Asian American groups condemn Chow acquittal, urge communities to confront anti-Black racism

Several Asian American civil rights and advocacy organizations have spoken out following the acquittal of Rick Chow in the fatal shooting of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton, calling on Asian American communities to reckon with anti-Black racism and practice cross-racial solidarity.

A South Carolina jury acquitted gas station owner Chow on June 1 for the 2023 shooting death of Carmack-Belton, who was shot in the back as he fled the store. Surveillance footage from the business showed Chow’s wife, Alice, trailing Carmack-Belton before Chow pursued and shot Carmack-Belton. Now, Carmack-Belton’s family is pursuing a civil wrongful death lawsuit against Chow, with attorney Todd Rutherford representing the family.

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Asian American Advocacy Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, the Legal Defense Fund and the National Urban League issued a joint statement Thursday condemning the killing. The groups invoked the 1991 shooting of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins by a Korean American store owner in Los Angeles as a precedent that deepened tensions between Asian and Black communities. “Narratives that attempt to justify this killing or promote collective blame to communities fuel harm and increase the risk of further violence,” they said.

Stop AAPI Hate issued its own statement earlier on Tuesday, arguing that anti-Black racism, just like anti-Asian racism, is a tool of white supremacy that uses racial division to set communities of color against each other. “As selective news coverage and sensationalist social media content inflame racial tensions between Black and Asian people, it is critical that we meet this moment not with division but with solidarity,” the organization said, calling Chow’s acquittal a miscarriage of justice.

Locally, Asian Media Access, an organization rooted in North Minneapolis’ multicultural community, called the acquittal “an abhorrent failure of accountability” and urged Asian Americans to confront anti-Blackness within their own communities. “We cannot authentically advocate for our own safety and justice while remaining silent when members of our diaspora inflict harm on Black lives,” the group said.

The outpouring from Asian American organizations suggests a broader reckoning with what role the community plays in America’s racial landscape. As we have previously reported, the verdict risks reopening fractures that many organizations worked to bridge, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when advocates fought to dismantle narratives casting anti-Asian violence as a Black-on-Asian problem.

Those fractures have a direct historical precedent. The lenient sentence handed to Harlins’ killer, Soon Ja Du, helped fuel the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, which left deep wounds in both Black and Korean American communities.