Qiyu Yang ASA002 A01 Week4

Week 4 Blog

Qiyu Yang

ASA002 A01

Professor Valverde

This week, I read the poem “Who Killed Soek-Fang Sim?” by W.P. first. I didn’t quite get what was happening at first, then I read the narrative version and I was shocked. In the story,Soek-Fang Sim was a Singaporean, people think she was a poor professor, was being mocked by her colleague for her accent, she got very low pay, and she died from breast cancer. And later, W.P. tells her story. She was also getting low pay, even she gets awards and never been absent for her work, she was being denied from promotion. She published 12 books or so, but when competing with a white male faculty who just published 1 article, she was being told “not good enough.”After her publication of the poem, more and more people stood up and fight, but it was exchanged by how many stories like Soek-Fang Sim? 

There were some data shown in the “Investigating Discrimination” by Jane and Mai, 92% of white male was approved in tenure promotion, and only 55% for white women, and minority women and man. I did not expect that both race and gender matters that much. Regarding the reaction that USC made with the charge of discrimination, they were ignoring students’ complaints, not answering the inquiries from media, and although they put some candidates back to reconsideration, but mostly there was not further tracking of that. How are these actions different from doing nothing? 

Refer to the “Killing Machine,” the author remembered what happened when she was still in school; faculty dies when fighting for tenure. Asian American often experience imposter syndrome that they were not worthy for their achievement. They have done a research related to the mental health of the Asian American in academy. With 2000 responders in 13 months, they found out 74.4% reported with physical issues and 48.1% with mental issues. I am thinking that is it possible that most of the Asian American academies with no issue are unlikely in completing this survey? And so, leads to these huge numbers?

References 

Ma, A. (2018, December 7). How the Asian American Backlash to Affirmative Action Went Viral. Retrieved from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/affirmative-action-wechat-asian-american-harvard/. 

Valverde, K. C. (2013). Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholar’s Resistance and Renewal in the Academy. Rutgers University Press