thank you sister for these words. razor sharp expression of the nebula of thoughts in my mind about the political possibilities of Asian America.
I know I don’t really repost much on Tumblr, and rarely if ever bother to write something of my own, but I’ve been marinating on a few thoughts partly in response to (but long brewing beforehand) a recent API students town hall held on campus a few days ago. This in no way is meant to denigrate the hard work of the student organizers who put it together or to dismiss the real concerns voiced during this time, but rather I hope can re-pose a few questions that I voiced during that time which I felt were not engaged with in any significant way.
To summarize the motivations behind holding the town hall before getting into my thoughts— Asian American undergraduate activists on campus have been feeling alienated from the larger Asian American student body and (more significantly) other student of color organizers, and wanted a space to discuss why this is. A lot of different reasons were given (or talked around), but the key point of discussion was the general construction of Asian Americans on campus as “apolitical” and the way in which this discourse has been used to question the integrity of Asian American activists whose work is devalued, forgotten, or dismissed as ally work or logistical support rather than as central to student of color struggles on campus.
The feelings of hurt and anger by Asian Am activists aren’t new— a large part of this disaffection in current students stems from last year’s Compton Cookout incident and its aftermath— but recently came to a head at an apparently problematic student of color conference that took place at another university in the system. Important to note is that during both the Compton Cookout period and at this recent conference, nooses were hung anonymously in public places and were found by students of color; moreover, Asian American activist students felt upset that Black and Chicano students have been delegated (by the administration, faculty, other university powers-that-be, and each other) as “leaders” of the anti-racist movement on campus while Asian Americans have not.
Much of our time at this town hall was spent, then, on listening to each other’s shared anger and pain; frustrations with not being recognized as doing the work; annoyance at being repeatedly called upon to organize “the Asian American community” on campus; and a desire to “reclaim” Asian American identity as one based in political solidarity rather than as an essentialist identity marker of difference. Emotions were high, and the uncomfortable silence in the room between speaker’s comments never quite broke throughout the two-hour long session. Once it ended, I was left with a sense of frustration myself, though for very different reasons than those I heard voiced at the session. Here is a little bit of what I wished I could say to these students— many of whom I count as my friends— but couldn’t.
—-
Mga kasamas,
I hear you. I listen to the tremble in your voice, not knowing if you are holding back tears, a yell, a cry. I see your confusion, your pain, your feelings of helplessness and determination. You are tired. Tired of being ignored, tired of having your hard work marginalized, tired of being seen as an “ally” to the struggles of “real” people of color. I know you want to build community, that you have dreams and goals of achieving social justice. I hear you, I do. I feel many of those things, too. I only wonder, my friends, if you hear yourselves, really hear yourselves, at meetings like this. And if your feelings— as important, necessary, and real as they are— are preventing you from imagining something else, of working towards the liberation I know that you and I all want for ourselves and our communities.
This is not to say you should not be hurt, or angry, at the way you have been treated. Yes, the events in the past two years (and longer) have been difficult, and painful, and have made you question your friends, your purpose, your life. It is only to say that now that you are hurt, and angry, and frustrated, what do you do with that emotion? Where do you channel your time and your energies? If reclaiming API is a goal that you want for your community, how will that be worked towards— how will you build that community?We talk a lot about the power of discourse. We rail against the ways that Asian Americans have been constructed— on campus, in the US in general— as “model minorities” and pitted against other people of color. We know our history, and because of that we have a power that so many are denied access to. Even so, there seems to be an assumption that community just is, that we all know what it means, what it is based upon, and that it is already there, already in existence and just in need of being strengthened or “reclaimed”. This is a grave mistake, I fear, and one that unfortunately has let the work of building that community fall to the wayside, in lieu of a politics of emotion that has nowhere to be channeled but as critique, as misdirected anger at those we could and should be in community with.
Community, like “Asian American”, is produced as well, and there must be some clarity on how it is to be based— is the Asian American campus community you want to be based on a shared interest in social justice, on working against racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism in its many manifestations, against privatization of the university? Or is this radical Asian American community you envision based on the assertion that you (the collective and individual you) are just as oppressed as if not more oppressed thanthose other people of color— those Black, Chicano, Muslim students on campus who are taking all the credit for campus organizing to the detriment of Asian American students? I ask because, like you, I imagine a community based on the former (on social justice). I ask because, when I have sat with you in these conversations, in these town halls, in my office, in classrooms, I do not hear desires for the former but lamentations about the latter- I hear only discourses of injury, of a community based in being let down by everyone else, not a community based in building something different, something new that isn’t structured by hierarchies of difference and power which keep communities of color, queer communities, and other marginalized communities apart and fighting for the bread crumbs we are thrown by the state.
