Asian American Studies 2 : Week 10 - A01

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Week 10 - A01 - Jarrod Baniqued

Week 10 (10 March 2019)
Jarrod (Section 1)
What a rousing conclusion to a grueling marathon.
To paraphrase Ephesians 6:12, "We fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. We fight not just against the wicked rulers of the dark and low places, but the wicked servants of the light and high places." This has been the essence of ASA 2.
In the end, all this has been about Asian American students and faculty embracing their ancestral homelands' communitarianism and uniting to overturn the patriarchal and capitalistic practices in higher education. Asian American women in particular need to speak up and speak louder in promoting their causes in the higher education system. They (or if I may be so bold, we) need to remind ourselves constantly to "stay woke" to keep our minds fresh and open. (An aside: I should note that I have a few reservations about the term "woke" and its meaning. The character Jonathan Pie has some valid criticisms in his YouTube videos which I recommend checking out.)
The power of social engineering cannot be understated. Throughout this course so far, there have been many examples of this power being used for bad, to put it bluntly. But there has also been a chthonic reaction to this top-down, mechanistic way of thinking, the grassroots overgrowing the drafting table, so to speak.
I recently learned of efforts to create political movements and parties based on the ethos of hip hop culture in Germany and New York. I'll put the URLs below. While I don't associate myself with hip hop, I acknowledge that it is an influential vessel for Asian pro-democratic thought, as the end of the main video will show. When I read this, I noticed many, many parallels between the conclusion and hip hop culture, especially their potential for political change.
Questions: What is the future of the Fight the Tower movement as we move into a new decade? What should we do for its tenth anniversary?
Visual: "Hip Hop and Streaming", an episode of Netflix's Patriot Act, the first news satire hosted by an Asian American, Hasan Minhaj. Pay particular attention to his coverage of Thailand's youth movements: