Pause

This week is going to be ridiculously busy, so I might be quiet for a while.

Tues: Chinese Final Exam
Wed: Chinese Oral Presentation
Thurs: EC 11 Final Exam, EC 60 Midterm which will be a final if I get a B
Fri: First Draft of PS 128 paper due. 0/10 pages currently written.

Only upside to all of this is I'll be pretty much done by the time Ludacris gets here for Spring Fling!

Today was rather good in a productive way. Ate a damn lot, lit a candle for my brother Lorenzo's birthday, got home to find that the Celtics won on a Jesus Shuttlesworth buzzer beater. Even got to master the kettlebell snatch with my 53 lb chunk when I got back home. Some kids were at the entrance of Metcalf selling brownies and I got some for a nightcap. Productive day, I'd call it well spent. If the rest of this week goes as well, I'll be happy. Congratulations also to all my friends who went to the marathon! It continues to be a dream for me and my muscle anxiety.

I believe in miracles.

Towards True Constructive Discourse

The following is a copy of a letter that I sent to members of the Tufts administration. Certain names have been omitted for the purpose of privacy.

________________________________________________________

Dear all,

Earlier today, my friend sent you a letter in which she detailed how because of her speech and her history of activism at Tufts, she has received verbal personal attacks from anonymous members of the Tufts community. I will not reproduce those comments here because I trust that you at least read letters coming from your students, and you have seen them already. Even though the comments come from a few sources who have not been named, they have caused her and her friends great distress. Do you know what it's like to meet new people and have to think about whether this person already hates who you are?

When I read her letter today, it woke me to how real the harmful environment on campus is. I had tried to be thick-skinned. I took all the comments of "whiny", "bitchy", "crybaby minority", as well as the ones telling me and my friends to "shut the fuck up" about racism and bigotry as signals that yes, indeed, there were people at Tufts who were ignorant and who I had to reach out harder to. I took their attacks as attacks on the principles that I stood for, not as attacks on my person. However when she bravely attached her name to the words she wrote, she became the one target of attacks that named her as someone to be derided, ignored, demeaned, and not taken seriously. I had previously changed my name entry on facebook in anticipation of the backlash that could get personal. But seeing how personal it has gotten for her has, yes, made me fearful of coming out with my name to speak out on racism and bigotry and support my classmates. But I intend to anyway because despite my fear of retaliation upon my person, I want people to know that these harmful acts and this harmful environment are things that I, Anthony Cruz, do not approve of, and if they disagree I want them to tell it to my face.

As an administration, it is one thing to foster freedom of speech on a campus, but it smacks of irresponsibility to encourage speech among students and completely disavow ownership of the discourse that ensues. Of course you tell us all that racist, hateful, and violent speech are bad and that you care about the intellectual, physical, and emotional well-being of students on this campus. But these are all truisms that you have to tell us. I don't need to hear that you care about me or that you decry racial slurs. I need you to acknowledge that this is a problem that we students cannot fix by ourselves because in an important way, racism is a problem with all students, with the university, and even with you, members of the administration.

Which brings me to my next point. My parents have been extremely supportive of my efforts, and yet every time I show them a piece I wrote for my blog, the rally campaign or the Tufts Daily, they wonder about the toll it is taking on my schoolwork and the time I should spend studying. And you know what? It does take time that I would have spent studying. But as a person I cannot spend my time studying when I know that I can and should be doing the right thing. I should not have to be telling my classmates that racism still exists, that it is much more than a problem of individual racists and that we should all actively stand together against it. Believe it or not, despite Tufts' rigorous standards for admission, there are still people I have to explain these things to. But I shouldn't have to explain it to them. That is YOUR job. If you tell me and students like me that my views are important and that you completely support them, why is it I that has to defend them over and over and over again before people that you have conceded are misinformed and misguided about the problem of racism? I want to believe that you are not likewise misguided, and that you truly support the cause that me and my friends are fighting for, but we really need much more help than we're currently getting. I should not have to be taking time to write this letter, but I do anyway. I really have no choice because, unfortunately, unlike many other Asian Americans, my parents never taught me to "know my place."

This campus is not as divided as you may think. It is not black and white, or asian and white, or rich and poor or administration and students. When someone shouts death threats and racial slurs at my friends or derides my friend's character for speaking what she believes is right, it is a problem with all of us. These things happen because people think that they're the okay things to do, that no one will speak out in disapproval or that the consequences will not harm them. I tell you that this is exactly what people have in their minds when they do these things.

