[Annie]
Dear Mom & Dad,
Let’s have a conversation about race. More specifically, I want to talk to you guys about the Black Lives Matter movement, why it matters to me, and why it should matter to you. My name is Annie Wang, and these are some things that I wish my parents would understand. There are so many kids who struggle with communicating to their parents about politics, social causes, and democracy, specifically, support for the Black Lives Matter Movement. With the momentum for BLM dying down, I think society is due for a debrief or examination of the meaning behind this movement. In this episode, I will be talking to some of my peers of various backgrounds to gauge how Gen Z is having this important conversation with their parents.
Essentially, the Black Lives Matter Movement has to be understood in the context of the historical legacy of the ill-treatment of black people by society, the police, the criminal justice system, and American political and social institutions more generally. That legacy is a fact. The Movement, in my opinion, is a reflection of and reaction to that legacy.
Personally, I hold the unique perspective of being an Americanized immigrant child with traditional Chinese parents who work in urban DC neighborhoods with high crime rates and a large black population. I actually had a conversation about BLM with my parents (or tried to at least) over the summer and it simply resulted in an impasse. Because my parents don’t really speak English, our conversations were in Chinglish, a blend of mostly Chinese with a few English words. This language barrier between my parents and I definitely made it more difficult for me to be a voice of democracy. Their negative experiences with the black community throughout their lives has blinded them to the historic oppression of African Americans in the United States.
I want to be completely transparent here and just say on the record that this innate anti-Blackness has been historically imprinted within the Asian community, so we cannot blame our parents for holding the beliefs that they have, but rather, we need to help educate them so that society can move towards a brighter and more inclusive future. So let’s first delve into why Asian parents generally have an unconscious bias towards the black community.
Colorism is perpetuated heavily throughout family traditions. In Asian culture, we have been taught that fairer skin equated to beauty and darker skin was a flaw. This is so deeply ingrained into our culture that even our old folk-tales carry anti-black sentiments. This colorism escalated into justified racism as we were subconsciously taught to demonize and fear Black people. It’s also this colorism that has glorified the white race and normalized pro-whiteness in Asian cultures. When I was visiting my family in China a couple of summers ago, I often got remarks from relatives saying “oh no, why are you so tan?” or “don’t forget to wear a hat to keep your face out of the sun!” On a bright and sunny day in the streets of China, I saw so many people trying to cover their skin with large hats, umbrellas, and even long sleeve shirts and pants. Honestly, it really frustrates me to see that the beauty standards in Asia revolve around a pale complexion.
Despite these sentiments, did you know that the original Asian American movement actually came about through the civil rights movement? It was inspired by the Black Power movement and the need for Asian American-born communities, who had historically had fought for their claim to citizenship, to build unity with the Black Power Movement and Third World Liberation Front. And yet, harmful stereotypes such as the Model Minority Myth fail to credit the black communities. This concept basically says that Asians are regarded as the “model minority,” which is a myth that discrimination doesn’t exist and everyone can succeed so as long as they worked hard enough. This false notion stereotypes Asians as the hard-working, soft-spoken minorities, when in reality, all minorities are equally as deserving. It’s also because of this myth that perpetuates and normalizes structural racism within the minority communities. Mom and dad, you see, casual racism is so deeply embedded into Asian culture that we are conditioned to view Black people as lesser — so much so that we turn a blind eye to their abuse. Anti-blackness divides us and prevents us from building power together.
Okay, so now I have one of my peers, for the sake of anonymity, I’m gonna call her Rachel. So, Rachel, could you please elaborate on your conversations with your parents around the BLM movement, and what their initial reaction was?
[Rachel]
Yeah, so I think the really important thing isn’t the conversations I’ve had with my parents, more so the lack of conversations I’ve had with my parents. I’m very, very privileged the way that I’ve grown up as a white woman… Both of my parents are doctors… I’ve never really had to worry about a lot of things… Politics have never been a conversation in my home because I’m lucky enough that they’ve never had to be, which sounds like such a horrible thing to say but… That’s what being privileged is as much as I hate to admit it. And when all this started happening, I talked so much with my friends about it. My college friends, my home friends. Very deep conversations, I’ve honestly learned so much throughout this process and throughout the whole movement, but my parents never really watched the news. They knew what was going on, but it was never really a topic of conversation at the table. Like it’s not that I would feel uncomfortable bringing it up, it’s just that like… It would’ve felt weird to. It would’ve felt very forced and they are very supportive of the movement. We donated money whenever I brought those things up to them. They said “of course, send things to Black Lives Matter, the NAACP” whatever.
