Balbir Singh Sodhi. I don’t know if that name has the resonance that it should. Amongst Asian-Americans, names like Vincent Chin or Navroze Mody are part of our collective conscious. But Balbir Singh Sodhi is a name that is so important for the telling of the tale of minorities in America, but also a story that sits at the base of a crushing horror of what’s happened in this country after 9/11. Sodhi was the first victim of post-9/11 acceptable racism in this country. It’s when we started realizing that we needed to stand together.
A piece I wrote on racial minorities is up at Goatmilk.