(CNN) There's a quote from Cathy Park Hong's provocative and brilliant essay collection " Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning " that's one of the most jarringly apt summaries of the insidious nature of silence I've ever read.
Silence is the scar that forms over the small, persistent wounds of our lives as Asian Americans.
Tou Thao, Chauvin's Asian American fellow officer on the scene, stood by , hands in his pockets, even as onlookers pointed out that Floyd wasn't moving, and didn't seem to be breathing.
Asian Americans' privilege is an uncomfortable thing for us to consider, given the very hard journey our immigrant parents, grandparents or great-grandparents may have taken to carve out a place for us here, and the microaggressions (along with more explicit forms of racism) we still experience in our own lives.
When we refuse to address the bigotry woven into American society, when we submerge black lives beneath "all lives," when we talk obliquely about love and fellowship without acknowledging racism and segregation, when we who are not black stay silent, we allow the names of countless casualties of state violence and systemic racism in policing to fade into mere litany, a blurry montage that rolls before the latest victim is unveiled.