But one conversation that really freaked me out that’s not explicitly black lives matter but obviously connected was about defunding the police. I think as a young adult, you can go through these moments with your parents when you realize that they’re actual human beings, not just your mom or your dad, but real humans with real problems… And that really, really hit me during quarantine because both of my parents are democrats, and for some reason one night we were talking about defunding the police. And my dad was super against it, and me and my mom were shocked. Like I was honestly freaked out. I was like “Is this not important to you? Do you not care about the lives being lost?” And he just said “we need the police. Like it’s not that at all. I agree that it’s horrible things that are going on, but we still need the police.” And me and my mom kept trying to explain to him like, “yeah, that’s not the issue. It’s that you need more than police. It’s that police don’t have sufficient training. They don’t have mental health training to deal with a lot of issues that occur that the police are called for when another type of professional could be a lot more helpful. And it was really scary having this conversation with him and my mom because he’s by far the smartest, most educated, rational person I know, and he just clearly did not understand what defunding the police meant.
[Annie]
And just to give the listeners that don’t know, defunding the police basically means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department, but not necessarily abolish policing. So when you were trying to talk about it with your dad, how did you try to explain to him what it means? Did you try to provide evidence, or how did you go about that?
[Rachel]
So, I pretty much explained it exactly the way that you just did. For all of the listeners, I thought that was a great, great definition that you used. My mother and I were saying this to him, and when you asked about evidence, I’m so glad you did because we actually went through lots of different news articles from reputable sources and talked about their definitions of what defunding the police was. My dad couldn’t really refute what we were saying. Even in articles that he brought up, me and my mom were still able to scroll through them and say “okay, but like here’s a point in your article that supports our point.” And then he could still go through ours and do the same things, but it was starting to become a much more dynamic, deeper, serious conversation when we really got down to what does this actually mean.
[Annie]
Right, and I think that really goes to say, parents, there is a confirmation bias that a lot of people just have based on what they already believe, so they tend to neglect the information presented that don’t support their beliefs, and so that’s really something to be mindful of and be wary of. But that being said, Rachel, have you had anyone in your family talk about “All Lives Matter” or saying anything around that?
[Rachel]
Yes! Oh my god. I am not active on Facebook but for some reason one day, I could not tell you why, I was scrolling through my Facebook, and actually my dad’s mom, my grandmother, posted something about saying all lives matter. And I literally put my phone down and laughed. I was just like “Oh my god. Like what?” Because I’m not going to lie, at the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, I thought saying all lives matter was like an equal saying to black lives matter. And I was then able to educate myself, talk to more people, and realize how wrong that is, and I’m so grateful because I truly do have such a different outlook. Not that I was ever racist or anything, but I just think that there are so many terms that are thrown around including “defunding the police” that are not clearly explained to people that people think they’re supporting one thing but they’re actually supporting another. I honestly didn’t have a conversation with my grandmother about what she posted because I’m just not that close to her and I didn’t feel comfortable, which I kind of regret because the only way this world is going to change is if we do have those difficult conversations with each other… So maybe one day I will. I definitely talked to my mom about it and she was like “Yeah, that’s just so wrong. That’s just ridiculous.” I hope people can actively seek out this information and become more educated, and I think a huge part of that is the community you surround yourself with.
[Annie]
Obviously, the statement “all lives matter” is correct in the sense that every person’s life has value to it, but the context for saying it directly that “All Lives Matter”, it basically has an intrinsically negative connotation against the Black Lives Matter movement, so all lives can’t matter until black lives matter first.
[Rachel]
I completely agree with you! I completely agree.
[Annie]
Rachel, what do you hope your parents or your family would understand about the movement and about your perspective?
[Rachel]
I hope that my family would understand that the supposed “bubble” they see that I’m living in at school… Yes, it exists, and it is somewhat a bubble, but this generation is not like theirs. We are a dramatically more aware generation. If you looked at the polls and if only our generation had voted, practically the entire country would be blue. I really want my parents to know that not only are there an infinite amount of resources to understand what’s going on in our country and what people in our country deserve and understanding how to have those hard conversations, but that the country is actively changing and they can actively be a part of that if they choose to be.
