Week 8

Week 8
Don Elijah Atienza
A03


     While reading the article What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice by Mark Tseng Putterman, I took note of two particular topics. The article pointed out the topics of the presence of Asian Americans in racial justice protests and the contributions Asian Americans make to protests by other students of color, namely black students. This week's theme revolves around student activism and these topics reflect it in different ways. The first being the presence of Asian Americans in racial justice protests. The author referred to experiences of Asian American students in their universities. All of their experiences were common in that they felt that they did not belong there and that they did not feel safe. They felt that they were "just there to get a degree then leave." This mentality, I believe, is a direct result of how they were brought up. Any Asian American who says this confirms the model minority myth. I think this is why we do not see Asian Americans participating, let alone leading any type of social justice engagements. The other topic I noted was the link between protests of all students of color. There was an event in the article that stood out to me. In summary, it dealt with the Asian American students and the black students of Northwestern University. By coincidence, both organizations put out demands for their respective departments. The beginning of this article described conflict between these two groups, but in this section the students realized that they had similar goals and decided to stand in solidarity together. Conflicts like the one described in the beginning of the article, I believe, does not make any sense. We students of color are all fighting for similar things, why not work together to attain that?

Question: What plans of action can we students of color take to obtain the rights we deserve?

References:

Putterman, M. (2016). What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice.

[Digital image]. (2016, February). Retrieved May 21, 2017, from http://www.densho.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Black-Lives-Matter-Friday-1356.jpg