We are reading the news from the same platforms of racism in America. We sit comfortably in our homes, most of us laugh at the country that historically colonized ours to feel superior that we are better than these people, yet we have not done anything to dismantle the hierarchies and systems in our own homes--in our own country.

Tou Thao, the disgraced Minneapolis police officer who is one of the four officers involved in the death of George Floyd, is of Hmong descent (a Southeast Asian ethnic group).

When people think about the leaders at the forefront of the American Civil Rights movement, the first person that comes to mind is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I can’t breathe.” Despite the man’s cries for help and exclamations of his inability to breathe, the police officer kept his knee on his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. This man was murdered. This BLACK man was murdered. His name was George Floyd. Say that name. Remember that name. Continue to carry his name into the revolution that we are currently witnessing.

As an Asian American woman— specifically as a Filipino American— I know how anti-Black racism runs rampant in Asian communities.

“In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation.” - Audre Lorde, “Transformation of Silence”