Week 1---Yiwen Bao

Yiwen Bao

ASA 002 A01

Week 1

The beginning of the reading impressed me a lot. I started with low mood reading it and hardly ever came back to feel comfortable later. The discriminations professor Valverde experienced were so heavy and last for so long. I felt most upset when reading that one and one seemingly kind and helpful person coming to Valverde’s life but were all different inside. I believe those person who let you see hope and courage first and then lose all can make you feel way more lonely, grieved and distressing than persons who attack you from the first time. 

In the reading, the high-level university administrators are introduced as businessmen without a background in education. Many universities are built up like commercial institutions now. That’s the point I agree and could feel it’s true the most because of my own experience. The rising tuition for us international students exactly matches the descriptions in the reading, making me feel like university is making financial profits from us and we have no choice. My family has to pay these high tuitions cause I need to continue my academia. I have to buy those high-cost textbooks, materials……We’re never informed about reasons for tuitions to rise. Those let us down a lot. But before reading this, I knew little about those dark sides of university administrations. Whenever hearing an institution run for many years, famous in the world, and is about education and academic, I would never relate it so much to those shady stuff, but now I have to rebuild my thoughts and beliefs. And I think this is the one way author succeed in raising awareness of discrimination issues discussed in text. Taking other courses, I might never have chance to know about these truths, but silently studying for four years until graduation.

Another sad point is that, academic and psychological bully are way more cryptic and hard to define and be observed than those physical ones. You have to take much efforts to speak out, and even make others to believe you in what you experienced. Like your experience of being bullied by the feminist scholar in Asian American Studies Department, those bullies are mostly indirect. Feeling afraid, mad, isolated but lonely and hard to seek for help should be very afflicted and lacerate. If a single person’s ability is limited, do women of color have to choose tribes and build alliances with others? But choosing the tribe is also a big challenge and risk. In the reading, Valverde has showed to us how people in Ethnic Studies Department and Asian American Studies Department targeted negatively on her. So where can women of color who are experiencing discriminations find sense of safety? 

Questions: (1) In part three of the reading, actions of making alliances and finding members to fight with you together are called to fight the tower, but how specifically can women of color find refuge, salvation, departments and tribes? In universities, I didn’t see much information about those being advertised. And what can we do to lower the chances of being indirectly attacked and targeted inside departments? What can those groups help and how can them become stronger and help fight for rights more effectively?  (2) Women of color like the author experienced much discriminations in life and already made lots of efforts fighting the tower. Then how would they feel and think when some of women of color who also faced injustice don’t have hope, courage or trust in their ability to talk aloud about their stories and fight for rights? Would you feel upset, annoyed, lonely, understandable about their feelings or disapproving on their actions? Would these situations let you down in fighting the tower or feel more urgent and responsible?

References:

1. Valverde, K., (2013). “Fight the Tower”: A Call to Action for Women in Academia, 12(2), 367-419. Retrieved September 30, 2017.

2. Lee, C., (n.d.). Asian Americans for Equality. Retrieved October 1, 2017 from 

http://www.aafe.org/who-we-are/our-history