This article is part of the Asian American identity series.

Sandi Chai immigrated to the United States from Taichung, Taiwan, at 22 to attend college. She settled in a small, rural town in Texas called Brownwood, where she met and later married her then-husband and raised two daughters.

Chai says she never encountered any form of discrimination before moving to Texas, where she not only dealt with everything from being ignored to being followed around in stores as a suspected shoplifter but also experienced racism from her white ex-husband’s family. But Chai never really talked about these issues with her daughters — until recently.

“I have to say, I did raise them white,” Chai told Vox. She didn’t teach them how to speak Mandarin, nor did she talk much about her culture and heritage. “Part of it was because where we were living, I didn’t want them to get bullied. … There wasn’t a Chinese or Taiwanese population in Brownwood, and I didn’t want to push the culture on them.”

In most Asian American households, having frank discussions about race and racism are somewhat taboo because of cultural, language, and intergenerational barriers. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, only 13 percent of Asian adults said race came up “often” in conversations with friends and family, compared with 27 percent of Black adults.

Avoidance was a common theme in a survey Vox conducted in April 2021 about Asian American identity. “Denial is the best word to describe my family’s attitude towards racism,” wrote one respondent from New Jersey.

“My parents paid the ‘immigrant tax’ that Hasan Minhaj talked about,” wrote another from California. “Being ‘let’ into this country and able to live a life with food on the table and [relative] physical safety was considered progress. Any racism encountered by the immigrant was a tax to pay for being able to live here.”

“Older generations of Asian Americans, who have worked so hard and sacrificed so much to provide their children and grandchildren opportunities they never had, are just grateful to exist,” a respondent from Arkansas wrote. “They continually say, ‘This is a white man’s world,’ accepting the fact that dirty looks, racial slurs, and violence [are] just part of the minority experience in the US.”

After more than 6,000 reported attacks against the Asian community between March 2020 and March 2021 — intensified by the Georgia shootings in March that left six Asian women dead, Asian American families like Chai’s are beginning to reconsider whether avoiding conversations about racism is still the right approach.

Vox talked to three Asian families about the conversations they’ve had about racism, what they wish they’d talked about earlier, and how the dialogue has evolved throughout the surge of pandemic-related attacks against Asians across the US. The conversations have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

“With the recent movements, it was more like it’s past time to actually say and do something about it”

Sandi Chai, 48, mother; Shalom Brown, 21, daughter; Zoe Brown, 19, daughter — Taiwanese Americans living in College Station, Texas

Sandi: By the time I got to the US in ’95, Taichung was more developed than Brownwood was. I don’t think I realized how racist America is. I had more money, I was better educated, but they looked at me and they treated me like I was a lower- or second-class creature, just because of my skin color. That was very surprising to me.

I mostly ignored the racism I experienced. A lot of it. Some of it was just outright aggression in the very Southern way. Sometimes I walked into stores and the owner just pretended I wasn’t there. They made sure I knew I wasn’t welcome. I got followed at Dillard’s [department store] all the time. My ex-husband’s mother’s family said a lot of racist stuff against me.

Getting a divorce and getting out of there was great. I didn’t talk about these experiences at all before my divorce, or actually before Donald Trump got elected. Then with George Floyd and the [Black Lives Matter] movement, I became even more vocal about it.

Shalom: For us three, we started talking [more about racism] after Donald Trump’s election. We were told [by my dad’s side of the family and by neighbors] that we have to pray for him to become president. And honestly, as someone who is biracial, it was scary. The people that you’re supposed to trust and respect are all of a sudden supporting a man who would do or say horrible things about people that look like you.

George Floyd’s death did spark more conversations. Even with Trump, I was still quiet and didn’t really talk about it or post about it. But with the recent movements, it was more like it’s past time to actually say and do something about it.

Zoe: I look more white than I look Asian. Growing up, whenever my classmates would make any jokes or racial slurs against Asians, they wouldn’t think they were being racist towards anyone in the classroom because I look white. When my sister was around, they would say, “Oh, there’s an Asian person here, maybe we shouldn’t say something like that.”

