Week 8- Alice Kuang A01

Alice Kuang
Section A01
Week 8

This week's article, "What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice" definitely hit close to home, as a core part of organizing work is organizing our own communities and keeping ourselves accountable, especially in the racial justice aspect in addressing anti-black racism. As I have been a young community organizer in my community the past few years through Chinese Progressive Association’s Youth Movement of Justice Organizing (Youth MOJO), with a specific focus on empowering high school youth and the working class Chinese community. This allowed me to not only organize the working class, immigrant Chinese/Chinese American community, but also allowed me to participate in overall Asian American movement building efforts in the bay, and allowed me to be at the epicenter of the long, vibrant legacy of Asian American organizing efforts. 

Through the years, I've come to witness, study, and understand that many injustices affect us interpersonally and communally, as manifestations of systems of oppressions (like racism, colorism, White Supremacy, etc.), and that many narratives are valued more than others due to this. Due to misconceptions, erasure, and much more, much conflict is present amongst POC. 

Through the years, I've become aware that manifestations of oppressive systems like White Supremacy show up through anti-black racism, and as the overall segregation and hostility between POC groups, and even API groups. I grew up as a low income, first generation Chinese American in a Single Room Occupancy in Chinatown, where I developed an intense passion for the community and connection to my culture. However, like many immigrant communities and families, the Chinese community had its share of struggles, so through history, Chinatown developed into a bubble isolated from the rest of the world, and obscured me from seeing the world for how it truly was. As it was a bubble, I remember my parents telling me things that were results of mainstream American media, such as, “Stay away from black and brown people! They’ll only try to mug and/or injure you!” I didn’t know it then, but these were blatant results of systemic racism and colorism that kept people of color away and hostile towards one another. I realized that POC solidarity was needed more than ever for movement and change to happen--- break through those walls created by the systems and histories of oppression. 

By working with displacement, gentrification, evictions, and many more issues, I gained insight into the struggles that my family, and many other POC families faced, and that we were more similar than I had though. The histories of resistance show that Asian American liberation efforts have been on the backs of the Black liberation movement builders. Remembering this, and like the article states, it's imperative that we can continuously make this solidarity happen. This starts with keeping our API community accountable, organizing folks, and building solidarity in our own API community. 

Question: I've had the privilege of being able organize with API organizations/coalitions, where it's much easier to bring people together, raise Asian American consciousness, and directly address much more apparent issues. How do we bring this consciousness and urgency into college campuses, and work under the institution, especially for Asian Americans?

References: 

Putterman, M. T. (2016, February 1). What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice. Race files. Retrieved May 20, 2017.