Week 5

Thao-Nhi “Jasmine” Vu

A02

Week 5: Imperial University

This week’s readings demonstrate that while education is the greatest weapon against oppression, this country’s education system is one of oppression’s biggest tools. Imperial University reminds us that bigotry often find itself footholds in academia For example, racial categorizing began first in academic works through the use of “savage” and “primitive” to frame people of color as inferior (Chatterjee, 14). The perpetual dehumanization of marginalized people in academic has contributed to desensitization of crimes and injustices against them (e.g., the alarming amount of black people killed at the hands of police, or the scores of deaths in the Middle East). We have stopped caring about them because we’ve been conditioned to do so. We see this in tragic action in the other article of the week: Darrell Hamamoto’s Empire of Death. In this, Hamamoto writes on the rising homicide rates since the Vietnam War (Hamamoto, 280) and the prevalence of veterans who turn to violence after their time abroad.

As Asians, we are one of the communities “othered” by imperialist teachings — the “white man’s burden” in desperate need of a white savior. History paints us as victims waiting to be rescued by white men, when in reality they feed off of our vulnerability and drag us down. Empire of Death depicts the role of Asians in the thoughts and fantasies of white, male murderers: that is, subservient, easy victims, and, most importantly, unwanted. Serial killers have long targeted Asian Americans on the fringes of societies; the power over vulnerable groups is too strong a temptation. Likewise, mass murderers also kill Asians for power, albeit different reasons. These men channel their frustrations and uselessness into exterminating those they consider even more beneath them.

Who taught them these things? Whose fault was it for the deaths of so many Southeast Asian men, women, and children? The education of a militarized, imperial America has made it okay to lack humanity for these people — because they do not see us as people.

QUESTION: How do we prove our humanity? We do not look like them so they will not empathize; is the "model minority" we've been granted the closest we can get to being humanized?

Even as they rescue us, we are still pastiches and stereotypes.

Gillam, V. (1889, April 1). The White Man's Burden (comic). Judge Magazine.

References

Chatterjee, P., & Maira, S. (2014). Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hamamoto, D. Y. (2003). Empire of death and the plague of civil violence. In Boggs, C. (Ed.), Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire (pp. 272-296). New York, New York: Routledge.