Week 1

George Welly 

A01

Fight the Tower describes Dr. Valverde’s personal struggle within academe due to the discriminatory practices committed within the institution. Dr. Valverde's case is particularly unique—being a mother, woman, Vietnamese American, mentally ill, as well a refugee. A cacophony of minorities is present within Dr. Valverde and each aspect was torn down and denigrated upon her surroundings within the work environment. Within her article, Dr. Valverde manifests the discrimination placed upon Asian Americans. Despite having attributes and skills that over qualifies that of the system, the system has placed many obstacles in front of Dr. Valverde.  However what was truly interesting is that there was not only presence of discrimination upon Asian Americans, but within the Asian American community itself. This preconceived caste system quintessentially imposes superiority among ethnicities where people group as one race. Those of east asian backgrounds are seen in a higher light than smaller asian minorities coming from south and southeast Asia. This situation is only occurring because those of south and southeast asian backgrounds usually come from lower income backgrounds. Rather than fighting against one another, Asian Americans  should stand up together as one and support one another and fight this so called tower. Cooperation is necessary for change and Dr. Valverde stresses, “The truth is we are not alone; we can win. But, we still have yet to come together as a collective to demand our rights. What follows is an ever- evolving list of suggestions on how to start thinking about individual action and strategies towards positive, collective change.” (Valverde, 2013). Through Dr. Valverde’s words, it is important for the minority individual to realize that a group effort and action is the key to stirring change within the academe. If people continue to remain silent and do nothing, I truly agree that nothing will change and all will remain the same. On a final note, I personally respect Dr. Valverde’s constant persistence and will to change the norm and I find that this article indefinitely stirs the readers. Her story teaches us that we have all have voice and that we simply just need to use what we already have. 

Q: We know that Asian Americans must use their voices and stand together, but how exactly should Asian Americans fight with their voice to excite change in the system?

References:

Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline (2013) "Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia," Seattle Journal for Social Justice: Vol. 12 : Iss. 2 , Article 5. 

Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol12/iss2/5

Welcome to Stand Up Life(2.0). (2015). Retrieved April 4, 2017, from astanduplife.org

week 1

Anna De Villa

A03

Week 1

I was honestly shocked when I read Dr. Valverde’s account of her journey to gain tenure. I knew from the start that Asian Americans were discriminated in multiple fields, but all that she went through, from stress-induced health complications to discrimination from other Asian Americans, was unfortunate to hear about. Oddly enough, while it was quite disheartening to see people who I thought would be on her side, I did not find it completely out of the ordinary. Based on my experiences growing up in the Philippines, and then moving to a mixed community in the United States, it was not unexpected for different races to form biases against each other. Even in communities that promoted equality, the students divided themselves based on race or idolized other races. When she mentioned the inferiority she felt toward East Asians I understood that feeling of bias. Even in my own country, there is a bias against actual natives and that favors more foreign looking, or paler people. I have also often been told that Asians get the “good” stereotypes, and are less discriminated against than other races, but they just build up expectations that add more racism and opposition against Asians. Dr. Valverde’s experiences echo this sort of damaging mentality.  

Question: Do you think the concept of dominant races within the Asian community stem from different cultures or from past colonization?

References:

Akana, A. (2016, Jan 21). Am I White Washed?. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTPbrWsLUcg

Valverde, K. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. Seattle Journal of Social Justice. 12(2). 367-419.

I thought of this video and white washing in general when I read about the racial bias formed against Dr. Valverde.

Week 1

Joshua Omoletski

Section 3

When I came to UC Davis, I had expected the university to be a place where diversity was present, welcome and celebrated as well as social injustices being absent and frowned upon. I’ll admit, Davis is a very diverse campus, yet there are still moieties of social injustice present. Throughout my entire college life, I have been lucky enough to not experience any such injustice due to my outward appearance as a white male (despite being half Chinese). However, two of my friends have not been as lucky.

Both of them are female asian american students. One had her repeated opposition to giving consent belittled and ignored at a party purely because she’d appeared to just be “another drunk girl who couldn’t think clearly”. Luckily, her party buddy had managed to get her out of the situation. My other friend was not necessarily subjected to such a dangerous situation, but she was/is experiencing Imposter Syndrome.¹ She tells me continuously how she feels like everything she did leading up to college wasn’t good enough and that she doesn’t deserve to be enrolled here. I also recently found out that she cut off ties with some of her male friends because they would call her their abg².

