Asian Americans Have a Responsibility to Promote Anti-Racism in their Communities

We further the system of injustice against Black people through our actions, and in Thao’s case, our inaction.

On May 27, along with millions of other Americans, I watched the gut-wrenching footage of George Floyd losing consciousness as White officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck.

Those were the headlines: “White Officer Kills Black Man.” Headlines that we’ve heard countless times before. But until I watched the raw footage of the horrifying incident, I wasn’t aware that an Asian police officer stood by for nearly 10 minutes as Floyd slowly lost his life.

The footage was terrifying for a number of reasons — the fact that Chauvin did not remove his knee from Floyd’s neck even though he was handcuffed, the aching last words of Floyd who repeatedly said that he couldn’t breathe, and the desperate pleas from bystanders to check Floyd’s pulse. One image stuck with me though, even more than the crippling image of Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck. It was the image of the Asian American police officer named Tou Thao, who did not turn around one time to check if Floyd was still alive and, in fact, stood as a barrier so that civilians could not help Floyd.