The Silence of My White Friends After Atlanta

I learned about the murders in Atlanta on Twitter. The Covid-19 viral pandemic had temporarily staved off mass shootings, a uniquely American malaise. At first, the news signaled that a tragic normal had returned, bringing back a familiar dread. But that dread turned into horror as I learned that all three sites that were attacked were Asian spa businesses in Atlanta. My breathing sped up as I scrolled and refreshed for details. Six of the eight dead were Asian women. I felt nauseous when I realized that I had been expecting a hate crime like this to happen for a year.

I was already on edge from the violent attacks on Asian elders around the country; the mass shooting sent my heart racing. With my mind on high alert and my eyes glued to the headlines, I dropped all my work, unable to concentrate on any tasks at hand. I saw the debates roll in about whether race was even a factor, then ignored them for my own sanity. Emotionally, I was exhausted.

In the following twenty-four hours, seven friends and colleagues checked in on me, offering their condolences and comfort, but not requesting a response—simply sending their support. No fewer than six of them were Black women. I was consoled by these texts and direct messages, grateful that they cared.

Ten days later, I heard for the first time in a few weeks from my best friend of twenty years. She, a white woman, texted: “Are you getting this insane wind by your place? It sounds like our whole neighborhood might blow away!”

As the text message came in on my phone, the Santa Anas howled outside. But I was shopping online for emergency medical devices with GPS-tracking for my octogenarian parents, worried about their safety as they took walks around their Bay Area neighborhood every day.

*

Despite all the toxicity, trolling, and bite-size hot takes for clout on social media, after the shooting, I strangely found more comfort on Twitter with fellow Asian Americans—most of them creatives and artists—than I did from my own best friend.

I thought she’d perhaps send a quick text check-in while she came up for air from her studies and had a chance to catch up with the headlines. I had to remind myself that even close friends must read vastly different news stories, by virtue of whatever the algorithm was figuring we’d want to read.

I strangely found more comfort on Twitter with fellow Asian Americans—most of them creatives and artists—than I did from my own best friend. 

The tweets in my timeline, however, mirrored what I was experiencing and feeling:

“The hatred from strangers, sad, but not surprising. The indifference of those we personally know, truly heartbreaking,” said one tweet.

A reply-tweet to that one read: “The indifference has been the hardest for me too. Seeing who is showing up and who has remained silent makes my heart hurt and is sadly, making me re-examine who I call my friends and family.”

I was reminded of the words of Martin Luther King, when he said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

*

After taking some time to sit with the silence of my friend, I wondered if we had just casually tenured into a long-term, flimsy intimacy. But there was no doubt that the distance the pandemic necessitated factored into my insecurities. I came to the conclusion that there was no choice than to reassess this friendship, or endure a continued pain.

I wondered: Who was I when I first formed this friendship?

A born-and-bred Wisconsinite from the suburbs west of Milwaukee, I had been indoctrinated since birth to assimilate and reach for white adjacency not only for survival, but as a goal and a way to ascend in America. With the approval of white people, society inferred, the American dream could be ours too.

When Vincent Chin—a Chinese American who became the scapegoat of laid-off auto workers in Detroit—was murdered in 1982, it was proof we needed to show our alliance with America because of how we looked. During the automobile crisis in the 1980s, my family bought only American cars—even though they broke down all the time.

These outward depictions and declarations of Americanness permeated other aspects of life too. Whenever we were out in public, my mother—an English teacher during her last years in Taiwan—would admonish my father to speak English instead of Taiwanese. There was no mistake; we got a lot fewer stares after this became codified into our family conduct. And whenever I was in public with friends from my Chinese youth group, I dreaded running into any of my white school friends for fear they would have their suspicions confirmed that I was incapable of thriving in white American society.

Even after I moved to Los Angeles, gaining the resources to do the work of undoing the lie, assimilation still lived on in my subconscious.

*

While it might have been easier to write off our friendship based upon evidence that she wasn’t showing up for me, I remembered how far I had come in order to show up for myself. Then, I remembered how far I had come in order to show up for others. I evolved into someone who requires solidarity from those I call my friends. Though I had let go of shorter and lesser friendships in recent years because of undeniable incompatibilities, I still believed this one with my best friend was different. I would not have done it justice to write our friendship off at the prospect of having a tough conversation. A conversation that was years in the making.

My experience with my friend showed me that even twenty years of friendship was not enough to penetrate hundreds of years of American imperialism and colonialism. It wasn’t enough that I had shared with her my experience about being told to “go back to China” in a Chinese garden in San Marino mere weeks before the Atlanta shootings. It wasn’t enough that I told her about the time I told a fellow Dodger fan to “shut the fuck up” on the commuter bus when he mocked an Asian driver on the way to Dodger stadium. It wasn’t enough that my friend had witnessed me, as we vacationed in Hawaii, confronting a group of racist Asians for insulting and mocking her Black friend outside a restaurant in Honolulu.

I had thought, over the past twenty years, that maybe my own confrontational nature with racism would single-handedly educate her through osmosis. But it hadn’t. Still, we had traveled too far through the years and worked too hard toward cultivating an understanding between us to not have the race talk now.

Though my disappointment in our disconnection was real, and though I was perpetually exhausted from this trauma, if I wanted to reach her, I realized that I would still need to spell it out. That my closest white friend isn’t above confrontation, and silence was complicity.

I took a few days to gather my thoughts. Then I picked up the phone.

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