Reading Fight the Tower reminded me of the injustices my aforementioned female friends have had to endure. Purely because of their gender and race, my friends were subjected to sexual objectivism by male peers as well as self-doubt as a result of sexism rooted within themselves. These everyday hardships are all the more perplexing since this is UC Davis, a university celebrated for its diverse population and widespread acceptance of all cultures. I was baffled by Prof. Valverde’s article of what she had to face when dealing with members of an entire department of faculty. You would think such unfair judgment would be absent in a professional environment; however that was quickly proven wrong using Prof. Valverde’s application for tenure and the following appeal process as examples. Universities should be a place of equal opportunity and unbiased evaluation.

 3

This video is a clip from Family Guy depicting a group of Thai girls as objects of sexual pleasure. I realize this is a comedy show and everything is just meant to make you laugh, but more than likely there has been someone who has watched this and thought that this is actually how you should treat asian/asian american women.

Question: Professor Valverde, after you received your tenure did your peers continue to harass you and mistreat you?

References:

1. Valverde, K. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12 (2), 377

2. “Lolzercopterzallday”. (2009, February 7). Top Definition: ABG. Retrieved from ^{http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ABG}

3. “Magnus Adrian”. (2016, March 21). Family Guy Quagmire’s Thai girls. Retrieved from ^{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awRhB270znA}

Week 1

Thao-Nhi “Jasmine” Vu

A02

Week 1: Fight the Tower

Professor Valverde’s article, while already powerful in its own right, stuck out to me for one particular reason. In her article, Professor Valverde recalled a member of the faculty (also Asian-American), who out of personal vendetta made the academic environment hostile and threatening for our professor (Valverde, 2013, pg. 381). Her attacks on Professor Valverde, coupled with our professor’s observations of the Asian “hierarchy”, remind me that solidarity is not guaranteed, not even within our so-called safe spaces and sanctuaries. Despite the shared identity of women of color — and by extend Asian women — in academia, Professor Valverde could not easily reach solidarity with her fellow scholar. The poison of oppression is that it convinces those underneath it not to blame the oppressor. Rather, like Professor Valverde’s work environment, it convinces marginalized people that their enemies are each other. In order to succeed, you must find a way to delegitimize those around you. Even within social justice circles, you will find prejudices. We must be careful not to become aggressively black-and-white with our politics, lest we risk devaluing another's’ experiences simply because of differing views. There also exist prejudices between ethnicities. I understand that many of these attitudes, whether justified or not, have reason and historical basis; after all, it would be naive not to accept that Asia has done its fair share of damage with imperialism. However, these divisions keep us from properly mobilizing and actively working against white supremacy for the benefit of us all. Our oppressors want us to hate each other; so long as we are divided, they will remain on top. We cannot build up without supporting one another.

Q: A minor one, but in Professor Valverde’s hierarchy of Asians, why are South Asians and Filipinos grouped together? I had always considered Filipinos Southeast and also victims of American imperialism; what about them puts them at a higher rung than the rest of Southeast Asia?

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: a hand-drawn infographic depicting different interpretations of solidarity, with the prompt being "What does solidarity mean to you?". Examples include:

1. Joining for a common cause
2. Removing barriers
3. Linking global struggles.

References

Valverde, K. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12(2), 381.

StephaneM. (2016, November 4). Sharing & Caring. [Infographic depicting different interpretations of solidarity]. Retrieved from http://mindthetrain.eklablog.com/sharing-caring-a127358832

Week 1

Joanne Agus
Section: A01

Fight The Tower is a story about professor Valverde’s struggle in applying and getting tenure. Throughout her struggle she faced discrimination by both the institution and colleagues from the department, which caused stress and lead to a life-threatening miscarriage. She explained that discrimination within her working community applied to her in multiple aspects – being Vietnamese, mixed raced, mentally disabled, a woman, and a mother. Fortunately, I don’t think that I have been discriminated as an Indonesian international student at UC Davis because I feel like the community really celebrates diversity. Despite of that, I can see why professor Valverde’s experience would be prevalent amongst other women of colour in academia through my own experience. Growing up as an Indonesian with a Chinese background and a catholic religion placed me as a double minority in my Indonesian community. I felt oppressed and judged whenever I didn’t fully understand the common Muslim practices since religion is deeply engrained in our high school education, and that the majority of Indonesians are Muslims. Although most of them may seem like trivial microagressions, I truly believe that this normalizes the idea of discrimination against minorities. As mentioned in the article, these microagressions are “difficult to prove and taken seriously" (Valverde, 2013). Evidently, these microagressions developed into a normalized discrimination that applies to acceptance rate of student’s application to higher education. In a way, without people voicing their opinions about it, we have accepted the idea that “it’s just how it is” and that “it’s better to lay low than to make yourself standout and be attacked by the society”. This also means that the community that I lived in before moving to Davis has normalized victim blaming against the minority. Professor Valverde’s article really empowered me to take strategic steps and voice my opinion to battle against discrimination especially in academia.

The poster bellow is an online advertisement of tutoring business that only accepts students who wears hijabs in Indonesia (Bintang Pelajar, 2013). 

1.     Valverde, K. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12(2), 5. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol12/iss2/5

2.     Bintang Pelajar. (2013). [Website poster advertisement for a tutoring business]. GHL Mahasiswa. Retrieved from http://karir.bintangpelajar.com/2013/03/13/fusce-nec-odio-elit-in-interdum-velit/

Q: What causes the believe of a "dominant race" within the asian american community? (pg. 390, Section H. Class Bias)

Week 1

Gabriel Cenizal
Section: A01

This week's reading exemplified the nature of how unemphasized identities are seen at the institutional level. I find that Dr. Valverde's experiences reflect how these identities (woman, person of color, minority, mental disability, Asian American, mother, etc.) are mistreated and unsupported and define the true amount of accessibility to resources you get toward your own success in academe. I was somewhat triggered because Dr. Valverde's experience with not being completely supported in her endeavors, leading to her physical and mental deterioration, was something I experienced myself. I find it completely valid to say that this is a prevalent issue in which we as people of color are not given the same resources and support to succeed as our white counterpart, and I agree that in order to take back our right to own our future would be to mobilize and verbalize the issues we face as students of color. After reading Dr. Valverde's narrative, I better acknowledged that personal impasses are not to be ashamed of; it drives change and inspires and motivates us into improving the system we learn from, as well as sets an example for individuals like us to do the same.

Orel, S. (2015, December 1). Why Empower Employees? Retrieved from brandconnections.com/why-empower-employees/

Question: Has anyone opened up to you about facing the same issues w/ tenure? What advice did you give them to overcome them?

Week 1

Caitlyn Minas
A03
Week 1:  Fight the Tower
April 3, 2017


I grew up in a community and attended schools where a majority of residents and students were people of color (POC).  That's why I naively felt that I was strong enough to handle racism either because I was constantly surrounded by open-minded individuals who, like me, knew the well-known stories about prejudice and civil rights but did not have our own stories to share.  Once I began college, however, I became exposed to vocabulary such as "institutional bias" and "Filipinx" that critique social norms hold everyone accountable for their words and actions.  Professor Valverde's inspiring story is a more personal example of why we should challenge the lingering discrimination and racial bias in academia – a field where young, bright scholars grew up believing that they can be unstoppable but quickly realize they will face adult bullies who kindle friendships only to backstab these maturing professionals later.  Additionally, we place less value on teachers today because we have turned academia into a competitive business, where teachers become more disposable and students in turn are discouraged from pursuing careers in a field with little or diminished opportunities to advance.  Although I may not choose to attend graduate school and conduct research in the future, I share the responsibility with my peers and teachers to foster an enriching learning environment that educates, inspires, and learns from each other that does not use race as an excuse to define our merit.



I could not find an engaging video related to Asian Americans in academia, but here is a news story of Fresh Off the Boat actress Constance Wu and how she advocates for better Asian representation in American media.

PopSugar Entertainment (2016, Jul 22).  Actor Constance Wu Is Tired of Hollywood's "Lazy Excuse" for Racism.  Retrieved 

          from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7VQmGmy-jM

Q:  Have you learned the true reasons for your tenure denial?  Did your colleagues admit to using racial bias as a factor?