my heart breaks for all of my asian friends today but especially the asian women in my life. i’m so sorry for the hate and scapegoating and violence y’all have experienced — not just in the past year, as our former president trafficked in racist language that has led to a horrific increase in anti-asian hate crimes, but over history and especially at the hands of the us government. i’m sorry that news outlets will continue to credulously quote the murderer and law enforcement, refusing to acknowledge the inherent racism and misogyny of his actions — brushing off hate crimes because “he was having a bad day.” i’m sorry that people will demand empathy for a murderer before ever considering how they perpetuated the culture that lead to eight deaths — never thinking to tell their stories instead of his. i’m sorry that this country’s obsession with uninhibited gun access allowed a man to buy a weapon mere hours before he used it to take eight lives. i know condolences don’t dismantle the white supremacist patriarchy that murdered those eight women. for the rest of us: please check out this list of orgs and resources that benefit asian communities. and, before you put the burden on your asians friends to tell you what you can do to help, maybe have conversations with the non-asian people in your life about the ways we all promote and perpetuate anti-asian racism. let’s start there.