Week 10_Van Nguyen_A04

This week reading goes back to Asian American in academia, the very first topic that we encountered in the class. The article “Academics Awaken: Power, Resistance, and Being Woke” is about the unfairness of Asian American women in academia, the model minority concept that was put onto Asian American. Yet when Asian American experience any unfairness, they do not dare to speak up, afraid being ashamed, afraid of calling names, pointing fingers. However, it is crucial to be awaken at injustice racism that not only awaken to the injustice but to ourselves. Be awake at who we are, we need to know who we are, identify ourselves and should not allow or take in how other frame us into their identification of ourselves. A lot would not speak up because we think we are inferior in comparison to other races in the US since Asian American relatively has a shorter history in the United States and this led to inferiority of the people, do not dare to speak up due to both model minority and privileged oppressed. Yet we need to understand and realize that those two concepts do not mean good for us. They are obstacle preventing our people attain higher achievements. Asian American should not take things for granted but fight for the unfairness that we do not deserve, fight against the injustice that our people went through and prevent history repeating itself. But to do that, we need to be awakened at the reality of racism, that the last reading also mentioned that the US is in the post-racialism period, but it is not yet post-racism. We should fight for what we deserve or at least what we think we deserve to have. 

Valverde, C. Conclusion Academics Awaken: Power, Resistance, and being woke. Fight the Tower.