At Cornell, Asian and Asian Americans compose 20 percent of the undergraduate

At Cornell, Asian and Asian Americans compose 20 percent of the undergraduate student body. Our issues are often commented upon, but rarely is the perspective of an Asian American represented in the mainstream discourse. So what does it mean to be Asian American?

It means that you’re bi-cultural: both Asian and American, yet neither at the same time. In Asia, you’re American; in America, you’re Asian. You are also bi-cultural in the sense that you walk a fine line between being a person of color and being a token white.

It means that you’re a perpetual foreigner: It doesn’t matter that you were born here, or that English was your first language, or that your family has been in America for the past six generations — people see you and assume you’re a foreigner.

It means that you must be the same as the Asian next you and that you share the exact same identity and exact same problems: It doesn’t matter if, as a Southeast Asian, you are an underprivileged minority because all Asians are model minorities.

It means that because of the model minority myth, other people of color don’t always see you as a minority, and at times you question whether or not you’re a person of color because you’ve internalized the racism and social constructs. You forget the context in America and you forget the long history and future promises of discrimination. You forget the history of how and why the idea of a model minority was created — that the white patriarchy used the Asian American identity as a counter to the civil rights movement of your Black sisters and brothers in the 1960s.

It means that because you’ve internalized the racism and the stereotypes, you truly believe that you’re a curve-buster and that somehow because of your race you’re supposed to be academically superior to others. So when the time comes that you get a C- on a test, you don’t go and get help from a professor or TA because why would you need it? You’re Asian, you’re supposed to have academics covered. You also truly believe that Asian women are more subservient and submissive, and that Asian men are somehow effeminate, because that’s what you’ve seen and been told your entire life by society.

It means that in terms of compositional criteria for diversity, your identity is yanked around to serve the benefits of others. If we need to seem more diverse, we’ll count you as a minority. If we’re trying to obtain recognition for how we support our underprivileged minorities, we won’t count you because there’s too many of you. Asian Americans are left out of the conversation of diversity and minority issues unless it serves others to include us. Ultimately, the issues of Asian Americans are not addressed because it is never about what you need and what is fair to you; it is about how your identity best serves others.

It means that people assume you’re silent and then block your voice when you try to speak. Asian Americans, they never protest or anything, so why should we listen when they talk to us about the inequalities they face? At Cornell, there are signs that this is changing, and let us all work together to ensure that these signs become hard reality. Let us work together to ensure that the issues and concerns of 20 percent of the student body factor into the agendas and concerns of the Student Assembly and the administration.

Being Asian American has nothing to do with geographic lines or skin color or eye shape or any physical markers. Being Asian American has everything to do with the social structures that have been imposed upon us and the sociocultural expectations that are used to discriminate against us and marginalize us starting from the day we are born. Marginalization doesn’t happen by accident.

At Cornell, this marginalization takes many forms. It spans from the fact that Southeast Asians are not considered under-represented minorities and are therefore not actively recruited to Cornell, to the statistic that half of all completed suicides are by Asian and Asian Americans, to the sentiment of “Asian invasion” held by many students about the prominence of Asian and Asian Americans in the demographics of Cornell. Because of this, it is hard to feel welcomed at Cornell; it is hard to feel at home at Cornell.

To ameliorate the isolation, the Cornell Asian Pacific Islander Student Union hosts Asia Night every year, but Asia Night only temporarily provides a sense of community. Asia Night serves as a warm welcome and introduction to the deeper issues that the Asian and Asian American community face. It celebrates the diversity of the Asian and Asian American community, and I hope that the Cornell community uses it as an opportunity to begin exploring race relations and racism at Cornell. I hope that the community will begin exploring the Asian and Asian American perspective so that our issues are commented upon with our outlook in mind and so that room is given for us to voice our opinions and concerns.

http://www.cornellsun.com/section/opinion/content/2012/02/22/what-does-it-mean-be-asian-american