Week 8 — Jennifer Zhang

Jennifer Zhang
SID# 914019640
ASA 002 / A03

What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice

In Mark Tseng Putterman's "What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice," he discusses the role of Asian Americans in political movements for social activism on college campuses. Putterman addresses the roles of, or, rather, the lack thereof, Asian American students—he mentions that larger, more popularized movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement often take up a lot of the country's attention and pushes Asian Americans to the side. Reading both the article and other students' submissions about their thoughts on the topic, I was bemused but also amused. A common theme between the article and student views were that Asian Americans were not "politically and socially active" enough compared to other groups of color. I found this to be very interesting because my group had originally pitched our SAPSA topic as a focus on Asian American students' role in student activism, starting with the seemingly true fact that Asian American students to not partake in campus politics as other minorities and ethnic groups. I thought this would be a good topic that would surely not be challenged because I had done a good amount of research on campus politics and student activism, and wherever I looked (online), there were never articles that focused on Asian Americans, and, when there were, they mainly talked about the root reasons of why Asian Americans prefer to be unparticipative in politics. I used to have the same viewpoint, until I realized that Asian Americans were not politically inactive or indifferent per se, but the movements that take place in the Asian American community are often swept under the rug because they are seen as less worthy, either of attention or recognition and acknowledgment. We should be digging into why Asian American student activism is seen this way and stereotyped as nonexistent, rather than analyzing the "reasoning behind why Asian people are more collective rather than individual," "prefer to stay out of other people's business," or "politically unsympathetic to other communities of color." 

Asian American political movements have always existed, they were just never given the same amount of recognition.

Q: Why is it that Asian Americans don't get enough coverage on their political activism? What are some ways we can fix this?

Works Cited:

Reappropriate. (2014). [Image of Asian American protest against police brutality in 1970s]. Retrieved from http://reappropriate.co/2014/01/10-examples-of-aapis-rich-history-of-resistance/

Putterman, M. T. (2016). What asian americans are bringing to campus movements for racial justice. Racial Files.