Our Shared Destiny: AAPIP Statement on George Floyd

At the Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), we are devastated by the news of Mr. George Floyd’s death and the weight of yet another Black life senselessly taken by excessive and lethal force, this time, at the knee of a white police officer. We stand in solidarity with George’s family, friends, and the African American community in Minneapolis and beyond in mourning his tragic death. Like so much of what we are experiencing that has been heightened by the pandemic, George’s death is not an aberration nor an anomaly, but another countless example in the continued pattern of this country’s darkest truth about racism. We must decloak centuries of white supremacy and stop the ongoing dehumanization and terrorism of Black lives.  

As Asian Americans, we are outraged that an Asian American police officer not only stood by and watched this horrific tragedy unfold, but added his own racial slur. Our experiences of anti-Asian racism in this country are rooted in anti-Blackness and we cannot look away or stand on the sidelines of justice. We all have a responsibility, including Asian Americans, to end this pandemic of anti-Black racism, to actively affirm that Black lives matter.  

George Floyd is Breonna Taylor; Laquan McDonald; Ahmaud Arbery; Christopher Whitfield; Kendra James. WE are George Floyd, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and Michael Brown. We are reminded, yet again, that our destinies and liberation are intertwined. This recent string of lives taken in the midst of a devastating pandemic calls upon philanthropy to be worthy of its definition as the love of humanity. Philanthropy can and must lead the way, centering an anti-racist lens and working in solidarity, to develop a cure for the deadly virus of racism that has ravaged our communities for centuries. Time is of the essence.