Shalom: Some people I met in high school would ask me about my accent, the food we ate, just frustrating microaggressions. Sometimes I did feel myself being self-conscious. But the biggest thing was more in my personal life, not really in school. Our dad’s mother and their family are very racist. I remember she would always say my sister is really pretty. Don’t get me wrong, she really is. But like, [my grandmother] would always pick on something, like tell me that my ears were too big every time she saw me. I was little and never understood why she picked on me. I never really voiced these things till I got older, when we started talking more about race. Mom faced more racial prejudices than we did.

My mom kind of shielded us from racism growing up. I’m an anthropology student, and I had this project where I had to talk to my mom. And I realized that the whole time she was in our hometown, it was really rough for her. She mentioned it before and everything, but I guess being able to have a long, fluid conversation about it brought up everything that she had to go through. I then realized how she shielded us from a lot, so we didn’t really have to face it.

Zoe: I love that we get to explore more of my mom’s culture [now]. Learning more about it makes me so happy because I get to know more about that side of my mom that was kind of suppressed when she moved to the US. They would tell her, “Don’t do these things, don’t say this, don’t eat that,” and I’m just happy to be able to learn more about the culture with her. Our mom is just such a beautiful person, and I’m really proud of the three of us and what we’ve overcome in the last few years. It’s been such a journey.

“We didn’t have a lot of conversations because I wanted to shield them from the trouble or to protect them from what’s going on in the world”

Willie Saligumba, 58, father; Jo-an Saligumba, 55, mother; Jacob Saligumba, 21, son — Filipino Americans living in Portland, Oregon

Willie: We never discussed it. We never pointed out color. My kids were taught with high discipline, to treat and respect everybody and to be polite and obedient, but we never discussed color or racism because they always got along with everybody. There was never an issue until recently.

Jacob: I didn’t recognize a lot of them back when I was in high school. Some were subtle Asian ones, just like, “Oh, you’re good at math because you’re Asian.” I was taken aback, but also I didn’t know those were microaggressions growing up until, like, college. Microaggressions are kind of subtle hints of racism that you might not even notice when you’re in person or when it happens.

Jo-an: I’m sort of naive. I went to Oregon City High School, and it was all Caucasian. I was naive and trying to speak English at the same time, and not aware of everything. To me, I thought they were friendly. No discrimination here.

Willie: People take little jabs at you like that. You don’t know it because you just didn’t pay attention to it. To me, it was never an issue. But things have changed a lot lately. New words have been brought up. Jacob and I will go at it all day long.

He calls me racist all the time.

Jacob: I don’t say you’re racist. I say some of the ideals or beliefs we grew up with are racist, and I’m even trying to unlearn some of the racist things that [have] been said. I remember talking about colorism in the Filipino or Asian culture. I said something like, “It’s racist for us to believe that just because you’re a darker color, it means you’re not worth as much value.” It’s also trying to apply that to the American mindset that we’re in.

Willie: No, that’s because of the way I grew up with many different nationalities, starting with the military and living in the Columbia Villa [affordable housing] projects. I can blend with any of those races and be accepted [with] no problem because my personality allows me to. But if this guy is beating up on this guy or disrespecting this guy, [it] doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter what color, it’s just wrong. But he still calls me racist.

Jo-An: It’s like a wrestling match between them. I just watch and listen.

Willie: With the attacks on Asian Americans, he’s worried about mom and myself being attacked or whatever. But firstly, I’ll fight to the death if it means protecting my family.

All this was brought to life because the previous administration was prejudiced, discriminatory, and racist. I admit I’ll kid about, “Hey, where does this thing originate from?” I’ll joke about that because I’m Asian. I’ve been like that ever since I was in the military. I lived with many different races. That’s just my attitude. So it doesn’t matter what color you are.

Jacob: I wished we acknowledged how racism isn’t only towards a certain race, like recognizing that we face our own type of racism in this country or area we’re in. Because we’re so used to it, we don’t really acknowledge it or bring it up.

Willie: We didn’t have a lot of conversations because I want to shield them from the trouble [and] protect them from what’s going on in the world. I want them to experience it, slowly but surely. It was never discussed. I just didn’t want them to stress and not be afraid to go to school. The less they knew, the better it was.

