“Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” by Monyee Chau

Hello, my friends. I hope that you are staying healthy and safe. That you are fighting the good fight and writing the good write. I’m straying today from posting a new short story or updates on writing and reading, to say on this site what should be obvious to all, but seems to still be falling on some unwilling ears: Black Lives Matter, violence against peaceful protesters is unacceptable, white supremacy needs to be dismantled in our country along with structural racism and the militarization of our police forces that support this continued inequality and inequity. It is ridiculous, shameful, and immoral that we have continued to allow the state of affairs to continue for so long and that we still have people who are more concerned for their own privilege and comfort than for their neighbors’ very lives.

I stand in solidarity with the Black community and with my other siblings of color in wanting and working towards a world where white supremacy and institutionalized racism no longer exist. Where we have equity and justice and peace. These are hard days and hard times, but those of us who have privilege, in whatever form, need to use our voices, dollars, and actions to support, uplift, and affirm the work and very lives of our siblings who are being threatened.

As writers, readers, creatives, people,  we have the responsibility to use our voices, our words, our actions to uplift each other, support each other, and challenge each other to do better. In the words of Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

I want us all to know better so we can do better.

It is incumbent on us to see our everyday lives as the space where we need to continually challenge ourselves and each other to become anti-racist allies. To educate ourselves, instead of forcing BIPOC to expend more emotional labor to educate us. I say this as a mixed race woman who is of Japanese and German descent. I have both been on the receiving end of racism and received the privileges of “passing” as white depending on the mood and makeup of the white people around me. I work to use my relative position of privilege not to keep others down, but to work on myself and to work with others to use that privilege, in whatever (small) ways I can, to work to end white supremacy and create the kind of world I want for my daughter and for all children of color.

There are many, many creatives, activists, organizations who know so much more and do so much more and I want to highlight just a few things that may resonate with you as a creative, as a writer, as a reader. Read Ally Henny’s post on how to begin to decolonize your bookshelf.  Read, watch, follow, or all of the above, any of the resources/sources listed on this Forbes article, “First, Listen. Then, Learn. Anti-Racism Resources for White People.” I have to point out especially, Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt’s book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We See, Think, and Do as an amazing resource among so many others.

While we, as writers and creatives, may create worlds of fantasy and daydream about distant galaxies. We all live on this one planet, in this one world. We cannot be apart from it. And we can use our creativity, our solidarity to make it better. To say we are sorry for our complicity in these structures that we all live in and to help shape new structures that uphold the dignity and humanity of us all.

Thank you for reading. Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay kind. And use your talents for the good because at the end of the day, it’s up to each of us to do what we can for the good to squash the insidious evil that wishes we didn’t see it for what it is.