Maki Somosot: Reflection on March 16 Atlanta-area shootings
March 18, 2021
Content warning: Descriptions of racism
Maki Somosot, OOC Communications & Narrative Director
I am heartbroken, infuriated, and feel numb over and over and over again by this act of pure hatred that’s being downplayed and dismissed in the public space and by the media.
As an Asian American professor so painfully put it, the violence is in the forgetting.
As someone who immigrated to America right when Obama was elected, I was so drawn to the post-racial future that his administration promised.
It wasn’t until I moved to rural Louisiana from New York City where I realized the sham that was sold to me — when a white man from a small community down the bayou told me to go back to my country. And it wasn’t until I sat at a table with another white man who had welcomed me into his home, fed me a delicious meal, and proceeded to drop into the conversation how slavery was good for Black people that I grasped the depth of the rot that still lies at the heart of this messy, beautiful, difficult country — one that is nonetheless striving to be a model for the rest of the world.
During that whole conversation, my Filipino companions stayed silent. And slowly, I began to realize how my own community was complicit in perpetuating the racism, the hate, and the ignorance by white people that has traumatized Black and brown people in this country — as a way for my own people to distance themselves from the common struggle, as a survival tactic to achieve their way into whiteness in the hopes that they will finally be accepted.
I have no easy answers. All I know is how proud and thankful I am to be part of an organization that models the America that we all want to live in — an America that celebrates and honors all of our differences while grappling with the complexity of our humanity and history — an America that doesn’t shy away from itself.
I am blessed to share the Race Class Narrative work with others in our community because I genuinely believe that narrative change — the way we talk about race and class in this country — is the way to move forward.
Our lives matter. Our voices matter. And together, by speaking up and supporting each other in spite of our differences, I know we will heal this rot that has festered for too long in our country.
Together, we will build the future, and it will be a bright future that includes and celebrates all of us. No exceptions.
