Black Lives Matter

An open letter to Asian+ members in the Physics and Astronomy community

To our fellow Asian and Asian American colleagues and friends in the Physics and Astronomy community,

Last week, in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many others¹, we participated in Strike For Black Lives and Shut Down Academia to reflect, learn, act, and plan for more actions to end anti-Black racism. We reminded ourselves of the long history of racism in the United States, which has a pernicious anti-Black and anti-Native legacy at its foundation. We painfully recalled how our own past action and inaction have perpetuated anti-Blackness. As we stand with our Black neighbors against police brutality and a health system that is failing them in the US, we also recognize the urgent need for an international effort, including reforms at the fundamental level, to end anti-Black racism in science and academia.

While many of our Asian and Asian American colleagues and friends have already joined the battle against anti-Black racism, more of us need to engage. We write to urge you to start or continue taking action.

We fight against anti-Blackness because we are human.

This is not to say the stories and experiences of Asians and Asian Americans are irrelevant. The Black and Asian communities have long been intertwined, both in historic events², and most directly in thousands of people who identify as both Black and Asian. Looking inward, we as Asians and Asian Americans have experienced oppression in the form of racism and xenophobia, which are often disguised in daily life as the stereotypical roles assigned to us, cultural shame, social marginalization, and immigration hurdles. Our experiences are real, and they may make us feel muted, angry, or overwhelmed. But for those of us who are not Black, these Asian experiences are not Black experiences. As we face the urgent issue before us, our experiences should only give us more reasons (not that we need more) to stand up and fight against anti-Black racism now.

As a community, we need to confront ourselves, commit to learn and act, and hold each other (including our white colleagues) accountable. There is no neutral ground; silence is complicity with racism. We must act by³:

  • Recognizing how our action and inaction perpetuate racist and unjust practices and systems, including within our academic and research institutions and communities,

  • Actively working to address and dismantle racist and unjust practices and systems,

  • Rejecting being used as a “model minority” or a “token person of color,”

  • Amplifying (but not replacing) the voices of our Black colleagues and friends, and

  • Advocating for policies that support and protect Black students, staff, and faculty at our institutions.

This is not an easy journey, but one we must all take to build a future of justice and love.

Black lives matter.

Our voices and actions to support Black lives matter.

Chihway Chang (University of Chicago)
Ami Choi (Ohio State University)
Mandeep S. S. Gill (Stanford University)
Bo Jayatilaka (Fermilab)
Saurabh W. Jha (Rutgers)
Cindy Joe (Fermilab)
Alex Kim (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
Yao-Yuan Mao (Rutgers)
Meenakshi Narain (Brown)
Toyoko Orimoto (Northeastern)
Nausheen Shah (Wayne State University)
Yu-Dai Tsai (Fermilab / U Chicago)
Yuanyuan Zhang (Fermilab)

On the 19th of June, 2020


The authors thank Brian Nord and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein for their inspiring voices and actions.
¹Including Nina Pop, Muhammad Abdul Muhaymin, Jr., Stephon Clark, Philando Castille, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and thousands of others. Our community failed to speak up in the aftermaths of their killings, as we were reminded by https://notimeforsilence.org/.
²For example, the racist policies that limited Asian immigration into the United States began to be ameliorated with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, passed as a direct result of the Civil Rights Movement led by Black Americans.
³For more actions that you can undertake at your institutions and beyond, see “Call to Action” at https://www.particlesforjustice.org/.

Click here to see a list of additional resources that you may find useful.

If you would like to join us, click below to

This letter has been co-signed by

(Click here to co-sign)

Camille Avestruz (University of Michigan)
Yang Bai (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Sowjanya Gollapinni (Los Alamos National Lab)
Tao Han (University of Pittsburgh)
Melissa Hutcheson (University of Michigan)
Gourav Khullar (University of Chicago)
Young-Kee Kim (University of Chicago)
Hitoshi Murayama (UC Berkeley / Kavli IPMU)
Hiranya Peiris (UCL / OKC / Stockholm)
Kimmy Wu (University of Chicago)
Tien-Tien Yu (University of Oregon)

