--- title: Ferguson and Non-White America: Why Asian-Americans Should Care description: Ferguson isn’t simply black versus white canonical: https://time.com/3606900/ferguson-asian-americans/ author: Jack Linshi article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-27T03:29:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:42:20.353Z article:section: History og:title: Why Ferguson Should Matter to Asian-Americans og:description: Ferguson isn’t simply black versus white og:url: https://time.com/3606900/ferguson-asian-americans/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb1043b67694b27a5/69876b338e0601445c458d9c/ferguson-police-michael-brown.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2200 og:image:height: 1238 og:image:alt: A female protester raises her hands while blocking police cars in Ferguson og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Ferguson Should Matter to Asian-Americans twitter:description: Ferguson isn’t simply black versus white twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb1043b67694b27a5/69876b338e0601445c458d9c/ferguson-police-michael-brown.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Ferguson Should Matter to Asian-Americans > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=05a865c3-5288-4e5f-85e4-2bf65c655d0f&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=05a865c3-5288-4e5f-85e4-2bf65c655d0f&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 'Am I next?' Ferguson's Protests Through the Eyes of a Teenager [Watch (HLS stream): 'Am I next?' Ferguson's Protests Through the Eyes of a Teenager](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fStAJZ1s.m3u8) (5:27)  _Published 2014-08-16. TIME followed a teenager as residents of Ferguson, Mo. turned out to protest peacefully on Aug. 16_  by [Jack Linshi](https://time.com/author/jack-linshi/)  ## Jack Linshi Nov 27, 2014 3:29 AM UTC  A female protester raises her hands while blocking police cars in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. A female protester raises her hands while blocking police cars in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Adrees Latif—Reuters  by [Jack Linshi](https://time.com/author/jack-linshi/)  ## Jack Linshi Nov 27, 2014 3:29 AM UTC A peculiar [Vine](https://vine.co/v/O1XlODJtUrh) floated around social media Monday evening following the [grand jury announcement in Ferguson, Mo](http://time.com/3607406/michael-brown-parents-darren-wilson-today-show/). The short video shows an Asian-American shopkeeper standing in his looted store, with a hands-in-his-pockets matter-of-factness and a sad slump to his facial expression. “Are you okay, sir?” an off-screen cameraman asks. “Yes,” the storeowner says, dejectedly. The clip is only a few seconds, but it highlights the question of where Asian-Americans stand in the black and white palette often used to paint incidents like Ferguson. In the story of a white cop’s killing of a black teen, Asian-Americans may at first seem irrelevant. They are neither white nor black; they assume the benefits of non-blackness, but also the burdens of non-whiteness. They can appear [innocuous on nighttime streets](http://www.laweekly.com/2006-12-14/columns/black-man-walking/), but also [defenseless](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/popular-columbia-student-battled-attackers-tragic-car-hit-article-1.280825); [getting into Harvard](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html?%5Fr=0) is a result of “one’s own merit,” but also a genetic gift; they are assumed well-off in society, but also perpetually foreign. Asian-Americans’ peculiar gray space on the racial spectrum can translate to detachment from the situation in Ferguson. When that happens, the racialized nature of the events in Ferguson loses relevance to Asian-Americans. But seen with a historical perspective, it’s clear that such moments are decidedly of more colors than two. _VOTE:_ [_Should the Ferguson Protestors Be TIME’s Person of the Year?_](http://time.com/3562179/time-person-of-the-year-poll/) Michael Brown’s death has several parallels in Asian-American history. The first to come to mind may be [the story of Vincent Chin](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-h-wu/the-case-against-vincent%5Fb%5F5237359.html), a Chinese-American killed in 1982 by a Chrysler plant superintendent and his stepson, both white, both uncharged in a racially-motivated murder; like Brown, Chin unified his community to demand protection under the law. However, most direct parallels have often had one distinct dissimilarity to Ferguson: they have not spurred widespread resistance, nor have they engraved a visible legacy. There is the story of [Kuanchang Kao](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Kuanchung-Kao-s-political-legacy-3101781.php), an intoxicated Chinese-American fatally shot in 1997 by police threatened by his “martial arts” moves. There is [Cau Bich Tran](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-JOSE-1-8-million-settlement-in-killing-by-2558796.php), a Vietnamese-American killed in 2003 after holding a vegetable peeler, which police thought was a cleaver. There is [Fong Lee](http://www.mprnews.org/story/2009/05/28/fonglee%5Fverdict), a Hmong-American shot to death in 2006 by police who believed he was carrying a gun. None of the three cases resulted in criminal charges against the police or in public campaigns that turned the victim’s memory into a commitment to seek justice. [One op-ed](http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2009/05/28/daniel%5Fpham%5Fsjpd%5Fshooting/) even