[Annie]
Alrighty, my peer Nick’s with me to give us some insight on how the BLM movement conversation went with his parents. So, Nick, how did you first bring up the discussion topic and how was it perceived by your parents?
[Nick]
Yeah, I have Iraqi immigrant parents. My dad was actually born in Iraq back in 1956, came here when he was 17, so yeah, we’ve been living here ever since. It is interesting getting that perspective because we don’t pay attention to this a lot, but politics looks very very different when you go from country to country. Like there’s no republican or democrat in Iraq, but you know, you did have pro-Western parties, pro-this parties whatever, so I did get to talk to them a little bit about the Black Lives Matter movement over quarantine when we really had, you know, nothing better to talk about than what’s going on in the world. It’s very hard getting people who aren’t in these black and brown communities that aren’t specifically targeted by police brutality, to get them to understand that your perspective on the police is not the only perspective that exists out there. It was a little bit easier to maybe get my mom to admit that maybe her perspective isn’t the only perspective and that maybe if you lived in one of these communities that you would kind of see it in a different way. My dad on the other hand actually spent a lot of time in Detroit when he first got here. A lot of the Chaldean community was in Detroit pretty intermingled with Black people, and you would think would have a better idea of the police brutality that they incurred. And not just the police brutality but like harassment, and the antagonistic tendencies of the police in Detroit against black and brown people, but then, at the same time, it looks different from different people’s perspectives. My dad, not being a black or brown person in this black or brown neighborhood, might’ve seen how the police act, but wouldn’t have registered with him the way it would’ve with someone who was personally targeted by it.
[Annie]
Mhm, yeah for sure. When you were trying to, I guess like, convince your mom to see your perspective, how did you really go about that?
[Nick]
Yeah, obviously, I had to come in with the statistics, which I don’t have now.
[Annie]
In one study conducted by Princeton University, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed.
[Nick]
When you really contextualize the facts, maybe police brutalized white people to a higher degree because there’s more white people, but percentage wise, which is what you have to look at, obviously you see not only more accounts of brutality against black and brown people, but much rougher and much more unprecedented brutality against people in these communities.
[Annie]
Yeah, it’s not something made up; it’s something that’s been historically ingrained in our society. With that being said Nick, after bringing some quantitative reasoning to your argument, how did your mother respond?
[Nick]
So, in my mom’s case, she was definitely more apt to see things from a different point of view, which is something that I can appreciate because I think she’s always been a more reasonable thinker, in my opinion. She’s not very partisan either way, maybe if there were other people in the country with a similar situation as her, but don’t have a reason to get educated on stuff like this, that could be a loss for sure for the movement.
[Annie]
What would you want your parents to understand after having this conversation with me?
[Nick]
I think I would say… Coming from an immigrant standpoint yourself, as much as it’s great that our family individually was able to get to a point of standing where we do have a good amount of wealth and a good amount of education within my brothers and sisters, that is not a good enough reality for everyone. And by saying that all that matters is us as individuals is absurd, and we really do need to turn our heads away from the individual aspect and really turn to the world as a whole and how we can improve other people’s lives now that we made it to where we are now.
[Annie]
So now, I also have my friend Dele to share a little bit of her insights on the Black Lives Matter movement and her perspective as an African American college student. So, Dele, how have your conversations about the Black Lives Movement gone with your parents?
[Dele]
At first, not very good haha… I felt like really emotional because I have a little brother, so just thinking about how he would grow up into the world was really emotional for all of us. This was also a conversation that we haven’t really had since my parents are immigrants. They didn’t grow up in America, and so I think that disconnect between growing up black in America vs just being black in America is just a tough conversation to have at first.
[Annie]
Yeah, for sure. So what do you think is the root cause of this movement and has it been festering in society for a while now?
[Dele]
Yeah, I think the root cause honestly is just frustration and anger, but I think it’s always been there. Like every few years, the movement starts to rise back up and it’s slowly gaining more and more momentum, especially after like the 1960s, it was like at one of its peaks, and then over time it slowed down, and then like in the 90s, it was at its peak again. So I feel like the anger and frustration has always been there, and also just with every peak there’s always new advances and new small wins, but again it’s just never enough.
