Story highlights Jeff Yang: David Dao's public dragging from United flight is not an exception, but the new normal

While the incident shocked many Asian-Americans, among African-Americans, it was simply and tragically familiar

Jeff Yang is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a frequent contributor to radio shows including Public Radio International's "The Takeaway" and WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show." He is the co-author of "I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action" and editor of the graphic novel anthologies "Secret Identities" and "Shattered." The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) Imagine you're a 69-year-old physician -- a Vietnamese-American immigrant, traveling by air from Chicago to your Kentucky home.

Imagine that the flight you're on is overbooked, a consequence of decisions made by the carrier to pack its planes as tightly as possible in order to deliver maximum value to shareholders, even if in doing so it's providing minimum comfort for travelers.

Imagine that the airline decides four of its employees need seats to get to Louisville airport, and as a result, it must eject paying customers from the flight. Imagine if, failing to find volunteers, the airline selects random passengers to deplane instead, you included -- and that when you refuse, saying you have responsibilities to patients back home, you're physically yanked from your seat by security, slammed against an armrest, making you bleed, and dragged semiconscious down the aisle in full view of horrified passengers.

Here's the hard and honest truth about this ugly incident: It is not an exception, but the new normal. Dao's brutalization was shocking to many Asian-Americans, who set Twitter aflame with accusations that he was targeted because of his race. We don't know what might have happened if he had not been Asian-American.

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But America knows well the template for this treatment of "the other": Among African-Americans, the incident was simply and tragically familiar — an expression of the same state and corporate-endorsed violence that they have seen enacted against their community for generations.