In a way, this letter comes from me alone and it is a mere drop in the bucket, and it will certainly not end racism by itself. But it is small for a very important reason. That is because in order to end or at least lessen the harmful power of bigotry and oppresion, it requires efforts from all of us, not just those of us who feel oppressed, but those of us who belong to the groups that hold power and privilege in this social system.

Truth be told, I'm new to this whole activism thing. Some of the people who have called me whiny are right about a few things - I'm still full of a lot of noise and anger. One thing you can count on is that I will continue to be noisy and angry until you and the administration finally take ownership of the harmful environment on this campus and take steps towards fixing it. In fact, I am adding all these email addresses to a mailing list of mine now, just so I can send emails to all of you with ease in the future. If you mark me as spam, I will find some other way to reach you.

I'm told by my more cynical classmates that I'm going to have to learn to not get responses from people in positions of power. I frankly don't care whether you write me back personally or not. You are all busy people and there are many things that require your attention. I just hope that the well-being of your students becomes one of those things someday.

Best,
Anthony

Generation

Today is the second day of Telescope weekend at Tufts. Telescope is officially described as a "program for students of color, first generation college students, students from rural or low income areas, and other students interested in diversity." In practice, it's where high school seniors who have already been admitted to Tufts get to come to the University to visit and have the time of their lives going apeshit as college freshmen are wont to do. I didn't have the luxury of going on Telescope, but friends of mine tell stories of both incredible fun and incredible stupidity, as if they were thrust into college at a time when they really weren't ready for it yet. Bah, who is, really?

I was having lunch in the campus center when someone who looked to me like a middle-aged dad approached me and stuck his hand out. "Excuse me, could I have a few minutes of your time?" said the man. From yesterday I've had random people going up to me and congratulating me on the rally and it's just been awesome to have so many people supporting us. I thought he was another one of them, but to my surprise, he was in fact Bruce, a middle-aged father of a girl going on Telescope. Since he mentioned later in our conversation was Jewish and from Philly, I'm guessing his daughter was one of the "other students interested in diversity."

Bruce had picked up a copy of the Tufts Daily and read about our rally. He asked me if there really were a lot of hate crimes going on at Tufts. I hesitated at first, thinking that I was just about to paint a picture of my school to someone who had no impression of it. He told me once again that his daughter had already decided to come, so I could be honest. I breathed a sigh of relief.

What I appreciated from this conversation was that despite Tufts' efforts to bury what happened in terms like "bias incident", even a complete outsider like Bruce realized that the details of the incident pointed to it possibly being a hate crime. Just let me know that people even outside the university are concerned with how we are doing.

After he left, though, I thought about why I assumed he was a dad off the bat, but yet I wondered why, of the around twenty people in Hotung Cafe at the time, he approached me. He had no knowing that I was one of the rally organizers. He in all likelihood assumed that since the rally was in response to an incident involving Asian Americans, an Asian must know about the true situation involving hate crimes on campus. Not calling him racist, but at least even he realized that the best person to ask about racism is someone who belongs to the targeted group. Some people don't get even that.

Also, been reading a lot of Allan Johnson's stuff recently - I know you're reading this Kip, would highly recommend him for debaters (If you still coach high schoolers that is :) ). He's a good intro to talking about sociology in a scholarly manner. If you can't find his books, his site collects many of his essays.

Sanctuary

I had a conversation with a friend last night about what my goals in doing all this rallying, activism, and being angry. Truth is, for a long time I wasn't sure of the best way to articulate them. It's not ultimately to make America as a country better, this is not my country and I have another one to worry about. It's not out of whining about Asian victimhood or some twisted sense of Asian supremacy. And it's certainly not out of some desire to make myself look better or get a writing portfolio going - but if that happens, that's ancillary of course.

The same friend seemed to doubt how realistic the declared goals of the rally and the activism were. Solving racism? "bullshit." Making Tufts a safe haven? "bullshit." Something like it not being possible so we should stop trying for that.

I felt angry and offended by his statements, but also seriously challenged. Because truth is, I don't think it's unrealistic or unreasonable to ask Tufts, the administration and the students, to make our physical and intellectual space a safe haven. It's not too much to ask that when people go here their presence here will not be questioned or attacked on account of their race, sexuality, religion, or socioeconomic class. It's not too much to ask that students be greeted by other students with open-mindedness and curiosity, not ignorance and bigotry. It's not too much to ask that the administration stop sweeping hate crimes under the rug with the sugar-coated shell of "bias incident." A bias incident implies held racist beliefs of an individual. Any sociologist will tell you that when it comes to talking about racism, individualistic models always fail. Racism is ingrained in how social systems work, how people are raised to behave in these social systems, and how the paths of least resistance in these social systems lead to oppression by privileged groups towards unprivileged ones. At Tufts, no one in the administration acknowledges that privilege still continues to create an environment that ignores the struggles undergone by students who do not belong to the dominant majority, resulting in the perpetuation and compounding of their pain.

