Jiayu Fang
ASA 002-A03
9/30/17
Professor Valverde's "'Fight the Tower': A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia” does not only fearlessly and powerfully told the audiences her own experiences, but also provides lots of solutions that help people with the same problem and tell them that they are not alone. To be honest, I never realized that women of color, or even women in general, are facing such a sad and severe situation, even among the highly-educated people in a well-known university. The discrimination and bully of women never really comes into my mind, or should I say, I never consider them as bullying under my own cultural background before I came studying abroad. I am an international student from China and people in my country, at least people from my high school, would say I am being too sensitive and cannot take any jokes if I feel uncomfortable or get mad at their words. I got so mad while reading about the department head still want professor Valverde to submit the grades, even though he knew that she just escaped from death. I think I can somehow understand why the department head did this to save his job from his boss and being selfish and heartless. However, I don’t see the reason why women, who give birth to all men on this planet, should be disrespected and not be understood. This situation especially happened on Asian American women since we are the minority (Asian American) of the minority (women). But Asian American women cannot be ignored and made up a significant part of the academia and the numbers are growing. Fortunately, I am so glad to see so many people with different roles in society are standing for minorities and actually cares about this social problem. On one hand, I wish all people can be united as one and be less discriminated based on people’s races and colors. However, on the other hand, if we treat every individual strictly equally, that would be another type of unfair, for example, to disabled people. How to balance discrimination and individual’s benefit?
References:
Valverde, K., (2013). “Fight the Tower”: A Call to Action for Women in Academia, 12(2), 367-419. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
Kingston, M. H.(1976), The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.
We accept so much bad behavior and treatment as normal. That's because we have come to accept our position as second class citizens or normalized discrimination. That has to stop!
ReplyDelete