This thread reminds me of the time when a Han friend of mine from Xinjiang realized that she grew up in a place where the ethnoracial dynamics were similar to the Jim Crow South. It was sad for her to have to rethink everything, and start an ongoing project of decolonization. https://twitter.com/Yang_Aotearoa/status/1288126640325685255

That same process is clearly being resisted here. Instead the writer just appears to be sad that the Xinjiang he loves is being exposed as a space founded on the ongoing institutionalized violence toward Uyghurs and Kazakhs. That exposure is making him take a position.

My friend told me that the way this became clear to her was through conversations she had with a friend from India about his caste-privilege and the way he connected that to structural racism in the US.

Yet, despite taking up this position my friend was not able to publish her work, because she worried about what would happen to her parents back in Xinjiang if she did.