declared how little America learned from Tran’s slaying. While Ferguson captures the world’s attention, why do these Asian-American stories remain comparatively unknown? One possible answer could be found in [the model minority myth.](http://time.com/3475962/asian-american-diversity/) The myth, a decades-old stereotype, casts Asian-Americans as universally successful, and discourages others — even Asian-Americans themselves — from believing in the validity of their struggles. But as [protests](http://time.com/3606892/ferguson-protests-continue-across-nation/) over Ferguson continue, it’s increasingly important to remember the _purpose_ of the model minority narrative’s construction. The doctored portrayal, which dates to 1966, was intended to shame African-American activists whose demands for equal civil rights threatened a centuries-old white society. (The original story in the New York _Times_ thrust forward an image of Japanese-Americans quietly rising to economic successes despite the racial prejudice responsible for their unjust internment during World War II.) Racial engineering of Asian-Americans and African-Americans to protect a white-run society was nothing new, but the puppeteering of one minority to slap the other’s wrist was a marked change. The apparent boost of Asian-Americans suggested that racism was no longer a problem for _all_ people of color — it was a problem for people of a _specific_ color. “The model minority discourse has elevated Asian-Americans as a group that’s worked hard, using education to get ahead,” said Daryl Maeda, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “But the reality is that it’s a discourse that intends to pit us against other people of color. And that’s a divide and conquer strategy we shouldn’t be complicit with.” Through the years, that idea erased from the public consciousness the fact that the Asian-American experience was once a story of racially motivated [legal exclusion, disenfranchisement](http://www.history.com/topics/u-s-immigration-before-1965) and [horrific violence](http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5043/) — commonalities with the African-American experience that became rallying points in demanding racial equality. That division between racial minorities also erased a history of Afro-Asian solidarity born by the shared experience of sociopolitical marginalization. As with Ferguson, it’s easy to say the Civil Rights movement was entirely black and white, when in reality there were many moments of interplay between African-American and Asian-American activism. Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama worked alongside Malcolm X until he was assassinated in front of her. Groups protesting America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, like the student-run Third World Liberation Front, united resisters across racial lines under a collective radical political identity. W.E.B. DuBois called on African Americans to support the 1920s Indian anti-colonial resistance, which he compared to whites’ oppression of blacks. Chinese-American activist Grace Lee Boggs, who struggled as a female scholar of color, found passion in fighting similar injustices against African-Americans alongside C.L.R. James in the 1950s. Though Afro-Asian solidarity wasn’t the norm in either groups’ resistance movements, the examples highlight the power of cross-racial resistance, and what hardships they shared as non-whites. The concept of non-whiteness is one way to begin the retelling of most hyphenated American histories. In Asian-American history, non-whiteness indelibly characterized the first waves of Asians arriving in the mid-1800s in America. Cases like [_People v. Hall (1854)_](http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601244.html) placed them alongside unfree blacks, in that case by ruling that a law barring blacks from testifying against whites was intended to block non-white witnesses, while [popular images](http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/three/63%5F02.htm) documented Asian-American bodies as dark, faceless and indistinguishable — a racialization strengthened against the white supremacy of Manifest Destiny and [naturalization law](http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3407400229.html). Non-whiteness facilitated racism, but it in time also facilitated cross-racial opposition. With issues like post-9/11 racial profiling, anti-racism efforts continue to uphold this tradition of a shared non-white struggle. “This stuff is what I call M.I.H. — missing in history,” said Helen Zia, an Asian-American historian and activist. “Unfortunately, we have generations growing up thinking there’s no connection \[between African-Americans and Asian-Americans\]. These things are there, all the linkages of struggles that have been fought together.” The disassociation of Asian-Americans from Ferguson — not just as absent allies, but forgotten legacies — is another chapter in that missing history. In final moments of the Vine depicting an Asian-American shopkeeper’s looted store, the cameraman offers a last thought in their conversation that had halted to a brief pause. “It’s just a mess,” the cameraman says. The observation, however simplistic, has a truth. That, as an Asian-American who’s become [collateral damage](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/20/ferguson-s-other-race-problem-riots-damaged-asian-owned-stores.html) in a climate often black-and-white, he, like all of Ferguson, must first clean up — and then reassess the unfolding reality outside. ### Photos: Ferguson