Week 1

Thao-Nhi “Jasmine” Vu

A02

Week 1: Fight the Tower

Professor Valverde’s article, while already powerful in its own right, stuck out to me for one particular reason. In her article, Professor Valverde recalled a member of the faculty (also Asian-American), who out of personal vendetta made the academic environment hostile and threatening for our professor (Valverde, 2013, pg. 381). Her attacks on Professor Valverde, coupled with our professor’s observations of the Asian “hierarchy”, remind me that solidarity is not guaranteed, not even within our so-called safe spaces and sanctuaries. Despite the shared identity of women of color — and by extend Asian women — in academia, Professor Valverde could not easily reach solidarity with her fellow scholar. The poison of oppression is that it convinces those underneath it not to blame the oppressor. Rather, like Professor Valverde’s work environment, it convinces marginalized people that their enemies are each other. In order to succeed, you must find a way to delegitimize those around you. Even within social justice circles, you will find prejudices. We must be careful not to become aggressively black-and-white with our politics, lest we risk devaluing another's’ experiences simply because of differing views. There also exist prejudices between ethnicities. I understand that many of these attitudes, whether justified or not, have reason and historical basis; after all, it would be naive not to accept that Asia has done its fair share of damage with imperialism. However, these divisions keep us from properly mobilizing and actively working against white supremacy for the benefit of us all. Our oppressors want us to hate each other; so long as we are divided, they will remain on top. We cannot build up without supporting one another.

Q: A minor one, but in Professor Valverde’s hierarchy of Asians, why are South Asians and Filipinos grouped together? I had always considered Filipinos Southeast and also victims of American imperialism; what about them puts them at a higher rung than the rest of Southeast Asia?

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: a hand-drawn infographic depicting different interpretations of solidarity, with the prompt being "What does solidarity mean to you?". Examples include:

1. Joining for a common cause
2. Removing barriers
3. Linking global struggles.

References

Valverde, K. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12(2), 381.

StephaneM. (2016, November 4). Sharing & Caring. [Infographic depicting different interpretations of solidarity]. Retrieved from http://mindthetrain.eklablog.com/sharing-caring-a127358832