I wonder if we weren't reading "massage parlors" would the outcry be bigger? I wonder if 8 girls from Harvard had been gunned down, if the headlines would evoke more empathy? I wonder, if it was 8 senators, if the flags would be lowered? Since when do we rate the value of lives lost? Since forever, and that's the problem. Middle passage? Not worthy of remembering. Trail of tears? What's that? Half a million lives lost in a pandemic? Not gonna lower a flag for that. Young women shot? Let's blame them for working in a massage parlor. Think it's not happening? Go back and read the news reports. They have names and families. But what do we read first? "Massage parlor shootings".

Violence against women. Violence against Asians. The same systems that did not protect them are the same systems that make Black mommas like me fear for their sons' lives. They are the same systems that cause learning gaps. They are the same systems that allow countless BIPOC women to go missing, ending up in the unsolved cases files of our justice system.

While I see my Black American, Kenyan, Vietnamese, Mexican, Guatemalan, El Salvadoran, Haitian, Chinese, Ghanan, students as more than BIPOC students, we all share the same fight. The same systems that started out disenfranchising non-males and non-whites at the founding of this country are the same systems that create inequities in our country today. Black, Indigenous, People of Color are diverse cultures and individuals who should be recognized and celebrated as such. However, we stand in solidarity against hate and against the systems that consistently do not value us. Because as Fannie Lou Hamer says, until everybody's free, nobody's free. #StopAsianHate

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