The Privilege to Do Nothing

Written By Elliott Pak

Photo by @mun_shots

---

I was a piece of shit kid.

When I was in high school, I drank a lot, I smoked a lot, I sold a lot of weed, I did a lot of hard drugs. My friends and I antagonized businesses (Target was one in particular) and were just straight horrible kids.

I ran from the cops more times than I can count on two hands.

And let me tell you. I got a way with every single one of those encounters.

Every. Single. One.

One particular time, my friends and I literally had a police helicopter track us through the woods and shine it’s spotlight on us, concluding in me and my best friend on our knees with our hands up while two policemen pointed tasers at us. No joke.

On that occasion, I was somehow lucky enough to only get booked with a ticket and had to go to court with my furious mother. I was scared as hell. As a 16-year-old, I thought my life was over. 

But I still remember the judge’s facial expressions as clearly as it happened yesterday. 

He just shrugged me off like nothing happened. I got a slap on the wrist. I think I had to attend some three hour drug seminar about how it ruins your life.

That’s it. For running from cops, doing drugs, destroying personal property, for resisting arrest while a fucking HELICOPTER chased us.

That was the privilege of being a good little Asian boy. Of being a non-Black kid. The stereotype of having good grades, being a tame kid with glasses – my cute mother, telling the judge all the things I do after school – that was just clear as day, my specific privilege as an Asian-American.

I’m privileged as hell.

This is just a straight up fact – myself, and many of my friends in California, grew up in really, really privileged areas. Mostly white. Little to no crime. Sunny weather and beautiful beaches.

Yeah, I grew up as the only Korean kid in a mostly white society. I dealt with my share of racism, and so did my sister, and my dad, and my mom.

But I was and still am privileged.

---

Black people in America have nothing close to that privilege.

Everyone knows what’s going on in America right now, but the fact that I don’t see every single person I know outraged feels weird to me.

In America, every morning, students stand, put their right hand over their hearts – and pledge the statement – “to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

And it’s simply not true. It’s 2020 and it’s not even close. Certain sections of our country don’t get the same liberties as others. And clear as fucking day they are not getting the same justice.

In my lifetime, I’ve never seen something that so clearly shows a divide between three groups of people.

One, the people who are enraged by what is happening and are loudly protesting.

Two, people who condemn the protests, which is their right.

And three – people who haven’t said a word about it.

People who have continued on living their lives like nothing happened.

---

There’s a Lot Of “Good People” Doing and Saying Absolutely Nothing.

I’ve met a ton of different people from a variety of backgrounds and places in my life.

Something I believe and hope I will always believe is that there are way more “good” people than there are bad people in the world.

There are “good” people everywhere. Most people are “nice.” They believe in what is “right” and know what is wrong.

But what this event, more than anything else has shown, is that knowing what is right and wrong is not enough to make a person good.

Being a good person, believing in “what is right” – it is merely a baseline for being human. It is merely a prerequisite to not being an evil person. It is merely the traits of not being a sociopath.

A lot of people try and skate by on the fact that they “believe” in good things without publicly practicing them. They’re good people, so long as it’s comfortable. As long as whatever good thing they have to do isn’t an inconvenience. 

But if it doesn’t truly affect them, the truth is they don’t really need to care, and they don’t really need to act on it. They can watch something horrible from the sideline and say, “Oh my God, that’s so horrible” – but they have the ability to turn off the TV, to close their phone, to make the bad things stop happening in their world.

It’s a privilege to be able to turn the world off like that.

Believing in what is right without action – this doesn’t contribute to anything. It makes you a leech.

If you saw the video of George Floyd and so many others, said “that’s fucked” to yourself, and moved on, you’re a privileged person. You have the privilege to turn off the bad news and go on with your day. You have the privilege to stay quiet and have your world remain the same.

And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been that person for many, many years. 

But it’s kind of fucking crazy how few people will admit it, when it’s incredibly obvious. And even crazier how few people are willing to say or do anything about it.

---

The Black community is enraged right now, for good reason.

All the oppressed community wants (besides the obvious justice against violent policemen and reform for a broken system) is this recognition from us, the privileged, and to simply state it and stand up with them.

But they’ve been asking for it for so damn long, something so seemingly trivial, that anger builds. Rage builds. And sometimes that rage turns into something non-productive and even detrimental. Because anyone who is filled with rage and emotion is bound to say or do something they might not have done while calm.

This rage is something that anyone who’s been part of the majority will never really comprehend – myself included.

But if you really say you understand their plight, can you really blame them?