Jacob: That’s why I joined the [Filipino American Student Association] in college — to find a place to bond with other people that have the same upbringing and experience and culture as I did growing up. Because we’re very Filipino American, we don’t really do a lot of Filipino activities and aren’t a traditional household. I don’t know Tagalog besides some words. It’s been a lot of pride to say to them that I’m still carrying on this Filipino culture even though we weren’t really raised with it.

Willie: There’s a big reason why he set out to where he’s at right now. I never taught the language to the kids because I wanted them to get really immersed. Still, if they want to hang the Filipino flag in their rearview mirror, go for it.

Jo-An: I cook Filipino food all the time, and he loves it. He’ll eat bagoong [a Filipino fermented shrimp paste].

Willie: That, the food, we never forgot.

Jo-An: I’m so thankful that Jacob belongs to FASA because he’s learning more about the Filipino culture instead of us teaching him.

Willie: I’m glad he’s opinionated. How else is he going to grow? I don’t want him to think the way I think. I’ve learned a couple things from him, too.

“As Asians, we tend to suppress and not speak out. … But there are times where that actually works against us. This is one of those times.”

Kee Park, 58, father; Susan Park, 49, mother; Sophie Park, 23, daughter — Korean Americans living in Boston, Massachusetts

Sophie: I definitely had those quintessential Asian American child experiences of bringing sushi to lunch and the kids recoiling, or someone asking me why my face looks like it was hit by a pan. I just didn’t process it as any form of racism. It wasn’t until relatively recently that I realized how different I was. Even though I thought about it a lot in high school, I just remember distinctly walking on the street one day in Boston and being like, “Oh, I am a minority.”

Kee: Growing up in the ’70s, my parents wanted to assimilate as quickly as possible to American culture and give up our Korean identity. I was told to pick an American name. There was no emphasis on trying to maintain our Korean heritage and culture. We never really talked about racism. If we were being ridiculed, we just kind of swallowed it and moved on.

With Sophie’s generation, it’s been different. We’ve been talking about it actively, a lot more than my parents spoke with me, and I think it’s healthy. As Asians, we tend to suppress and not speak out, like silence is a virtue. But there are times where that actually works against us. This is one of those times. When our safety is at stake, it’s time to speak up. I’m really happy that our daughters are all very vocal. And so have I been, and so has my wife.

Susan: The Atlanta murders really upset me. When I found out that four of the eight people who were murdered were Korean women, it made me feel like that could have been my mom. It could have been my sisters. It could have been my daughters. It could have been me.

Kee: After the Atlanta killings, I was asked to make a statement for work for one of our big gatherings. I don’t like to talk about these things by nature, but I felt like I needed to. And I did.

Sophie: Historically, I didn’t like to talk about it either. But at this point, it’s doing everyone a disservice to stay silent. I was talking to my mom about the different experiences I’ve had as an Asian woman, and I realized I don’t actually share those things with my parents when they happen because I just shrug it off. Racism takes such a more insidious form against the Asian community, and I don’t think I realized that certain things were microaggressions or were racist until I reflect back on them. I feel like conversations around our identity as Asian Americans didn’t really happen until recently. Right?

Kee: I think the Atlanta shooting was like the George Floyd moment for Asian Americans. After the press briefing, when the police were trying to empathize with the killer for having a “bad day,” that woke me up, and I was like, this is truly systemic racism with the white people at the preferred seats — and they’ve maintained that.

If you look at the interracial (Black-Asian) tensions, people fail to see why that’s happening. Whites have always kept the preferred seats, and we and all the others get to fight over the crumbs. It’s really the white people’s refusal to share the power and the wealth that they have in this country with everybody. What I realized after the shooting was we have to dismantle the whole system of structural racism.

Susan: Also, we’re a Christian home. So I really didn’t have conversations with Sophie to be proud of her Korean American heritage, but it was more like, “Don’t forget, we have a faith.”