Mia de los Reyes (Caltech)
Kyle Helson (UMBC/NASA GSFC)
Ashay Patel (Caltech)
Gautham Narayan (UIUC)
Pratiti Deb (University of Chicago)
Ekta Patel (UC Berkeley/Miller Institute)
Aida Behmard (Caltech)
Michaela Leung (University of Washington)
Teresa Panurach (Michigan State University)
Sal Wanying Fu (UC Berkeley)
Sunayana Bhargava (University of Sussex)
Nicole Man (University of California Santa Cruz)
Amruta Jaodand (Caltech)
Bjoern Penning (Brandeis University)
Samaya Nissanke (GRAPPA, University of Amsterdam)
Biprateep Dey (University of Pittsburgh)
Song Huang (Princeton University)
Stephanie Kwan (Princeton University, Physics Department)
Tarini Konchady (Texas A&M University)
Kyla Smith (Scripps College)
Yasha Kaushal (University of Pittsburgh)
Abigail Lee (University of Chicago)
Xiao Fang (University of Arizona)
Alexander Ji (Carnegie Observatories)
Shreyas Vissapragada (Caltech)
Priyamvada Natarajan (Yale University)
Sridhara Dasu (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
Rutuparna Das (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)
Mi Dai (Rutgers)
Xiaohui Fan (University of Arizona)
Mason Ng (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Nhan Tran (Fermilab/Northwestern)
THARINDU JAYASINGHE (THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY)
Tingjun Yang (Fermilab)
Hongyue Duyang (University of South Carolina)
Kaitlyn Shin (MIT)
Subhayu Bagchi (University of Mississippi)
Elizabeth Teng (Northwestern University)
Humna Awan (Rutgers University)
Yasmeen Musthafa (University of California, Irvine)
Andreia Carrillo (UT Austin)
Saptaparna Bhattacharya (Northwestern University)
Mu-Chun Chen (University of California, Irvine)
Kuan Wang (University of Pittsburgh)
Brett Andrews (University of Pittsburgh)
Lily Whitler (University of Arizona)
Ray Sharma (Rutgers University)
Nesar Ramachandra (Argonne National Laboratory)
Yuguang Chen (California Institute of Technology)
Jason Wang (Caltech)
Corrinne Mills (UIC + FNAL)
Rui Wu (New York University)
Lindsey Gray (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)
Bibhushan Shakya (CERN)
Spencer Chang (University of Oregon)
Yangyang Cheng (Cornell University)
Tuguldur Sukhbold (Ohio State University)
Jessica Birky (University of Washington)
Abhimat K. Gautam (University of California, Los Angeles)
Tom Tong (University of Oregon)
Jennifer Sobeck (University of Washington)
Siddharth Mishra-Sharma (NYU)
Xuan Chen (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Chun-Hao To (Stanford University)
Andrea E. Martin (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics & Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging)
Zoheyr Doctor (University of Oregon)
Bhuvnesh Jain (University of Pennsylvania)
Sandhya Rao (University of Pittsburgh)
Johnny Greco (The Ohio State University)
Suk Sien Tie (Ohio State University)
Yuzo Ishikawa (Johns Hopkins University)
Mathew Madhavacheril (Perimeter Institute)
Zuyi Chen (University of Arizona)
Quanzhi Ye (University of Maryland)
Rakshya Khatiwada (Fermilab)
Jennifer Lumbres (University of Arizona)
Massimo Pascale (University of California, Berkeley)
Rahul Biswas (OKC/Stockholm University)
Adrianne Zhong (UC Berkeley)
Marie Wingyee Lau (University of California Riverside)
Jason Poh (University of Chicago)
Jiayi Sun (Ohio State University)
Clarence Chang (Argonne National Lab/Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the KICP, University of Chicago)
Gurtina Besla (University of Arizona)
Chi-kwan Chan (The University of Arizona)
Serena Kim (University of Arizona)
Dae Wook Kim (University of Arizona)
Shannon Haley (UC Berkeley Physics)
Heyang Long (The Ohio State University)
Lawrence Lee (Harvard University)
Deepthi Gorthi (UC Berkeley)
Michael Kirby (Fermilab)
John F Wu (Johns Hopkins University)
Yi-Hsuan "Cindy" Lin (SNOLAB)
Eiichi Egami (University of Arizona)
Kenichi Hatakeyama (Baylor University)
Haichen Wang (UC Berkeley and LBNL)
WeiLeong Tee (University of Arizona)
Hongtao Yang (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
Jennifer Kadowaki (University of Arizona)
Kam-Biu Luk (UC Berkeley)
Dung-Hai Lee (University of California, Berkeley)
Chen Zhou (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Shantanu Desai (IIT Hyd.)
Ken Shen (UC Berkeley)
Sam Ponnada (University of Iowa)
Masao Sako (University of Pennsylvania)
Ji Won Park (Stanford University/SLAC)
Natasha Sachdeva (Northwestern University)
Chung-Pei Ma (UC Berkeley)
Prajval Shastri (Astrophysicist from Bengaluru India)
Weishuang Linda Xu (Harvard)
Stacy Kim (University of Surrey)
Victoria Xu (UC Berkeley)
Rongpu Zhou (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
Joanne Tan (UC Berkeley)
Spoorthi Nagasamudram (The University of Chicago)
Zhuowen Zhang (University of Chicago)
Lipi Gupta (University of Chicago)
John Ruan (McGill University)
Chamkaur Ghag (UCL)
Anasuya Aruliah (University College London)
Kinwah Wu (UCL)
Dhiren Kataria (University College London)
NGUYEN T. K. THANH (University College London)
Sanjay Kaul (Fitchburg State University)
Huanqing Chen (University of Chicago)
KC Kong (University of Kansas)
Katrina Miller (University of Chicago)
Tianqing Zhang (Carnegie Mellon University)
Juven Wang (Harvard University and CMSA)