African-Americans. The publisher wanted readers to be against black people. It is important to inform people with the correct information or else they will have beliefs based on false information.
If no action of correcting and educating our Asian parents is done, then Black people will continue to be stigmatized. They will constantly be labeled as thugs, ghettos, and dangerous. With the racism that Asians have been through and dealt with in the past, you would expect Asians to have sympathy towards Black people as well. This country was built off of racism and it’s hard to ever believe that we will ever live in a world that doesn’t have racism. There are people that love to have power and need to feel superior in some way.