Week1_Harry Kang_A01

At the beginning of our first lecture, professor Caroline Valverde showed us the video of the Pepper Spray incident happened several years ago right here at UC Davis. I was shocked not only by how brave and unswerving those students are, but more of it was the first time I feel that I was so close to such a brave protest action. In the society where I was born and raised, which is in China, we have been taught since very young to not resist unfairness but to adapt it. During watching the video, it was my first time to literarily feel and believe that sometimes we do need to, and more importantly we can protest the unfairness. There was even a moment I was so moved and wished I was there as one of them.

While reading The Time to Fight is Now: Asian American Women, Academia’s Socially Engineered “Privileged Oppressed,” Go Rogue by Professor Valverde, honestly the first thing that attracted me is actually the Star Wars style subtitles. Until I read her stories in the article, I’ve always believed after almost a century of “fighting,” Asian in America has really fit in the American society and with an equal status as any other races. This article totally changed my mind. Besides anger, I actually also felt a little pathetic when I first read the stories of Caroline. As Asians, although we have tried pretty hard to fit in this society, sometimes, even by giving up some of our own culture, we are still being “ignored”. However, people like professor Valverde keep proving to us by their own action and life stories that we, as Asian in America, deserve what all other races in American deserve. And if we don’t get what we deserve, we are going to fight for it! Just like jedi fighting sith.

Question: Many of my American teachers or professors tend to avoid topics relating to races, is that because we have laws here in college that restrict such type of conversation or they truly want to show respect to all races due to their higher education?

Valverde, K.L.C (2017) The Time to Fight is Now: Asian American Women, Academia’s Socially Engineered “Privileged Oppressed,” Go Rogue.

UNFAIR. (1954), Social Lion. Available at [Online]: https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/unfair