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George Floyd’s death is inspiring young Asian Australians to look at racism in their community
A worldwide movement is helping young Australians broach uncomfortable topics about police brutality and systemic racism with their immigrant parents.
Published 7 July 2021 10:53am
Updated 7 July 2021 12:04pm
By Melinda Boutkasaka
Image: Letters for Black Lives is a multilingual resource for people who want to discuss police brutality and systemic racism with their families. (SBS)
The death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the United States is leading Australia’s migrant communities to confront their own ideas about racism.
Mr Floyd, an African-American, was murdered by white police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020. Chilling footage shows Mr Floyd repeatedly crying out “I can’t breathe” as Chauvin kneels on his neck.
The killing of George Floyd reignited the worldwide Black Lives Matter movement and sparked massive protests against racial inequality across the globe, including in Australia.
Melissa Shrestha was one of the thousands of young people in Australia who felt compelled to take action.
Particularly, she wanted to challenge her own family’s ideas about racism.
“I wanted to highlight those things within the Asian community, where there was a lot of animosity and confusion around black communities and other people of colour.” 
She said that discussing the Black Lives Matter movement with her parents – her dad is from Nepal and her mother is from Qatar - was difficult, and would often end in arguments about which communities had it worse.
Melissa Shrestha was one of the thousands of young people in Australia who felt compelled to take action. Source: SBS
“My dad would say things like, ‘Our people came from the mountains, and we were milking goats before coming here, and then we worked really hard and moved our way up’.”
That’s when she came across the Letters for Black Lives project.
Letters for Black Lives is a multilingual resource for people who want to discuss police brutality and systemic racism with their families.
Hundreds of people collaborated worldwide to create talking points for young people such as Melissa, who wanted to explain to their family why they supported the Black Lives Matter movement.
All the letters start with the same emotional plea.
“Mum, Dad, Uncle, Auntie, Grandfather, Grandmother, we need to talk," they begin.
"You may not have many Black friends, colleagues, or acquaintances, but I do. Black people are a fundamental part of my life: they are my friends, my neighbours, my family. I am scared for them."
Letters for Black Lives is a multilingual resource for people who want to discuss police brutality and systemic racism with their families. Source: SBS
The first iteration of Letters for Black Lives started in 2016, but the death of George Floyd inspired a new batch of letters in 2020 - detailing the injustice of his death and the shocking history of African-American deaths in police custody.
The letters have so far been translated into over 40 languages.
After Melissa showed her parents versions of the letters written in Nepali and Arabic, she said she felt a “small shift” in them.
The murder of George Floyd sparked worldwide protests, such as this one in southern France. Source: AP
“There was a sense of, ‘I really understand this now, I didn't know this, I've learned something from you’,” she said.
“There are certain nuances and words that they might not be able to fully grasp in English, so having it in their own language, they were able to put them in the bigger picture.”
Among the documents published by the Letters for Black Lives project is an Australian version, which details the abuses and oppression suffered by Indigenous Australians.
After Melissa showed her father the Nepali version of the letter, she felt a "small shift" in him. Source: SBS
Melissa said that, because she was born in the UK and only moved to Australia at 14, her family had relatively little knowledge of Aboriginal history.
When she showed her dad the Australian version of the Black Lives letter, he was horrified, she said.
“He said, ‘This is really not okay, this is really intense’.”
Indonesian-Australian activist Bridget Harilaou published the Australian version of the Letters for Black Lives project.
Bridget’s letter details some of the brutal Indigenous deaths in custody that continue to plague Australia’s justice system.
“We have a really different history to the slavery, police brutality that is experienced in the United States,” they said.
The Australian version of the letter details some of the brutal Indigenous deaths in custody that continue to plague Australia’s justice system. Source: SBS
“You can't talk about social justice in this country without starting at the first oppressive practice that came to this land, which is colonisation and racism against Aboriginal people, and so I thought the context for that was very important.”
Indonesian-Australian activist Bridget Harilaou published the Australian version of the Letters for Black Lives project. Source: SBS
THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH
Risa Xu, from New York, said it ended in tears when she first spoke to her parents about the death of George Floyd.
“My parents were like, ‘You're being very argumentative, you're defending something that has nothing to do with you’.”
Risa posted the Chinese translations of Letters For Black Lives on WeChat, Twitter and Instagram against her parents’ wishes, who told her to stop drawing attention to herself.
“My dad's favourite phrase to always tell me, translated directly from Chinese is: ‘The gun shoots the bird that sticks its head out’,” Risa said.
A less prominent aspect of the George Floyd killing is the role played by Tou Thao, a Hmong-American officer who allegedly blocked bystanders who tried to come to Mr Floyd’s aid.
Risa posted the Chinese translations of Letters For Black Lives on WeChat, Twitter and Instagram against her parents’ wishes. Source: SBS
The Hmong people are an ethnic minority with roots in southern China, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
Academics in the US have studied the tensions, and racist undertones, that sometimes characterise relationships between African-Americans and Asian-Americans.
Risa said these tensions were partly caused by the “model minority” stereotype, in which her parents were taught to work hard and avoid rocking the boat to achieve the American Dream.
“There's this perceived sense of ‘whiteness’ that some Asian Americans think that they've reached, because of something that the model minority myth has told them,” she said.
“And it contributes to how some Asians look down upon brown, or black, or Latino populations.”
American history professor Dr Ellen Wu pinpoints the origins of the “model minority” stereotype to WWII, when the American government campaigned for Chinese and Japanese communities to prove their “Americanness” by joining the country’s war efforts.
Risa Xu, from New York, said it ended in tears when she first spoke to her parents about the death of George Floyd. Source: SBS
“This stereotype was not simply just imposed on Asian communities from outside forces, but many Asian-Americans had a hand in feeding into it,” she said.
According to Dr Wu, by the 1960s the government tried to deny the demands of the growing civil rights movement by contrasting two “very crude depictions” of each race.
“It was essentially implied: on the one hand, one way to deal with racism is what black people are doing, which is protest, making a lot of noise. Then there's a different model, which is Japanese-Americans, supposedly just trying to go back to their lives, not make trouble,” she said.
She says this has in turn contributed to negative perceptions of black communities by some Asian-Americans.
MODEL MINORITIES IN AUSTRALIA
Dr Tseen Khoo, founder of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network, says these stereotypes are also incredibly harmful for Asian-Australians.
“Those who have internalised elements of the ‘Model Minority’ myth… may police their own community in an attempt to 'not look bad' or give broader society a reason to exclude or persecute them,” she said.
“This doesn't work. It has never worked.”
People only need to look at Australia’s response to the pandemic to see “how easily Asian-Australians can become targets again”, she added.
A survey by the Asian Australian Alliance shows there have been some 550 Covid-related anti-Asian incidents in Australia alone.
ATTITUDES CHANGING
Melissa says while her parents have taken Letters For Black Lives onboard, comparisons with anti-Asian hatred are still brought up in their discussions.
“There's things that my father would say, like, ‘I experienced a lot of hate, a lot of anger… What about me? What about our community’.”
However, Melissa is glad that it’s led to more frank conversations with her family about social justice issues, and how they are interconnected with the Asian-Australian experience.
“We need to understand that there is anti-Asian hate, but we need to also understand that there are so many issues within the black community and LGBTI community too.
“If there isn’t justice for these people first, there isn’t justice for all people, and there isn’t understanding of systemic issues,” she said.
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