It’s wonderful that we’re Korean American. We embrace our culture. I make Korean food, we practice our traditions, we do our New Year’s and all of that. With my belief in God, my priority was that my family felt loved. But when the Atlanta murders happened, I thought, we’ve got to stand up for our Asian women, especially Koreans.

Sophie: I wasn’t really aware about systemic racism in America until maybe I was, like, 16 or 17. I don’t know what capacity you guys had, but hypothetically speaking, I wish it didn’t have to take so long for me to realize that it was a thing. Maybe I wish we had conversations about our unique experiences with racism and how those experiences matter.

Lillian, a young Asian American woman, was fed up with the flurry of fetishizing messages white men were sending her on Tinder. In 2017, she decided to create a meme Instagram account to show how men would slide into her inbox with remarks such as “I want to try my first Asian woman” or “I need my yellow fever cured.”

After more uncomfortable matches on the online dating app, Lillian used the account to speak out about the fetishization and intersection of racism and sexism that Asian women like her often face in real life. “I began to realize that these interactions on Tinder matched up with my lived experience of being an Asian woman,” she told Vice’s Broadly in 2018, “and I realized I could use this platform to talk about those experiences — and help others find validation through them, too.” Although Lillian stopped posting that same year, the account still has more than 19,000 followers, many of whom are Asian women who have commented on similar experiences of being sexualized.

For Asian women, the Atlanta spa shootings hit close to home. When Robert Aaron Long — the white 21-year-old gunman who was arrested on Tuesday and charged with the killing of eight people, six of whom were Asian women — told the police he had a “sex addiction” and that the spas were a “temptation he wanted to eliminate,” many were also quick to note the intersections between racism, misogyny, and racial fetishization. The stumbles of authorities and media outlets in distinguishing spas from massage parlors (the latter of which have a connotation of prostitution and sexualization) also showed that people were already viewing the case with certain tropes in mind without engaging in the vulnerable realities these workers face.

As Vox’s Li Zhou reported, Long’s statement about his “temptation” speaks to the longstanding stereotypes about not just the businesses, but also “Asian American women who have been exoticized and fetishized as sexual partners as far back as the 1800s,” Zhou writes.

Even before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigrants from becoming US citizens, the US had passed the Page Act of 1875, which ultimately banned the importation of Asian women, who were feared to be engaging in prostitution in the country, whether they were or not. And while many scholars point to different origins of Eastern fetishization, film scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu, author of the book The Hypersexuality of Race, says the emergence of films and artwork after US-led wars in Asian countries is when the trope of the hypersexual but docile Asian woman really took hold in America.

With Asian women, “there’s this construction of a being for others, and a being for the white man, usually, that were in these drawings and films and other cultural materials, that really extends to the way that we are capable of giving voice to this gunman who says that he was ‘sexually addicted to the temptations’ that [these Asian workers] offered,” Parreñas Shimizu told Vox. Meanwhile, “the Asian women who were killed were essentially silenced.”

I spoke with Shimizu about the history of fetishizing Asian women and how it translates to the shooting in Atlanta. Our interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Rachel Ramirez

People seem quick to want to label the motives of the Atlanta shootings with one definitive answer — it’s racism, it’s misogyny, or it’s “sex addiction,” as the shooter claimed. But it’s much more complicated than one thing. How do you see it?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

This particular event of Asian American women who work in a place that’s been attributed to sex work really hit me hard, because I’m a scholar that studies the representations and lives of Asian and Asian American women who are sex workers.

So for me, I could see their image and their identities catapulted into the national stage in a way that made it clear how much we lacked knowledge of how they got there. Why are they working there? Who are they? Are they immigrant women? What are their circumstances? What I’m thinking about is how their death has led to further silencing and burial — and how this killing has led to the amplification of the gunman’s voice and the simplification of a “sex addiction,” which further dehumanizes and decontextualizes the Asian women.

Rachel Ramirez

Talk to me more about this silencing and the intersection of a vulnerability and stigma of these workers. The shooter called these spas “a temptation he wanted to eliminate.” What comes to mind when you hear these words?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

So the arrival of Asian American women can really be captured as a genital event: The Page Act of 1875 reflected the fear of Chinese women as a source of contaminating sexuality. That they were possibly prostitutes.

