A young Asian American woman in Davie, Fla., has become the target of racist cyberbullying after she applauded “Middle Eastern peers” for making it through high school in her graduation speech.
What she said: Rachel Cheng, this year’s salutatorian of Western High School, used her time on stage on June 8 to address the struggles faced by Asian Americans and other minorities to get to graduation.
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Cheng began her five-minute speech sharing the racism she has faced as an East Asian woman amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 graduate pointed out that “21” was also the number of times she was called a “ch*nk” in the week before classes went online due to the coronavirus.
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Cheng said she was also chased out of a Walgreens by someone who did not want “China virus people” in the store. She recalled it as “the first of countless racially profiled interactions” that she has experienced in the past year-and-a-half.
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Aside from Asian Americans, the salutatorian dedicated the rest of her speech to applaud other minority graduates. These include her African American, Native American and Indigenous, Middle Eastern, Hispanic and Latino peers, and anyone else who is part of a marginalized community or “has faced discrimination of any kind.”
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Boos erupted from the audience when the graduate addressed her Middle Eastern peers, whom she described to be “in constant fear of their families and friends being struck down by a militant government who’ve had their land stolen and abused.” Cheng said the booing came from a few students and parents.
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Despite the boos, Cheng ended her speech to a longer and louder applause. A social media user has since reposted it on TikTok, where it went viral with at least 50,000 likes.
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