For many Asian Americans, Ferguson unrest set them on a path of resistance and reflection
Like many people, Ellen Lo Hoffman was shocked and disturbed by the shooting death of Michael Brown, a black teenager, by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, ten years ago.
Hoffman — an assistant regional director for the national campus ministry InterVarsity Christian Fellowship — held a meeting a month later at her Seattle-area home, inviting all employees of color to speak. It was a pivotal moment for the Chinese-American progressive when a black staffer asked, “Are Asian Americans our allies?”
“At that point I felt caught. I felt appropriately targeted,” Hoffman recalled. “He was basically asking, are you on our side or are you joining us? Or are you just going to be spectators?”
Asian American employees responded with regret, renewed ties with their Black colleagues and vowed to “lead the way.”
“It was both an affirmation to the Black staff, to say we stand with you, and it is a choice we make now to let go of our fear and our insecurity and all the cultural habits that keep us from really standing with you,” Hoffman said.
Brown’s death and the treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters in the days that followed left many Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders facing an internal reckoning. Organizations and individuals of all ages were encouraged to step off the sidelines and show solidarity, whether through statements, demonstrations or educational conversations.
The events galvanized a younger generation of Asian Americans who had never been part of a high-stakes movement. The ripples of those experiences were felt again in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the pandemic-fueled anti-Asian hate. Today, many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders continue to speak out, not just for themselves, but for other groups as well.
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This story is part of an ongoing AP series examining the impact, legacy and fallout from what has become known as the “Ferguson uprising,” which sparked nationwide outrage over police brutality and calls for broader solutions to deep-seated racial injustices.
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Gregg Orton, executive director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, a coalition of more than 40 Asian Pacific American organizations, looks back on that summer of 2014 as a defining period.
“It felt like a moment where the Asian American Pacific community collectively examined and interrogated our position on what it meant to stand in solidarity,” said Orton, who worked for Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Green, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
At the time, New York City residents were still reeling from the death of Eric Garner, about three weeks before Brown was killed. Garner, a 43-year-old black man, died after a Staten Island police officer put him in an illegal chokehold. His cries of “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry.
In December 2014, Beatrice Chen, then director of programming at the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, responded to the deaths of Brown and Garner 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 recalls that the evening was well-attended, demonstrating the weight of the issues at stake. It showed that even institutions like museums could not always remain neutral.
“I realized that people wanted to talk about it and hear what others had to say, and not necessarily in a confrontational mindset,” Chen said. “For many of them, it was like the first time they could talk about it in an open space with people they didn’t know.”
Chen, who now heads a nonprofit that helps immigrants in Manhattan’s Chinatown, also saw many Chinese American youth trying to explain to their immigrant parents why these issues mattered.
“Their cultural historical reference is still Asia. They still read Chinese newspapers. They don’t necessarily read mainstream or English-language media. And then you have the younger generation, which I think comes from a different societal view of race,” Chen said. “I saw some of the twenty-somethings really trying to explain, interpret and translate ‘Black Lives Matter’ into Chinese.”
According to Orton, the conversations were almost a precursor to 2020. He noticed much stronger, more vocal efforts being made to engage people within the community.
“I would say the collective response to COVID-19, anti-Asian racism, was a moment for our movement where people really came together and organized a little bit differently,” Orton said. “There was kind of an existential circumstance with the whole pandemic hanging over all of us. I saw it as a moment where we take our next big step forward.”
The lows of the past decade—including the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that left eight people dead, six of them Asian women—have reinvigorated advocacy for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. People who had previously thought nothing of visibility, representation, and safety joined protests, attended bystander workshops, or started their own advocacy groups. Just two days after the Atlanta attacks, California state education officials approved the country’s first national ethnic studies curriculum for secondary schools. Since then, states including WisconsinFlorida and New Jersey have passed legislation requiring AAPI history in elementary and secondary schools.
Beyond protests, data has also become an effective tool. Organizations like AAPI Data track information like socioeconomic status to reveal trends and disparities among Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Historically, federal, state, and local governments have dismissed certain subgroups as “statistically insignificant,” according to AAPI Data.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s March directive to better disaggregate data between Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders was also a key victory, Orton said, as was the removal of outdated language like “Far East.”
“We’re still dealing with growing pains,” Orton said, adding that young people want to see change now, while older Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who have been doing this work for a long time are moving at a different pace.
“We’re trying to figure out how it all fits,” Orton said.