Short answer: Because the Chinese know they have group interests.
It’s a shame American whites don’t have the same clarity.
A multi-racial society is always ripe for a race war.
Los Angeles Times: On a Saturday in February, Chivy Ngo, who owns Mister Bo Ky restaurant in Brooklyn, took a rare three-hour lunch break, closed his restaurant and taped a sign to the door.
“Will be at the rally for PETER LIANG reopen at 3 p.m.”
Ngo, a Chinese immigrant from Vietnam, rarely participates in politics. But that was before New York Police Officer Peter Liang fired his gun into a dark stairwell, and the ricocheting bullet struck and killed an unarmed black man.
Liang, who grew up in New York’s Chinatown as the son of Chinese immigrants, became the first New York City officer in more than a decade to be convicted in a shooting in the line of duty. For Ngo, the case stirred a sense of injustice he had never felt before. He and more than 10,000 other Asian Americans flooded the streets of Brooklyn for what would become the largest display of Chinese activism in recent history.
Nail salon workers stood with politicians. Chinatown cooks marched with uptown lawyers. They waved American flags and hoisted signs suggesting Liang’s conviction was the product of discrimination: “Peter Scapegoat”; “One tragedy: two victims.” The case sparked similar protests across the nation, but there were also counter-protests by African American groups demanding that Liang go to prison.
Here in Brooklyn, where the two communities have lived in close proximity for years, the case has opened an emotional conversation about whether Chinese Americans experience racism the same way other minorities do.
Liang’s Chinese supporters say they are taking up the fight against long-unrecognized discrimination against Asian Americans.
“If we didn’t come out, today it’s Peter Liang. Tomorrow it’s Peter Lee. After that it’s Peter Chan. We’ve borne it long enough,” said John Chan, a community leader who founded a Chinese civil rights organization after Liang’s indictment last year.
