Week 10: Jasmine Vu

Thao-Nhi Vu

Section A02

Week 10: The Future of Higher Education

We conclude this quarter — and the school year — with The Time is Now, Professor Valverde and Professor Dariotis’s introduction to their upcoming work Fight The Tower. Since we started this course with the professor’s article, we’ve travelled through all the facets of what we — women of color as students and members of academia — face ahead of us: racism, a university unwilling to change, the burdens of our elders, and the beliefs we hold within and of ourselves. For women of color in academia, the climb up is a steep one, as demonstrated by Valverde’s Fight The Tower article from week 1. For Valverde, we saw a (mostly) happy ending: well-deserved tenure and a continued position on campus. However, what of the countless other women, who were silenced, removed, and eventually forgotten? We fight not only for our empowerment, but for their justice.

Something interesting that I found in the article was how they demonstrated that the university is a self-serving institution. It demands the care work and emotional labor of its students and academics, and in a sense is “race-blind” in that none of its constituents matter. However, it’s easier to scapegoat women of color, so we are the ones targeted most often by the university. They expect Asian women in particular to be silent, even complicit, in the continued oppression of us and our fellow academics of color.

They’re wrong.

Last week, Professor Valverde said that Asian anger is crucial to our activism. We are not “thought of” as angry, or aggressive, or even active. Our anger is a tool of change; it will be how we break through preconceived notions of our status and show that we are not content with being complacent. Our anger is a shield for our black and brown siblings, who are vilified and hurt for their rightful anger, a danger we will not face. Therefore, we must be angry. We must resist. Fight the Tower gives us many examples of resistance and victory. Now, it is time for us to create our own.

My question this week: What will we be capable of when we realize how powerful our anger is? How do we keep this anger from making our actions irrational?

Sources

Valverde, C., & Dariotis, W. (2017). "The Time to Fight is Now": When Asian American Women in Academia Go Rogue. Retrieved June 2, 2017.