I hear you, I do. I know this is not what you mean when you speak. But I just need to ask: What does it do to us, to our “community,” when we are consumed by this need to prove ourselves as equally or more greatly oppressed than other communities of color, when we begin to talk of other student of color organizers as “privileged” and as trying to win “popularity contests”, when the very thing “they” are trying to win is access to the institutional structures which have kept all of us out of higher education for so long? When we claim the noose as our own, when we deny the fact of anti-black racism in order to further a more injured, more oppressed, Asian American subject position as our rallying cry? Moreover, in what realm of the “real world” (you know, that thing outside the miniscule spaces of racial and social justice which exist at the university not because of its inherent benevolence but because of its need to capitalize on “diversity” as a marketing strategy) would any of these students be considered as privileged as you accuse them of being? Are their life chances that much greater than yours— are their community’s incarceration rates lower? death by murder, poverty, disease less? ability to access the propertied markers of whiteness (home, “family,” employment) that much greater? Are they not as fucked by university, by the Real World, as you are? Are they not also the victims of restrictive immigration laws, the dissolution of the welfare state, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, as you are? Yes, did you say? If so, then why are they the primary source of your ire? Why are they the sole recipients of your anger, your pain? Why them, and not (to list a few)- the racist/sexist/homophobic nation-state? the corporations, banks, lenders? the prison industrial complex? the other arms of neoliberalism at work including, namely, the university? What would “reclaiming API” look like for this campus community if you organized around fighting these structural forces with, instead of organizing in contention to, other students of color?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but this much I know. “Asian American” as a political identity had, at its root, a desire to unite disparate Asian ethnic groups towards the common goal of multiracial, coalitionalsocial justice. To work towards liberation not only for or by Asian Americans, but for other Third World, Black, Latino/a, and Native peoples as well. “Asian American” was claimed by second-generation Asians in the US, (mostly college educated, mostly middle-class, many the children of the first wave of Asian immigrants who came not as professionals but as coolies, agricultural workers, and colonial charges) as a way of proclaiming one’s historical lineage and connection to the legacy of labor exploitation of, sexual violence against, and racial oppression of not only “Orientals” but also of other internally colonized populations of Black, Latino/a, Native and Third World peoples. Those activists knew that what was holding them back wasn’t the fault of those other people of color, who were pitted against them for jobs, housing, and other privileges at the whim of the state and dominant civil society; they saw the real, material violence that faced their comrades in struggle, like Fred Hampton (the 21-year-old Black Panther who, 41 years ago today, was gunned down as he slept by the FBI and the Chicago PD). These young (and old!) Asian Americans knew what their target was, and they knew they had to work out their own internal contradictions — with their conservative families and friends in their Asian ethnic communities; with the male leadership who were, at times, sexist and homophobic; with other communities of color; with white/straight/male allies— in order to build the movement for social justice. It was not easy, and the work was never completed. If we take anything from that generation of Asian American organizers, it is not only their accomplishments but also the burdens of the work they were unable to complete. The work is still ongoing. As long as these structural injustices exist, the work—all of it, including the exhausting emotional labor of building community, of educating allies, all of it— will never be done.
This is a lot, so I’ll end it soon (I promise), with a few more questions that I hope you take seriously, because I sure as hell do. As you “reclaim API”, what will you put your energies toward? How will you shore up your anger, your pain, your desires, you dreams and towards what ends? How will you, in short, do the work?
Your anger, your pain, your tears are real, but it is not enough to talk about it unless feeling like a more complete, individually fulfilled subject is your only goal. But for the “community”? Your anger, your pain, your tears are not enough to change anyone’s mind; to get what you want from the university; to be recognized for your labor (which, by the way, will never happen in a way that will satisfy you, if recognition is all you desire as a political ends). And it sure as hell isn’t enough to free a people, to create something new, to build another world. Is it enough for you?
