Week 10 - Christopher Mai - A01

In “The Time to Fight is Now”: When Asian American Women in Academia Go Rogue, Professor Valverde and Professor Dariotis reframe the struggles of Asian American women in academia to analyze the ways university power and social structures have evolved through capitalist imperialist models to ultimately control intellectual discourse.

According to the “Never Tell Me the Odds” chapter, Asian American women make up only 3.55% of university faculty and have a 40% chance of receiving tenure versus a 92% chance for white males to receive tenure. In light of how these power structures have formed to reinforce the idea that the standard American intellectual is white, it really reminds me of the frustration I have with mainstream America that anyone who is not white, black, or latino is foreign, and that Asians among other foreign ethnicities are seen as something as far as aliens. This reminds me of the racist, ignorant comments that arose after Korean boy group B.T.S. won the Social Award at the Billboard Music Awards earlier this year. Numerous tweets such as “who even are these Asians” and “how did these asians wearing makeup beat ACTUAL FAMOUS PEOPLE” show how there’s a sizeable social cultural bubble in America that gives its inhabitants the idea that the American music industry contains only non-Asian artists, and that the only famous, successful artists are the ones they are familiar with. This idea certainly pervades academia as well, as we see from this article that the university is trying to construct the image of an American campus lead by intellectuals of Western descent. It feels like there is a driving force in America trying to create an image where only Western people stand on a platform of leadership and respect, followed by a diverse group of underlings, workers, and undergraduate scholars.

Question: Can we educate a widespread enough population so that future generations are aware of a culturally diverse America in all corporate and social levels of this capitalist society?

Media: BTS with popular American artists "The Chainsmokers" at the BMAs

Works Cited:

Valverde, C., & Dariotis, W. (2017). "The Time to Fight is Now": When Asian American Women in Academia Go Rogue. Retrieved June 4, 2017.

Y. (2017, May 22). Fans angered after BTS receive derogatory comments for their win at 'Billboard Music Awards' Retrieved June 04, 2017, from http://www.allkpop.com/article/2017/05/fans-angered-after-bts-receive-derogatory-comments-for-their-win-at-billboard-music-awards
[ENG SUB] [170521] 방탄소년단 (BTS) with CHAINSMOKERS @ 2017 Billboard Music Awards. (2017, May 21). Retrieved June 04, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jO4hMJ58-g