In light of recent events at Yale, campus-wide discussions on race and its implications to students have been at the forefront of campus life. This article will hopefully clarify the responsibilities of all students, and particularly of Asian Americans, to create a safer space for students of color at Yale.
Before fully reading this article, I urge all of you, regardless of where you stand in this ongoing conversation, whether you are at Yale or not, to take a few minutes to listen to people of color and hear what they have to say. Read Facebook posts, grab a meal with your friends of color, or come out to one of the many events for discussing these issues. And when I say listen, I mean just that: listen. Come with an open mind and not with intent to argue or motivate, but just to listen.
This article would be much too long if it explained every reason why students of color are uncomfortable at Yale. For the sake of brevity, I shall highlight one, which stems from Erika Christakis’s response to an email sent out to all Yale College students from the Intercultural Affairs Committee, calling for sensitivity and respect regarding Halloween behaviors and attire. Christakis’s response called for an upholding of free speech and a reflection “on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.” Christakis remarks that “free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society” but free speech was never part of the question. The experiences of people of color and their pain are not a question of free speech. No one is denying Erika Christakis her right to free speech; what people of color are upset about is the insensitivity and condoning of cultural appropriation that inherently comes from a rebuttal of an email calling simply for respect. The question at hand, then, is not of free speech and censorship, but of respect. I hope that by now we all agree on that point, so let’s move on.
In response to this event and other racially charged events on campus, people of color have spoken out; they have shared their experiences in protests on Old Campus, in discussions at the African American Cultural Center, and in intense conversations with the administration. It would be an injustice for me to describe or paraphrase the experiences of the people of color that I have heard, so I will not. This article is not intended to add to the growing list of grievances against a racist Yale. I say this because I am an Asian American, and I am a person of color but my minority group frequently receives the benefits of the same social system that presently suppresses the voices of Black, Latinx, Native brothers and sisters and other people of color. And those are the voices that must be heard right now because they are the voices of pain, and they are the voices of those who have been crying out so long for help but are only now being heard. Thus, while our histories of oppression certainly entitle us to a voice in current affairs, they cannot compare to the strife that, in particular, Black, Latinx, and Native persons experience in the present day as they have perpetually experienced for centuries. As Asian Americans, it is our responsibility, as a minority group that has recently benefited from the status quo, to elevate and amplify the voices of marginalized people of color without dominating them with our own.
The one thing that brings all of us – people of color – together is our shared history of marginalization in this country. It cannot be denied that we all have had experiences – be they internment, slavery, segregation, or Indian removal – of dismissal, rejection, and appropriation. We all know the pain of these experiences and we know fully well which of them survive to the present day. In this, we hold solidarity, which is why it is inexcusable for any historically marginalized group to comply with the system that perpetuates marginalization today. And we know that circumstances change. In particular, Asian Americans gradually obtained some of the privileges of assimilation and inclusion, but they were obtained with complicity and at the expense of other marginalized minority groups. When we excel, we perpetuate the myth of the “model minority” and this is toxic, because it upholds a standard and a definition by which marginalized minority groups can and should succeed. And by remaining silent, we as Asian Americans comply; we permit this standard onto our marginalized friends, whose distinct histories of marginalization and oppression may not offer the same opportunities for success.
And this is why it is so incredibly important for us to show our support and solidarity for our marginalized brothers and sisters. Because even if we benefit from the status quo, we tacitly expect other marginalized groups to do the same. And this is wrong; it perpetuates negative stereotypes both of Asian Americans as the model minority and of other marginalized people of color. Our silence is complicity and instead, we need to use our privilege – the one recently afforded to us by the same oppressive forces that act on marginalized people of color today – to amplify the voices of our marginalized friends.
