Microaggressions & the New Asian Peril

My last post reminded me of a recent Boston Globe article that my journalism teacher suggested I look at. It's about a nation-wide resurgence of subtle racism across college campuses, which an assistant professor at Simmons College termed "microaggressions":

Campuses mobilize events around clearly offensive incidents. But Asian, Latino, and black students often suffer from "microagressions" says Graves: "subtle, almost unintentional indignities students of color have to face every day that are hard for them to deal with."

One example Graves gives is of professors who call on African-American students whenever the classroom subject turns to black culture, something several black students at BC complained about. "You become the representative of all blackness," Graves says, "which is an unfair position to be in."

Microaggressions are also difficult to report....

Many white don't recognize that these challenges remain, says Graves, because they believe the civil-rights movement ended tensions. "A lot of things are looked at as jokes or pranks," says Ashley Edwards, 20, a black BC sophomore....

Grace Choi, a BC senior, says she and her friends don't go out on nights where there will be plenty of public drinking on campus to avoid the possibility getting called a racial slur. The college atmosphere makes her uneasy

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The article also mentions that nooses have been found at the University of Maryland, Cal State Fullerton, Purdue, and Columbia, and that there are campus "Crossing the Border" or "Ghetto" parties on listed on Facebook that show white students wearing blackface...

That's scary. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have grown up in a tolerant, diverse community in the San Francisco bay area, and how lucky I am to be in a similar environment in Cambridge. (In fact, there's a joke that UCLA stands for "University of Caucasians Living Among Asians" and that MIT stands for "Made in Taiwan".) Actually, though, some local Bostonians here have told me that the area isn't as liberal and open as others would think it is. Does anyone agree?

I also just remembered another interesting point Professor Tang made in that talk I attended: I asked him if the subtle forms of racism Asian Americans face today can be compared to the institutional racism that blacks faced after slavery was abolished, when things were ostensibly better, but in fact, discrimination just went underground.

Tang replied that it was similar, that although the "Yellow Peril" should've fallen away, there was a new "Asian Peril", the fear that Asians were taking the jobs and "out-whiting the whites". So, a new form of racism sets in at the moment Asian Americans are supposed to claim progress, he said.

That actually reminds me of the first (and only) overt brush with racism I've had. I was in junior high, biking back with my brother and his friend in the backstreets, when we saw three boys standing in the middle of the street. They didn't budge when we approached. Instead, they ran right in our path, forcing us to swerve and hit the sidewalk. Then they swore and yelled at us: “Chinks! Go back to your own country!”

Luckily, a neighbor came out and scolded them, letting us speed away.

Later, I asked my brother what "chink" meant, and he told me that it was a slang word for a Chinese person. I was shocked at the time, because I had never experienced rascism and prejudice before. It hurt me—and it made me realize that I was different. I asked my dad about it, and he said that it was perhaps because people blamed the Chinese for taking jobs from Americans.

For a while I became paranoid. Once, I bumped into a Caucasian man in a restaurant. And for some reason, I felt ashamed. Did he think I was a blundering foolish Chinese person?

I eventually got over it, and I don't really think about it too much in my daily life. But seeing the situation now and a few years back, with the Patriot Act and the current immigration debate, it remind me that people will always start despising what they do not understand and fear.

Prof. Tang, in fact, said that Asian Americans should especially pay attention to the current immigration policies, because we share the same history of inequality, exclusion, and eventual resistance. He has a good point...I myself haven't followed this issue in the news extensively, but I'm starting to think I should.