Ever since news of the murder of George Floyd broke I’ve been struggling to articulate my feelings. Watching the video unfold was harrowing. Watching that suffering, the realisation of what is happening. The shame of watching an Asian man run interference while his white partner strangled a black man to death in broad daylight.

I’ve been looking for the right words, trying to say the right thing about the injustice we see, but not wanting to make it seem like I’m just “jumping on the bandwagon”. 

But as I listened to the voices of black people telling their stories and speaking their truth, and seeing that answered in violence and brutality from police, I realised that I was wrong to worry about finding the “right words”. Maybe there are no right words. But to stay silent is to be complicit. I will not be complicit. 

We live in a world where a system of oppression exists to lift up those with lighter skin and beat down those with darker skin. As an Chinese Australian man I have felt the cruelty of that structural racism, but in truth I was astoundingly privileged — certainly not at the top but nowhere near the bottom. I’ve never felt unsafe in my dealings with police, and thankfully I’ve only been attacked by racists a few times in the decades I lived in Australia. 

Our standing is such that we can be that police officer, our suffering is such that we feel we have to turn a blind eye lest it happens to us. Such is our power. Such is our privilege. And so it is our responsibility to check our privilege, to check our biases, to search within ourselves to root out our internalised racism, and see that while we are victims we are also beneficiaries in this system.

There are no words that can magically make things better. But we can make changes for the better by listening to the voices of those most marginalised. We must listen to our Indigenous brothers and sisters, to black folks everywhere. We must listen to their stories and amplify their voices. We are lucky that we live at a time where vast knowledge is available at our fingertips, we should use that to educate ourselves and how we can help.

If it is within your means, please consider making a donation in money or time. If not, there are many other ways to make a difference. We can have conversations with the people around us, we can set the standard and be the allies that black folk needs us to be. We can voice our support, and together we can move the needle of where normal is so that the racists who are intent on maintaining the status quo have nowhere to hide. They flourish because we let them. Together, we can close the door on this sorry chapter and open new paths to true equality. 

When we truly accept that Black Lives Matter, then all our lives will be better.