Shades of humanity

Let’s get it out of the way. I am brown, but I enjoy brown privilege. I am an American from Southeast Asia living in Silicon Valley, and part of a coveted community driving the global technological revolution. So I haven’t had to pay the incalculable price that comes with my dark skin.

My community has faced its share of racial assault, recently after the 2016 presidential election, when all brown-skinned people were tagged as Muslim terrorists. But that doesn’t even begin to compare to what the African-American community has been endemically enduring for centuries. So even though I fall squarely in the same color spectrum, I have led a very different life.

I know what I don’t know

Because I don’t know what it’s like to live in fear all the time. To try to raise my children to be compassionate, fair and ambitious, while at the same time teach them to navigate and survive in a world where the odds are foundationally stacked against them. I don’t know . . .

What it feels like to go for a jog not knowing that you will be hunted down like an animal — like Ahmaud Arbery.

To find yourself in jail for a minor traffic violation, and decide to end your life because you don’t see a way out — like Sandra Bland.

To have someone call the cops on you because you asked them to follow rules and leash their dog — like Christian Cooper.

To be awakened by armed police barging into your apartment, and be shot eight times — like Breonna Taylor.

To spend your last moments pinned down by three police officers until you stop breathing — like George Floyd.

And I don’t know what it’s like to be black in a country where your rights, your freedom and your life are disposable, and the pledge you make of equality and justice for all doesn’t apply to you.

But I know this

I know I am human. That makes me blessed, and cursed, with the ability to observe, experience and express a wide range of emotions, and to have an instinctive understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong.

I know I can use the power of my humanity. I can listen, I can ask questions. I can share my feelings with you — angry, broken, hopeless, frustrated, hopeful, driven — and ask you to share yours. And I can add my voice to yours so we can scream louder and longer, until we are heard.

Even though we come in many different shades, there is only one human race in the end. I know it’s worth fighting for.