Two weeks before the Georgia spa shootings that killed 6 Asian-American women, I sat down for an interview with my friend Pichet Ong, a renowned Chinese-American Pastry Chef, author, and multi-time James Beard Award semi-finalist. We spoke openly about racism and violence against Asian-Americans, and his own personal experience as an Asian-American. Sadly, the situation has escalated since our conversation, but it makes this honest conversation that much more important, and Pichet’s heartfelt words even more poignant.
This interview excerpt is just a portion of the full interview, it’s the segment of the conversation dealing specifically with hate crimes and racism against Asian-Americans. In this clip, I encourage anyone who experiences or witnesses a hate crime against an Asian-American to report it to Stop AAPI Hate, so that accurate data can be used in the fight against these terrible crimes. Indeed, all over the news this morning, reporters were citing stats from Stop AAPI Hate, so it matters that people report.
We call on everyone to speak out in solidarity with the Asian-American community and to call out racism anytime and anywhere it’s witnessed. Be brave, speak up, because silence is not the solution.