That they were possibly going to introduce a polyamorous way of life into the United States at a time when there was a growing influx of Asians to the country. If you look at that law, it’s revealing that race has always been tied to gender and sexual difference. That there’s a fear of genital sex, and that there’s a fear of new kinds of sexual culture that these racialized women were representing. 

At the same time, there was also the beginning of a mass circulation of Asian women in plays; for example, The Good Woman of Szechuan in the 1880s, Madame Butterfly in 1904. These cultural productions were occurring at a time of Asian encounters with the West and Western invasions of Asia.

There was a production in the circulation of Asian women as sexually different and sexually excessive. They love you so much that they are going to be blinded [to] your lack of regard and how that love is not reciprocated. It’s such a maddening, scary love and sex and feeling and desire that is contained in an Asian woman’s body. So this is going on in history, in the law, and this is going on in popular culture. 

When I hear those words, that the Asian women at those spas were “temptations” that he wanted to eliminate, it really captures the legacy of the history and the law and popular culture constructions of Asian women — that they are the vessels of excessive sexuality. For me, it captures producing otherness and the alienation and object status. It’s really a dehumanizing move. 

Rachel Ramirez

You mention The Good Woman of Szechuan and Madame Butterfly — is it with this kind of representation in art that the Western fetishization of Asian women really takes off?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

My first book, The Hypersexuality of Race, chose to begin with Miss Saigon in 1989, which continues and really was one of the most lucrative Broadway productions. I wanted to begin there, because I was so arrested by the repetition of the same story — like what is so appealing about an Asian woman who loves a white man so much that she will choose to kill herself and give up her child and give it to him?

That was from 1904, so it’s really almost 100 years, and it wasn’t just repeated in Miss Saigon; there were other incarnations of it, like in the movies of Anna May Wong. One of her first films, Toll of the Sea, was the same story in 1920. So my book really concentrates on about 100 years of that repetition. Why are we addicted to that story? What is so arousing and pleasurable about that construction? Who does it serve? It isn’t a happy romance; the man and woman’s intimacy are torn apart. In the end, it’s revealed that she has no value, that she is unimportant.

I don’t know where fetishization began. I think there are many stories that we don’t know about, regarding the colonial encounter between Asia and the West. But what I do know is that the hierarchy of value when we enter that relationship between a white man and an Asian woman, whether it’s in the context of the military-industrial complex.

One recent story is the one of Jennifer Laude, the trans Filipinx sex worker, who was killed by an American GI in the Philippines. But the United States protected him as soon as he was pronounced guilty; they shuffled him out of the Philippine courthouse, and he was never imprisoned in the Philippines.

Most recently, President [Rodrigo] Duterte pardoned him. The movement of trans Filipinx women who mobilized in order to say her name — and to make sure that her story did not get buried — tell us that the status of Filipinx trans women sex workers reflects the colonial relationship between the Philippines and the United States and the power inequalities between the countries.

Rachel Ramirez

I want to stay on this, because I am also thinking of the massive US military presence in Asian countries — particularly in Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, and Japan — and the immediate colonization of not just the lands but of Asian women’s bodies. That Asian women’s bodies are for Western men’s taking.

How does this translate to the events in Atlanta, particularly that the suspect insinuated he wanted to eliminate these spas because he couldn’t control his own addictions?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

My research on The Hypersexuality of Race included uncovering some photographs that I found of women, photographs of the places where they worked, where they were enslaved, essentially. There were makeshift beds and a pile of towels to aid them in cleaning themselves — and there were cartoon images that attributed the slanted vagina onto Asian women.

There was pornography that eroticized the relationship between the war brides coming back to the US after the Korean War, for example. And this was the first time that Asian women were in pornography that I saw, versus white women in yellowface. They were romanticizing the compatibility of a docile war bride, as an ideal American wife, because she was sexually servile but also a domestic servant.

There’s this construction of a being for others and a being for the white man, usually, that were in these drawings and films and other cultural materials, that really extends to the way that we are capable of giving voice to this gunman who says that he was “sexually addicted to the temptations” that they offered, and how the Asian women who were killed were essentially silenced. 

