Week 8 - Nicholas Suen A01

In Mark Tseng Putterman’s article “What Asian Americans Are ringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice,” he discusses the role asian americans play in relation to other people of color in various movements for racial justice. One interesting point that Putterman brings up is the perception that Asian American students are detached from the political conversations, and are content with racial inequality or racist establishments. (2016) One mentality he discussed was one that I have found myself resonating with in the past, was the Asian American perspective on police brutality, in that the most popularized and publicized instances of police brutality are targeted toward Black students more often than Asian American students, therefore in the eyes of some, these types of issues do not concern Asian Americans. However this contributes to the growing disparity in the consideration of Asians as people of color. This article almost serves as a call to action for those inactive or disconnected from political involvement, to support solidarity with movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement in ways that do not attempt to shift the focus onto the particular issues of other groups.

I was very interested by the amount of collaboration between student organizers of the Brandeis’s Asian American students Association and the Brandeis Black Student Organization during the Ford Hall Sit - In. This is a clear example of collaboration in solidarity, in which the Asian American group supported the Black Student Organization without compounding on their demands during the sit in. The methodology of different groups supporting each other without the “What about us?” mentality is powerful, in that it allows people of color organizations to target their efforts and demands without competing with each other despite having the same overarching goals of equality.

(2017)

Questions: What is the most effective way for other ethnicities to support each other’s movements without shifting the focus to their own issues?

References

Joven, A. J. Reaching for Whiteness: Colorism and #BlackLivesMatter. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2017, from http://www.aamunite.org/blog/2016/10/20/reaching-for-whiteness-colorism-and-blacklivesmatter

Putterman, M. T. (2016, December 27). What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice. Retrieved November 12, 2017, from https://www.racefiles.com/2016/02/01/what-asian-americans-are-bringing-to-campus-movements-for-racial-justice/