When I think about the racist bullying I went through as a kid to this day, my chest still inexplicably fills with rage. When I think about someone directing this racism to my sister, my parents, my grandparents – hell, even any random Asian kid – it makes me want to punch the first person I see straight in the fucking mouth.

The rage I feel about it, it’s unexplainable. How can I explain something that makes me see red? Something that makes me lose control of my words and thoughts? You want me to articulate clearly when my emotions are spilling over? 

Can you see how ridiculous a request like that is?

And that was just for some childish bullying nonsense.

What’s happening today and has been happening for decades is one billion times worse than what I went through – so I can’t even imagine the rage the Black community must be feeling.

Try to imagine how the Black community feels about one of their own, a grown man, being held down while pleading with an officer meant to protect him, while three other officers of the peace do absolutely nothing to help him.

You don’t have to remind me that one of those cops was Asian. That guy was a complicit fucking coward and an embarassment to Asians everywhere.

Imagine the rage that a community feels about not one incident, not two incidents, not ten incidents, but continuously happening, flowing like water as if it were a normal part of society.

Imagine the rage of knowing that the death of your loved one was just a senseless act of violence.

Imagine the rage of having to explain to your children why there’s a group of people that hate them for no reason.

Imagine the rage that builds when the rest of the country brushes it off as yet another isolated incident instead of a series of systemic racist attacks, one after the other.

Imagine having leaders, left and right, that send nothing but “thoughts and prayers” every few months. 

Imagine feeling that alone.

---

If You’re Sitting There At Home, Pissed That People are Protesting, Keep This In Mind.

You might say – well, I agree, but they don’t have to break stuff.
You might say – well, if only they did it peacefully, that would be a lot nicer.
You might say -well, [insert different, topic-changing excuse]

Y’know, you’d probably be right. There probably is a better way to do it. A better, more peaceful way to protest.

But they did that. 

NFL stars kneeling. Everyone had a problem with that.
NBA stars wearing warm-ups sending a message. Everyone had a problem with that.
People putting a fist in the air in solidarity. Everyone had a problem with that.

So what exactly are they supposed to do if every single way to protest isn’t “okay?”

Nothing ever changes.

Imagine giving your all to a cause that never changes.

In a situation as multi-faceted as this, there’s a million little arguments people can make. Not all policemen are bad, there are people who don’t really care about this and are just taking the opportunity to loot stores, some people are only protesting for the glory of being a protester, yada yada.

Some of these could be true. But if you’re focusing on one of these comparatively small issues rather than the main issue of systemic racism, you’re just justifying something way smaller than what the real issue is.

If there are other parts of this event that you automatically focus on other than an unarmed Black man unnecessarily having a knee pressed to his throat for 9 minutes – it means you’re not close enough to the situation.

You’re pointing out your own privilege, the privilege to take a really big step back from the situation and dissect various other minor factors.

You are literally, automatically pointing out – racism has never really affected you. The subject doesn’t enrage you enough because you’re not close enough to it. You can’t understand it.

You have the ultimate privilege of not feeling this rage.

Having that privilege is not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing. It’s a simple fact.

But if you don’t even try to understand and empathize with the rage that so many people have, you are contributing to the problem.

---

If you don’t speak out just because you aren’t directly affected by the issue – you are contributing to the problem.

Why? Because an oppressed community like this can’t do it alone, and the people who are committing the acts are in positions of power. 

And the people in positions of power fucking THRIVE off of people who say “hey man, this isn’t my problem.”

There are people in charge that are straight giddy at the fact that a lot of people are covering their eyes, ears and mouths at this issue.

Divisiveness among the people is the surest way to maintain power for those at the top. Police included.

If you’re saying it’s not your problem, you are contributing to further division. If it’s only the Black community’s fight, they will lose, no other way to say it. And it will forever go on like this.

And I hate to be the one to say it, but when you go outside, when you go on social media, it’s incredibly clear to see the people who are enraged and the people who are ignoring the situation whatsoever.

You have no idea what this means to us minorities when we see that.

When we see terrible injustices happen to other minorities, and right after, we see people we believe to be good people and good friends sipping mimosas and posting pictures on the beach without a word about what’s happening –

It makes us feel super alone in a David and Goliath fight.

It makes us feel like racism isn’t just a small minority of people itself, but rather part of a quieter majority.

We could spew the normal shit, like imagine if it was your family blah blah blah, if a cop had a knee on your mother or father or son or daughter’s neck blah blah blah, but people have been saying this since the beginning of time.

And still no change. Still just good wishes and prayers to those affected.