It’s stunning, too, that there’s still this innocence that’s being projected onto a man who killed so many people. How can that innocence not shatter? And how come that person is given the microphone in order to continue this narrative that relegates this sexuality that drives white men crazy? To say that these women hold in their bodies temptations that he can’t resist, and using that as a reason to justify their killing.

Rachel Ramirez

As you mention, on one hand, Asian women are stereotyped as hypersexual; on the other, they are also seen as “submissive” or “docile.” In fact, there was a study done in 2013, which basically found that Asian women are the most “desirable” racial group among white men and other races. How have these two different stereotypes contributed to Asian women being not just objectified but seen by white men as a more “desirable” race?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

The polar way we understand gender as virginal equals good or hypersexual equals bad is particularly a prison for Asian American women, because representations in between are hardly in the movies or are hardly around.

So whenever we appear, we must contend with the inheritance of excessive sexuality, where you have to say I am not that, and in the act of saying I am not that, it’s easier to go toward the place that says I am a good woman without that scary sexuality. So, it does not allow for Asian American women to define their own sexuality, which would most likely be in the vast expanse of the middle. We really have to live with those scary and very limited polar opposites.

Rachel Ramirez

Yes, it seems there is little imagination of Asian women outside of the binary subservient and overtly sexual. Relatedly, there has been some hesitancy to talk about the possibility of these spas in the Atlanta shooting being places of sex work. While we don’t know much about the victims and would never want to assume or lean into stereotypes, are we also ignoring an important vulnerability these women faced, even if by connotation alone, one that is made worse the more we stigmatize it?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

I definitely think that this must be an opportunity for us to educate on the plight of vulnerable, poor, working women in every industry, including the sex industry. While we don’t know if there were indeed sexual transactions, what we do know is it is really important to highlight questions like: Are these women safe at work? What are their conditions of work? How can we improve them, so that they are not any longer some of the most vulnerable in our society?

I do see this definitely as an opportunity for us to educate ourselves on the plight that led these women to work there. And also how there is the accepted linkage between Asian and Asian American women and the sex industry, due to the various wars in Asia and the non-accidental ways that the cities and towns that flank the US military bases had a prostitution industry that was supported by the US military-industrial complex. We cannot normalize our ignorance around the conditions in which these women live and work. This is definitely an opportunity to improve their situations by finding out more about what we can do to help.

Rachel Ramirez

In your book, The Hypersexuality of Race, you encourage a shift in thinking about the way Asian women are sexually depicted. How can people move beyond that negative perception of Asian women as submissive sexual objects that have no agency? How should we be thinking about the nuance of Asian women and how does that nuance keep them safe?  

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

Sexuality is a part of all of our lives — whether we love it or are ambivalent about it or don’t want to participate in it. It can be a great life-giving source of physical and psychic pleasure of which we should not be deprived, if we wish to participate in it.

One fear that I have, in looking at over 100 years of representing Asian and Asian American women as a source of excessive sexuality, is that Asian American women should be encouraged to do the work of defining their sexuality in the face of this heavy truck that is trying to tell them that they are a particular way. 

I concluded my book with a respectful, interrogative celebration of how Asian American women are using film precisely to explore their sexualities — and, of course, it includes their victimization, as well as their empowerment through sexuality.

We need to acknowledge this huge systemic force that relegates us into a particular kind of sexual role in society. We must take it in our own hands and really centralize our experiences and follow the lead of our foremothers, including Asian American women who worked in Hollywood and Broadway.

I do hope that we can look at the way Asian American women — whether actors, activists, or scholars — have confronted this infliction of perversity and not run away from our own sexualities, and really use it as a force, not only to feel good for ourselves, but as an opportunity to capture how we are not yet free and that we have so much possibility to create new narratives about ourselves.

Why did the killer keep going back to those spas? Why did these women continue to deepen into an object status for him? There’s a pornography to this whole thing in terms of what he chose to see about them, and how he chose to narrate that encounter, in a way that continues their devaluation, so that in his mind, in his actions, their lives were not worth living or saving but instead had to be extinguished.

