For many Asian Americans, Ferguson unrest set them on a path of resistance and reflection

Like a lot of people, Ellen Lo Hoffman was shocked and disturbed by the shooting death of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer a decade ago this month.

Hoffman — an assistant regional director for the national campus ministry InterVarsity Christian Fellowship — held a gathering at her Seattle-area home a month later, inviting all employees of color to talk. It sparked a pivotal moment for the Chinese American progressive when a Black staff member questioned: “Are Asian Americans our allies?”

“At that moment I felt caught. I felt called out in an appropriate way,” Hoffman recalled. “He was really asking, are you on our side or are you going to align yourselves with us? Or will you just be bystanders?”

Asian American staffers responded with regret, renewed their alignment with their Black colleagues and vowed to “lead out.”

“It was both affirmation to the Black staff, to say we are with you, and it is a choice now that we make to let go of our fear and insecurity and whatever cultural ways that might hinder us from really standing with you,” Hoffman said.

Brown’s death and the treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters in the days following led many Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders to an internal reckoning. Organizations and individuals of all ages were galvanized to get off the sidelines and show solidarity, whether it be through statements, demonstrations or educational talks.

The events roused a younger generation of Asian Americans who had never been part of any high-stakes movement. The ripples from those experiences were felt again in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and pandemic-driven anti-Asian hate. Today, many Asian American and Pacific Islanders continue to speak out not just for themselves, but for other groups.

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This story is part of an AP ongoing series exploring the impact, legacy and ripples of what is widely called the “Ferguson uprising,” which has sparked nationwide outcries over police violence and calls for broader solutions to entrenched racial injustices.

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Gregg Orton, director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, a coalition of over 40 Asian Pacific American organizations, looks back on that summer in 2014 as a seminal time.

“It did feel like a moment where, collectively, the Asian American Pacific community was kind of examining and interrogating our position on what it meant to be in solidarity,” said Orton, who was working for Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Green, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

At the time, New York City residents were still coming to grips with the death of Eric Garner roughly three weeks before Brown was killed. Garner, a 43-year-old Black man, died after a Staten Island police officer used a prohibited chokehold on him. His cries of “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry.

In December 2014, Beatrice Chen, then a programming director at the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, responded to Brown and Garner’s deaths by organizing a panel on the history of race and police brutality through the lens of current events. Panelists included journalists and social justice advocates as well as college-age activists. Chen remembers the evening was well attended, proving the issues weighed heavily. It showed that even institutions like museums couldn’t always stay neutral.

“It made me realize that people wanted to talk about it and to hear what others have to say, not necessarily coming in with a confrontational mindset,” Chen said. “For a lot of them, it was like the first time they’d been able to talk about it in an open space with people they don’t know.”

Chen, who now heads a nonprofit helping immigrants in Manhattan’s Chinatown, also saw a lot of Chinese American youths trying to impart to their immigrant parents why the issues were important.

“Their cultural historical reference is still Asia. They still read the Chinese newspapers. They don’t necessarily read the mainstream or English media. And then you have the younger generation, who I think come out of a different societal view on race,” Chen said. “I saw some of the 20-something activists really trying to explain and interpret and translate into Chinese ‘Black Lives Matter.’”

Orton said the conversations were almost like a precursor to 2020. He noticed far stronger, more pronounced efforts to get people within the community involved.

“I would say the collective response to COVID-19, anti-Asian racism was a moment for our movement where folks really came together, organized a little bit differently,” Orton said. “There was this sort of existential circumstance with the whole pandemic that was looming over all of us. I saw it as a moment where we kind of took our next big step forward.”

The lows of the last decade — including the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that left eight dead, including six Asian women — reignited advocacy for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. People who had never stopped to think about visibility, representation and safety were participating in protests, taking bystander workshops or starting their own advocacy groups. Just two days after the Atlanta attacks, California state education officials approved the nation’s first statewide ethnic studies curriculum for high schools. Since then, states including Wisconsin, Florida and New Jersey have passed legislation mandating AAPI history in K-12 education.

In addition to demonstrations, data has also become an effective tool. Organizations like AAPI Data have been tracking information such as socioeconomic status to reveal trends and disparities among Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander groups. Historically, federal, state and local governments have dismissed some subgroups as “statistically insignificant,” according to AAPI Data.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s directive in March to better disaggregate data among Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders was also a significant win, Orton said, as was getting rid of outdated wording like “Far East.”

“There’s still growing pains that we are going through,” Orton said, adding that young people want to see change now, while older Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who’ve been doing the work for a long time move at a different pace.

“We’re trying to figure out how that all fits,” Orton said.