Then silence.

And continuing on with our day, going on vacation, on speedboats, comfortably watching a movie with our phones turned off, while an entire subsection of our own nation struggles to breathe.

---

What Is Enough to Help?

Even after donating, after signing petitions, being part of the conversation online, I too, still feel like I’m not really doing anything.

But there is for sure something every, single person can do. The first step is to do actions that take courage. The kind of things that are uncomfortable as hell. 

To acknowledge the privilege you and I might have that we did nothing to deserve.

To speak out about something that you believe in even if it doesn’t directly involve you.

Even if it’s a friend of yours that contradicts you. 
Even if it might make you feel exposed or embarrassed.

And to let people in the trenches know that you have their back.

When I was a kid being racistly picked on by a group of older kids, even adults – if someone had told me that they had my back – you have no idea how much that would have meant to me.

Being a minority is lonely as hell to begin with. Being an oppressed minority must be some kind of living hell.

All of those things are uncomfortable as hell to do. Writing this right now is uncomfortable as hell. But if you really think you’re a good person, if you truly believe there is brutal injustice happening, do something meaningful about it, because if you don’t, being a “good” person really doesn’t mean anything.

---

Writing this made me incredibly sad. Not only sad about the injustice.

But sad knowing I’m going to alienate people I’ve known for a long time. Sad that I will have to argue with good friends about little aspects of this article. Sad because I really hate to lecture anyone like some internet soapbox asshole.

I too, would rather be comfortably hidden away from the conflict. I’d rather not rock the boat. I’d rather keep my feelings to myself. God knows it would be easy to, seeing as how I live on the other side of the world, where the problem in question is as physically far away from me as humanly possible.

But if you look at the big picture, my comfort and your comfort, all that shit is a drop in the ocean compared to the injustices that continue to happen over, and over, and over again.

I wrote this article for a specific demographic. For people like myself. People who live in generally peaceful areas. People who have not had much interaction with the affected community. People who are comfortable. People who are privileged enough to not be directly affected by these issues.

I am all of these things, or at least I was at one point in my life.

All I hope is that my friends who, like me, have been able to enjoy the comfort of being far away from these situations:

To not only be more empathetic to people whose situations are so much worse than ours, 
To not only understand why your situation is so much better than others,

But to have the courage to speak up about things that aren’t right and to try to contribute to things you believe in, no matter how uncomfortable it gets – even if it doesn’t directly affect you.

Because the simple truth is the oppressed community can’t do it alone.

You’re a part of this, whether you want to be or not. It’s one side or the other. And if you choose the side of complacency, neutrality, or silence, you’re not “in the middle.” 

You’ll be complicit to the wrong side of history when all of this gets written down. 

---

Links To Things You Can Do To Help Right Now.

Sign the Petition, Justice for George Floyd on change.org [CHARGES HAVE BEEN PLACED ON ALL 4 COPS, NO NEED TO SIGN THIS ONE NOW]

The official petition for Justice for George Floyd—the largest petition in Change.org history according to the site’s rep—already has more than 7.5 million signatures, but could always use one more. The petition is aimed at getting the attention of Mayor Jacob Frey and DA Mike Freeman to “beg to have the officers involved in this disgusting situation fired and for charges to be filed immediately.”

Donate to The NAACP Legal Defense Fund

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is “America’s premier legal organization fighting for racial justice.” The group works to seek “structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of equality for all Americans.” It’s currently asking for donations to continue the expensive process of litigation to “defend our civil and human rights.”

Donate to Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013, is an organization whose mission is “to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.” Donations go toward continuing its mission as well as its arts and culture programming.

Donate to the George Floyd Memorial Fund

The official GoFundMe for the Floyd family organized by George’s brother, Philonise Floyd. This fund is established to cover funeral and burial expenses, mental and grief counseling, lodging and travel for all court proceedings, and to assist our family in the days to come as we continue to seek justice for George.  A portion of these funds will also go to the Estate of George Floyd for the benefit and care of his children and their educational fund.

Donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund

A community-based nonprofit that pays criminal bail and immigration bonds for individuals who have been arrested while protesting police brutality.

Donate to National Bail Out

National Bail Out is a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration.

Donate to the Black vision Collective

A black, trans, and queer led organization that is committed to dismantling systems of oppression and shifting the public narrative to create transformative, long-term change.

Donate to Reclaim the Block

Coalition that advocates for and invests in community led safety initiatives in Minneapolis neighborhoods.

Donate to Campaign Zero

An online platform and organization that utilizes research-based policy solutions to end police brutality in America.