1,400 characters isn’t enough space to say everything I want to say about the Peter Liang verdict and the unjust killing of Akai Gurley. The more important point is that Peter Liang killed Akai Gurley and then failed to attend to Gurley as he was dying in the stairwell. Liang was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and official misconduct. This is the correct call.
Protests from the Chinese-American community calling for more lenient sentencing may claim that the protesters are seeking justice, but their actions and rhetoric reveal a strong current of anti-Black racism embedded within many Asian-American communities. Jason Fong explores this disconnect:
Peter Liang was not treated unjustly. Peter Liang was just not treated like he was white. Being treated like a white person is not the same as being treated justly. Whiteness is not justice.
It seems, however, that some of the protestors are conflating being treated justly with being treated as if one were white. They are protesting that a broken system was not broken enough to extend racial protection and unearned absolution to a Chinese kid from Bensonhurst. They are complaining that the structural injustice that lets off white cops should have also been extended to Liang. The unfairness here, according to the protestors, is that Liang wasn’t able to escape punishment—like others. This aspiration to be treated like white people is their version of “justice”—rather than a vision of justice that provides accountability for all police.
Whiteness is not justice. We should not aspire to be treated as if we were White. Whiteness is violence. Whiteness is oppression. Whiteness is destruction. Whiteness is inequality. Whiteness is racism. Whiteness is injustice.
Asian-Americans do not need Whiteness. We need liberation. We will never succeed in our true fight for justice if we do not eradicate the anti-Black racism that informs our political “activism”.
Yellow Peril supports Black Power. In 1968. And in 2016.
