What Kind of Solidarity should Chinese-Americans Pursue?
--作舟
Peter Liang does not represent Chinese-Americans only! He represents the United States law enforcement and his job is to protect citizens of all ethnicities.
A citizen was hit by Peter Liang’s bullet. The bullet was shot from Peter Liang’s gun. When Peter Liang pulled the trigger, he did so not as a “Chinese-American”, but as a law-enforcement officer. Peter Liang is an officer of the United States police force.
When anyone, donned in the uniform of any kind, is doing whatever he or she was enlisted and swore to do, this individual represents that particular force or authority, be it military or legal. Therefore, Peter Liang, an American in American police uniform, works as an extended arm of the U.S. constitution to protect his fellow citizens, and most importantly, to keep the city safe for all law-biding citizens, blacks, whites, brown, the rich, the poor, the deprived and down-trodden.
In the eyes of an officer, everyone should be protected and no one should be judged unless the officer is facing an obvious killer or criminal. When an officer opens fire, he or she believes the other individual deserves to die. Peter Liang must have learned the laws and responsibilities before he became qualified to work the beat fully armed.
One is innocent until proved guilty! Peter Liang was patrolling a residential building. He was not in the frontline fighting ISIS! He must know that NY city is not a war zone where police officers are sent out to kill. Or, does he know? Does he know that an officer should have prepared for various dangers in order to protect citizens from the real killers and murderers?
Would he have pulled the trigger if he was in an apartment building occupied by the poor whites, or the poor Chinese immigrants? What “reason” or excuses are good enough when an innocent citizen died with a bullet of his protector’s? To what degree can we rationalize this as a “mistake” or “accident” after a life was lost?
In Others’ Shoes
What if Akai Gurley were Peter Liang? Would the massive protest pen different slogans? Some people have asked similar questions. If a Chinese person were lying in his or her own blood while the neglected officer (white or black) holding a smoking gun was not thinking about saving the dying person, I bet that we’d witness a bigger protest. I myself would have joined without hesitation.
Do we protest so that the truly victimized can be heard? Or, do we protest because it's easier to identify ourselves in terms of ethnicity rather than justice?
A police officer in any American city does not protect his or her own ethnic group. His or her job is to protect everybody in every community. I think Peter Liang would agree on that. To bring any ethnic and racial inquisition into this particular case/tragedy is to confuse justice with a convenient ethnic solidarity. It is unsound to say that Akai Gurley and Peter Liang are two victims when the latter refused to admit his negligence. He didn’t even apologize for the “accidental discharge (of the bullet).” It is cruel and disrespectful to Akai Gurley's two young daughters and families.
Sylvia Palmer, Gurley's mother, was in court. She told a journalist that she felt no sympathy for Peter Liang after watching him weep on the witness stand.
"I would have sympathy for him if he only apologized," she said. "I would have believed it was an accident. But he did not, he shows no remorse for what he's done and it bothers me."
What solidarity?
After presenting the evidence and arguments from both sides, the jury and the judge were called upon to carry out the legal process and sentencing. Then, an unprecedented protest broke out marching across the U.S. against the court’s ruling. The protesters, mainly Chinese, Chinese-Americans, and Chinese émigrés, have expressed empathy written on signs for Akai Gurley, but the real reason was to protest the “unfair” result coming out of the courtroom. Some fellow Chinese view the protest march at this scale as an exhibition of solidarity.
I disagree.
When people get together, no matter how big the number is, it does not necessarily mean solidarity!
Yes, Peter Liang is a Chinese descent. His last name is Chinese. But his job and whatever rights and responsibilities the U.S. constitution and the NYPD granted him do not amount to the singularity of an ethnic or national get-togetherness when a citizen died because of his blunder, misjudgment and neglect. If Peter Liang’s Chineseness is the only reason we voice our solidarity, then, we have missed the point and willfully tilted the scale of justice.
In China, the word solidarity, like many abstract nouns for the human mind and emotions, has been misused and twisted for more than half a century by the communist propaganda machine, and it's often related to nationalism and loyalty to the communist party. Any voice that questions and criticizes the dictating leadership is considered a dividing force and criminal act. There have been fearless people in China protesting against injustice and the corrupt legal system, but the protesters are either jailed or forcefully silenced by the uniformed people’s police force.
In China, the word solidarity was used to describe a mob culture when millions of Red Guards torched temples and ancient text. They spoke in solidarity to take down their teachers and professors because they suddenly became the enemies of Chairman Mao. The propaganda bureau praised that kind of solidarity because of its massive size and force that had paralyzed the nation's spirit overnight. That kind of solidarity emboldened a lawless and inhumane revolution when families and friends turned against each other.
That was what I was taught and what I saw in China, solidarity.
So, when I heard the word being used to describe this protest, I could not help debating with myself. When I saw the Chinese protesters defend the NYPD officer, who killed a black man, holding a famous motto of Martin Luther King Jr., I felt confused. I felt I, too, needed to share my point of view when a large number of my fellow Chinese express their opinions this way. I'm not able to represent anyone else but myself. However, this kind of protest has misrepresented me and other Chinese-Americans whether we like it or not.
We come and live here because we believe the United States is a democratic and law-oriented country. We didn't come here because the American society is more rotten than our motherlands. We didn't come here because America is an environment more impossible to realize our individual dreams and pursuits than it is back home.
Ask your heart
Ask your heart: What justice should Akai Gurley receive? What comfort can you give to his little daughters? Did the protest help you with the answers? Did the protest help you understand why Gurley's family and the whole black community didn't rise to protest against the Chinese in the U.S.?
Ask your heart: What solidarity did you share and enjoy back home? In what kind of solidarity were we represented in China? What were we allowed to advocate when witnessing injustice and corruption?
Ask your heart again: Are we, all Chinese descent from the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc., united? Do we all hold the same ideologies and political views? What kind of solidarity should we pursue in these united states of America? Kinship? Dialects? Religions? Traditions? The food we eat? Do these have anything to do with the death of Akai Gurley? Do you truly believe the moment Peter Liang pulled the trigger he was protecting your safety?
He did admit that he was concerned with the safety of himself and his partner three minutes after entering a housing project where low- or no-income people live. The stairs were poorly lit in a housing project in New York city in the United States and Peter Liang felt his life was in danger! He took out his gun.
When he saw Akai Gurley lying in blood, what did he do?
Can we agree on one thing: Peter Liang is a disqualified police officer?
A rookie cop is a cop all the same. A rookie cop has no excuse to act recklessly in any poorly-lit and poorly-maintained place where people live with their families and children in the United States. A rookie cop should not think or imagine he is a Navy Seal when patrolling vertically inside a Brooklyn public housing.
I'm not blind to all the racial, financial, religious, and ethnic conflicts and ugly discriminations against minorities happening everyday and every-where in the U.S. No society is perfect. The United States is no exception. Her complexities and cultural richness are the strengths as well as challenges which we all share and face. But we do not want to be guided and manipulated by fears and anxieties, which nowadays are abundant.
Some people blame the poor for their poverty and misfortune. This kind of narrow mindset provides distrust among people based on the dollars in their pockets and bank accounts.
Being poor is not a crime.
It's close to a crime when we consider “poor people” threatening. This is real danger. It does not help the fact how “we”, the Chinese in the U.S., are viewed by others when we forget that Peter Liang IS an American and an American police officer, and his gun, his bullet caused the death of an unarmed man.
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