[Annie]
Right, you mentioned earlier that the conversations didn’t go well with your parents at first, but what eventually got them to I guess hear you out?
[Dele]
I think just continuing to have these conversations. We talked about it almost every day, and over time as we continue to talk more and more about it, we were able to see multiple perspectives. Like I saw where they were coming from, they saw where I was coming from, and we were able to kind of have this common ground where we were able to acknowledge how we both don’t know what it’s like from either perspectives, but we kind of understand each others feelings and we validated each other’s feelings, which I felt was really beneficial because it made me feel like my anger and my frustration with what was going on was valid. And they saw how passionate me and my siblings were with something needs to change now, and how hopeful we were with if we worked hard enough, it could change. They saw that and they acknowledged that, and they encouraged us to like keep on pushing at whatever capacity we best saw fit, even if they didn’t completely understand.
[Annie]
Yeah, that’s actually so awesome. Can you just clarify what exactly your parents’ stance was, and if it had changed at all throughout the time that you had talked to them?
[Dele]
Yeah, I think one was the protest, especially like the riots and looting just wasn’t good, and it wasn’t acceptable point blank. And then me and my siblings were like “Yes, of course riots aren’t good, but they’re necessary. We can’t bring attention to this matter without inciting violence, obviously, because like for years, we’ve been protesting silently with silent protests, and kneeling at sports games, but they haven’t heard us. So like if the one way for them to hear us is for us to actually get attention to this cause is through violence, I guess that’s just what we have to do. And my parents were so [chuckle]… They were like “No, violence is not the answer” and they still think violence is not the answer, but they kind of understand this wasn’t our first option. Of course we wanted to do it peacefully and calmly, but it’s just a byproduct of everything going on right now.
[Annie]
Yeah, that’s so valid. So why do you think others should support the movement?
[Dele]
I think… It’s just better towards everyone? You can’t just have this one oppressed, marginalized group of people in America, and think that it doesn’t affect you, because it honestly is going to shape how the next 50 years will look like… Because also, minority groups are starting to become a majority. I think it’s like by 2050, there’s not going to be one majority group in America so… If you have this major part of society now that’s being oppressed, it’s just going to have so many severe consequences in the years to come.
[Annie]
Did it help having siblings that were just as passionate as you in your conversation with your parents?
[Dele]
Oh, for sure, yeah. I think the conversation may not have been as encouraging or may have not progressed as far as it did if it was just one of us talking to our parents, but just like with all of us, we were able to educate each other, and support each other, and just like talk about it with each other first before we talked to our parents about it. And we were also able to just see new perspectives.
[Annie]
Right, I think having a sibling to back up your stance alongside your parents, I think that’s really important, and if any of you guys listening have siblings, you should really take advantage of that and really help persuade your parents into seeing your perspective. Dele, after having this conversation, what would you really want your parents to understand about your perspective and your activism?
[Dele]
Personally for me, I would wish my parents would understand like I’m not just saying these things because it’s on the media and it’s trending right now. Like I’m doing my own research and listening to books, articles, listening to podcasts about it… So before I take a stance on anything, I actually do my research, and I look into things, and I’m not just saying it just because it’s popular right now or just because it’s trending on Instagram or Twitter or whatever. I’m actually getting my information from credible sources, and just kind of wish my parents understood that. Because I feel like there’s this common misperception of like, “oh, you just like see it on Instagram and that’s what you automatically believe, but you just don’t know anything really about the causes.” I do my research before I take a stance or say anything about something because I know how misleading social media and headlines can be.
[Annie]
So, mom and dad, I know you’ve experienced hardships and been taught things a certain way growing up, but as we shape our lives in America, it’s important to shift towards an inclusive, futuristic society rather than sticking to old-fashioned traditions. America thrives because of diversity. The diversity in thought, in perspective, in experiences, that’s what makes our country unique, and the fight for Black Lives is only the start towards a brighter, more cohesive future.
And to the kids listening, family is so important and the first step to opening up to them is to have these tough conversations with each other. Remember that you may disagree and that’s completely okay. The goal is not to force your beliefs upon them, but help each other see a different perspective…
Dear Mom & Dad,
I’m eternally grateful for all that you’ve sacrificed for me, but I hope you can empathize with me and foster a world of kindness and inclusion. This is the future that I want — and I hope it’s the one you want, too.
With hope and gratitude,
your loving child.