The long history of brutalization of Asian American women has been a part of this country inside and outside it. We need to question our capacity of repressing those stories — and instead, we need to cultivate the need to hear about them and to know them.

The trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with the murder of George Floyd, has been delayed for at least a day. The district court judge is awaiting an appeals decision about adding a third-degree murder charge, on top of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges. Chauvin was caught on video last May kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis, sparking worldwide protests against police violence. 

The third-degree murder charge, under Minnesota law, means the perpetrator acted in a way that was reckless at the risk of causing death and carries a sentence of no more than 25 years. Prosecutors are arguing for the charge because it is easier to prove than second-degree unintentional felony murder. The pending charge would also provide options for jurors about how to convict, since police killings have historically gone unpunished. Police kill about 1,000 people in the line of duty every year. But according to a multiyear study on police crime using Google News, only a total of 80 American cops were charged with murder or manslaughter between 2005 and April 2017, and only 28 of those were convicted.

Last October, Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill had dismissed a third-degree murder charge, but the state Court of Appeals on Friday said Cahill must reconsider reinstating it. Chauvin’s lawyer told Cahill on Monday that he plans to appeal that decision but is willing to move forward with the trial. Prosecutors, however, asked that the trial be delayed until jurors know whether they are supposed to consider the third-degree charge.

Cahill sent jurors home on Monday and ordered them back Tuesday while he and the lawyers figured out next steps.

“The state is fully ready to go to trial, but the trial must be conducted in accordance with the rules and the law,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is leading the prosecution team, said in a statement late Monday morning. “Now that Mr. Chauvin has stated his intention to appeal Friday’s Court of Appeals ruling to the Minnesota Supreme Court, as is his right, the District Court does not have jurisdiction to conduct jury selection or hear and rule on other substantive matters in the trial.”

Floyd’s death last summer hurtled the nation into a moment of racial reckoning. The outcome of Chauvin’s trial, over one of the most graphic cases of police violence in recent history, will serve as a major indicator of whether the American justice system is ready to hold law enforcement accountable.

George Floyd’s death was a turning point for how the world saw police violence

On May 25, the death of 46-year-old Floyd was captured on video and caught the world’s attention. The footage shows Chauvin pinning Floyd’s neck to the ground as he begged and uttered the words, “Please, I can’t breathe” — a moment that parallels the last words of Eric Garner, also a Black man, who died after a New York police officer’s chokehold in 2014. 

Minneapolis bystanders cried and voiced their concerns for Floyd as another police officer watched the scene unfold. Three other fired officers who were involved face counts of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter and second-degree unintentional murder, and are scheduled for a single trial in August. The end of the video footage shows Floyd turning silent and motionless. 

Soon after, protests and civic unrest erupted in cities across the country, all calling for police accountability and racial justice. Longstanding conversations of police reform emerged, shining the spotlight on measures to defund or abolish the police, and to divert and invest funds toward community resources such as mental health support and housing initiatives. Even Minneapolis’ own city council moved to defund the police by diverting nearly $8 million from the proposed policing budget to other community services. During the November elections, voters across the country overwhelmingly approved a slew of local police reform ballot measures — such as creating and improving police oversight boards, changing police department staffing and funding, and requiring public access to police body and dashboard camera recordings.

On Monday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside heavily barricaded and secured government buildings in Minneapolis ahead of Chauvin’s trial. Minneapolis is bracing for another moment of unrest as it deployed more police and National Guard around the city. Activists say the heavy presence of law enforcement, chain links, and barricades is further proof of the changes that need to happen and that “property matters more than human lives.”

“The irony of the city calling its plan a ‘safety net’ while failing to provide all of its residents with the social, economic, and environmental resources to survive is a cruel reminder of our city leaders’ priorities,” Reclaim The Block, one of the leading organizations in Minneapolis demanding justice and police accountability, wrote in a statement on Monday. “This is not preparing for conflict, it is provoking conflict. They want to evade accountability at all cost and continue to uphold white supremacy and incite violence on a grieving community.”

If jury selection picks up tomorrow, opening statements are expected on March 29 with the rest of the trial proceedings set to continue for another two to four weeks.