This past week, many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders welcomed the Lunar New Year under the dark shadow of spiking horrific violence targeting Asian elders, particularly in the Bay Area and in New York City. During the biggest holiday season for many AAPI cultures — one that emphasizes family ties — the mood is particularly grim given that the victims who have been killed or seriously injured are beloved grandparents, parents, and elders in the community.

Even before these incidents, terms like “China virus” and “kung flu” from those in positions of power seemed to unleash and validate the use of hateful language, resulting in more than 2,800 first-hand reports of anti-Asian hate incidents from March 19 through December 31, 2020, according to the organization Stop AAPI Hate. In its first week in office, the Biden administration issued a statement condemning racist and xenophobic speech and actions against AAPIs, but it remains to be seen whether these trends will abate as the pandemic rages on.

Even as I prepared my own family to celebrate the Lunar New Year with this heavy news hanging over us, I was heartened to read some of the messages of solidarity and support from those in philanthropy. However, as a whole, my observation from working in philanthropy for more than 15 years is that AAPIs are often left out of conversations around race, either purposefully or by neglect. There have been numerous conversations in our sector where I’ve encountered arguments that AAPIs are somehow not considered people of color, or that countering anti-AAPI racism should not be an explicit part of DEI and anti-racist work.

This has to stop.

Racial equity conversations have increasingly been rightfully front and center in philanthropy. In particular, the focus on anti-Black racism and reckoning with America’s history of police brutality, redlining, and the legacy of slavery is incredibly important and long overdue. We need to continue to lean into this conversation and to fund and advocate for solutions to systemic injustices affecting Black and brown communities. Most of the civil right gains of non-white Americans like me have been because of the incredible work and courage of my Black and brown brothers and sisters who came before us. I and other AAPIs owe them an immeasurable debt.

My hope in raising this topic is not in any way to take away from the efforts to support other communities; our energy for learning and creating a better world should not be zero-sum in nature.

However, our commitment to embracing DEI is incomplete if we do not recognize the interwoven nature of racism. To be sure, the history of AAPIs and our relationship to Black and brown communities has been a complex one. For one, the “model minority myth” has proven to be a convenient tool for both hiding the discrimination against many AAPIs and for serving as a cudgel to divide and alienate us from other communities of color, pitting us against one another.

Read the full articles about the erasure of AAPI voices and perspectives by Grace Nicolette at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.