Itsumi Nagakura - A04 - Week 5

Privileged Minorities 

One thing I always felt was hard to comprehend, is when those that are oppressed, oppress others. A recent example is Asians condoning the Chinese because of COVID-19. In relevance to "Precariously Positioned: Asian American Women Students' Negotiating Power in Academia", this was President Les Wong of SFSU. From the surname Wong, I immediately assumed he was Asian and felt uncomfortable. I looked him up on the internet and found several accusations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. On top of this, when Wong was asked if Zionists were welcome on the SFSU campus on the spring of 2017, he replied saying “I take each on their own merits. Am I comfortable opening up the gates to everyone? Gosh, of course not. I’m not the kind of guy who gets into absolutes like that.”(Gloster, 2018) I wondered, how a minority, a person of colour, could be so ignorant. But then I realised that I was also "conditioned", in a way, to pity myself and those that looked like me because we are considered minorities; when in fact there are alternative aspects of privilege and oppression other than race. 

(Ebbitt, 2015)

"Looking at President Wong on February 25, I had realized that, while he was a leader and a role model of what an Asian American can achieve, he also represented the epitome of everything from which I was trying to break free: the patriarchal force that influences me to be quiet, passive, and obedient."(Valverde, Part 3: Section 4) Patriarchy is still a very prominent thing, especially in Asian culture. Because Wong is a man, and my assumption is his father was Chinese because of his surname, I again assume that he was raised in a patriarchic household. This is all assumption but is very likely to be true based on my own experience growing up in a Chinese immigrant household in Malaysia. When people have privilege, they hold on to it because why not? It gives them an advantage over others. When they have this advantage it is very hard to imagine the difficulties like how it is hard for children to understand the hardships of earning money when they never had a job. Privilege and power strongly affect people in a way they don't even notice. Wong was most likely educated being the president of a university. So I wonder, if education fails to "enlighten" us to the apparent disparity, what will?

Works Cited

Gloster, R., & Gloster, R. G. R. (2018, October 22). Les Wong exit interview: wishes he had been 'more prepared'. Retrieved from https://www.jweekly.com/2018/10/22/sfsu-president-retires-wishes-he-was-more-prepared-for-jewish-muslim-issues/

Ebbitt, K. (2015, February 27). Why it's important to think about privilege - and why it's hard. Retrieved from https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/why-its-important-to-think-about-privilege-and-why/

Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. (Kindle Version)