How We Can Practice Black Liberation in Our Day-to-Day Lives
During the turbulent summer of 2020, some of my oldest mentors and friends from Kizuna asked me to write an article about being a Black member of the Japanese American community. Grappling with the anti-Asian racialization of the already world-altering COVID-19 pandemic combined with renewed protesting against police brutality, I penned a piece for Yo! Magazine about my identity and experiences. For the first time, people were ready to listen.
When I think about my involvement in Kizuna, the first word that comes to mind is “foundation.” As I talked about in my piece, Leadership and other Kizuna programs gave me some of my first structured, nurturing opportunities to critically explore my own developing identity and positionality. I can still remember the Leadership session where I first truly learned how to explore concepts such as power, privilege, and oppression in a space with my peers, and I can also remember how in that session we were directed towards concrete, actionable tasks and practices to challenge inequities in our communities in that very same two hour block.
Importantly, I learned about these concepts in a joint session between Kizuna founder Kristin Fukushima and Povi-Tamu Bryant, a Black, gender non-conforming, and queer activist. There was something deeply powerful about having two non-male, queer, non-binary leaders teach us this fundamental material. While no one quite shared my identity, I felt wholly represented in ways that I could only even begin to conceptualize years later after going on my own sexuality/gender journey.
While I’m finding that literacy and action around issues of justice and equity are happening far earlier and more rigorously among kids just a few years younger than me now, we still need these kinds of spaces and programs more than ever. I’ve realized more recently that one of the things that makes Kizuna so special is the praxis (literally: theory + practice) present in the session I just described. In the age of social media-driven activism where education surrounding anti-racism and justice works feels like it ends after swiping through an Instagram post or closing an educational book. I constantly get asked, as a Black person, how non-Black Japanese Americans can support Black people and how to actually take action in dismantling anti-Blackness within our own community.
The blueprint, I think, is already in front of us-- and importantly, so are the results. When we talk about supporting the Black community, we need to ask ourselves whether we are supporting from afar or from a place of recognizing that Black people, culture, and struggles for liberation are intimately tied with our own. While I think there’s a real and valid fear of intruding into spaces that aren’t ours, programs like Kizuna have shown me that there are so many ways in which we can practice Black liberation in our day-to-day lives. For educators, current and future leaders, as parents, and as youth, I’ll leave you with these questions:
What Black organizations, movements, individuals, and community networks are near us, and how are we amplifying and assisting them on their own terms? If you can’t find or you don’t think that there are Black folks out there asking for support and naming their needs, think again. Look harder. There are many, many ways to respectfully and impactfully engage in supporting the political, economic, and holistic well-being of your Black neighbors.
Who are your Black friends? Colleagues? Peers? How about your children? If you look around and notice there are few Black people in your life, reflect upon why that might be. Ask yourself in what context that could change.
Learn more about the interconnected histories of Japanese American and Black oppression, and why they matter today. I find that incarceration is a great place to start. If you feel that Japanese American incarceration was unjust and illegal, you already have a lot in common with Black Americans, who are consistently unjustly policed in the present.
Support and engage with educational spaces that are doing important and necessary intersectional work. Enroll your children in their programs. Amplify and talk about them to your friends. If you notice that Asian American youth programming spaces aren’t addressing Blackness, use your voice to encourage people to do so.
Learning about and engaging in meaningful conversations and change within the Japanese American community about Blackness through Kizuna was instrumental for me. As I transition into whatever “young adulthood” means, I am profoundly grateful for these experiences and deeply hope that the next generation of youth get the same opportunities. In my historical work on race and health at Yale, my contemporary engagement with BIPOC-based community programming for organizations like USA Water Polo, and in continuing to be involved in Little Tokyo today, these experiences can be instrumental in helping us find new paths towards shared liberation.