Picks Up the Pieces After a Long Night of Destruction  Volunteers, drenched from a smoke alarm, assist in clearing broken glass outside a burned and looted shop in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Adrees Latif—Reuters  Volunteers and workers clear soot from the site where a police vehicle was set ablaze in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Adrees Latif—Reuters  St. Louis County police officers search a business in a building that was burned during a demonstration in Dellwood, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  A sign sits atop the rubble of a building that was damaged during a demonstration in Dellwood, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  People clean up a business that was damaged in riots the previous night in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Jim Young—Reuters  A worker cleans up glass at a business that was damaged during a demonstration in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  A man walks past a row of charred vehicles on the lot of a used car dealership in Dellwood, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Jeff Roberson—AP  A St. Louis County police officer uses official tape to secure a building that was burned during a demonstration in Dellwood, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  A policeman stands near one of the burnt businesses on West Florissant Avenue, which is closed for police investigation, in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Alexey Furman—EPA  A reporter looks through the window of a laundromat that was damaged during a demonstration in Dellwood, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  Two girls walk past the skeleton of a store in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Jewel Samad—AFP/Getty Images  State troopers block West Florissant Ave in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 25, 2014. Jewel Samad—AFP/Getty Images  Jodi Wurm helps to clean up after violent protests damaged businesses in Ferguson, Mo., Nov. 25, 2014. Aaron P. Bernstein—Getty Images ## Transcript [ NOISE ]. [ MUSIC ] This where we going out here man, it's crazy out here though. Man he shouldn't. He shouldn't have, he didn't deserve to die. I mean he didn't deserve that many shots though. Like you can shoot something in their leg to stop them from running. You can somebody in they leg to stop them from running but you ain't gotta shoot then down bro. Why you gotta shoot him in the head? He ain't even got no gun on him. That's crazy. I feel like they should keep protesting till it's over with. And if it ain't, and if he don't get justice then, that's just what's gonna happen man, we gonna be out here every day until something happen. Come on now let's keep walking. I saw Trayvon Martin, I saw George Zimmer get away with it. Now, now, now its another case now if these police get away with it now I'm telling you man this aint Florida this is St. Louis Missouri. Come on brother. [ MUSIC ] Quit talking bout my R bird. He was so young man. Man, he was gonna go to college like, what if that was me man. If 14 I'm just now going to school and stuff. Like, what if that was me gonna go to college. Like and then the only person in my family, and then I die right before the day the school starts [ MUSIC ] What is that all about, what's that? He was 18, he was too young to die.. What is that though? I dunno what that is, that's them. Lemme ask you something, if it don't make a point then why do it? They put this on here, i'm trying to scrape it off so I can write on it. But that's what i'm saying, why put it on that? When you can go get a piece of paper and put it on that. Mike Mike made a statement in time, you know what i'm saying? And we've got to keep his memory alive by not defacing property. And this is what they want y'all to do. This is defacing property. Look at this, this don't een say nothing no more. When the rain comes it can be washed away. But this right here, will never be washed away. All of these people out here will never be washed away. But I bet if you get out there in the middle of the street they gonna see you because your age. Its all about its just like fighting with your with your mind fight with a pen or a paper or a marker you know what I'm saying make it bigger. In every way, so they could see it. All right. [ MUSIC ] No peace. No peace. Don't shoot. Hands up >> Don't shoot . >> Hands up >> Don't shoot . >> Hands up Don't shoot. Hands. Don't shoot, hands up. Don't shoot, hands. Don't shoot, hands up. This is how we all gotta unite bird, all of us african american. To the night, this what it lead us to me. Everybody holding hands everybody showing love. Everybody saying here to support, that's what going on right now. This what we gotta do to get respect, like. And what's so crazy about it that, ain't nobody hear us until we do ****, until we do stuff like this. Like from the riot, everybody breaking stuff. Didn't nobody trip off of that until everybody started breaking. Though, it was all on BET, CNN. Everyone wasn't worrying about the Michael brown death. You got bigger and better, bigger and other things to worry about than people breaking into these stores. I understand what they did was wrong, but you gotta realize if the law gonna sit there and shoot this man like that, we wouldn't go through none of this. The stores wouldn't have gotten broken into. Broke into, footlocker wouldn't get broke into, this wouldn't get burnt down, if it weren't for them. And this is where we go. 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