Because when you think about it, the student who spat on my friends, told them to go back to China, and threatened to physically injure and kill them received more protection from the university than my friends did. In the real world, if he pulled shit like that he would have been put in a hospital. That didn't happen in part because at Tufts there is a police department that patrols everything, and no one would have been able to beat him half-dead and leave the scene scot-free, which isn't to say that my friends would have beat him up otherwise. Tufts ostensibly claims to value the emotional and intellectual well-being of its students, and it claims to value protecting its students from hateful attacks. In this case, it failed. They didn't just fail in preventing the attack from happening. They failed in properly recognizing the attack perpetrated and they fail in creating solutions that properly address it.

Someone else asked me why I care so much, why I haven't just learned to tolerate it and know my place like most Asian Americans. I guess it's a funny product of the fact that I myself belonged to a very privileged class in my own country and the fact that I never really had an experience with oppression on the level that Asian Americans face in this country. I guess I'm not so good at bearing it, and I still cannot comprehend "knowing my place."

I must add however, a positive note. Despite the fact that I have met so many people who in their ignorance deride not just me or my views, but my sense of justice, I have met so many more who support me and believe the same things and tell me to keep writing and keep fighting. For all the haters, I have never felt so powerful in my life.

hasta la victoria siempre

In case some of you aren't already aware, I was on a committee that helped organize a rally at Tufts today. Back in high school, I never seriously figured myself becoming the noisy activist type. I always thought I'd go through college being thirsty all the time, just getting drunk and getting Tang (hahaha, wordplay!). In college for my first two years I spent more time dicking around than I'd like to admit. Even this year there were times when I'd find myself sitting around doing nothing and wondering about what I wanted to do. The past week has had me stressed, angry, tired, and confused for a lot of the time, but it also had me fired up, driven, vocal, and passionate. I think I've found an issue I can really relate to on this campus on a huge level. Studies are always a first priority, but I don't mind putting time into this fight because it's really gotten bigger than me and my Korean friends or even the rally. What comes of this struggle will impact Tufts heavily for years to come.

does my ass look big?

One of the real highlights of working on this whole thing was Professor Wu telling me that my "Thirsty Victims" article was "amazingly good" and that I should become a race relations lawyer. On the one hand I feel great because it's a compliment from the best person at Tufts to give it, and on the other hand I wonder what I would have decided to do had I heard that comment a year earlier. Anyway, what's done is done.

Ending this entry, I'd like to misquote Atty. Andrew Leong, who is currently helping the KSA members and their advocates out. He spoke at the rally and gave me the best take-home message for the whole thing:

"You know what? I'm Asian. I'm not Black, but I can be. I'm not Brown, but I can be. I'm not Gay, but I can be. Because when I sent the press release of this rally to my friends at the Massachusetts Black Lawyers' Association, I know that they are supporting me here. And so are all my other friends in the bar no matter what their ethnicities are. If we really want to learn how to solve racism, we have to learn how to be Asian, Black, Brown, Gay, Muslim, Christian, White, and everything else in order to stand together and face problems against all of us."

A Thirsty Victim

This is the OpEd I submitted to the Tufts Daily in response to this column by Will Ehrenfeld. Let the flaming begin.

_________________________________________________________

A Thirsty Victim
By Robert Siy

Before I begin, let me say that I have not taken Race in America with Jean Wu. I have never before college lived in America, I wouldn’t even say that I identify as Asian American. But as an Asian man living in America now, I share a part of the lived Asian American experience in the way that I am seen and perceived because of my appearance, and in the messages that I am sent by society and media as a half-Filipino, half-Chinese man living in the United States. It is from there, and my experience of racism in my own country, that I make my arguments.

On April 14th, 2009, The Daily published an article by Will Ehrenfeld in his regular column Stuff Tufts People Like entitled “Alleging Bias.” This, apparently, being something that Jumbos are fond of. Going off of the theme of his previous column where he elucidates the Tufts “thirst for victimhood”, what better way to quench that thirst than by crying big, white, racist wolf at every turn? Somehow it’s a mark of “uniqueness” and exoticism to belong to some marginalized group, and how better to express this uniqueness than by telling everyone how exotically victimized you are at every chance?

Disturbed as I was by some of Mr. Ehrenfeld’s remarks, I was able to keep my victimhood in my pants long enough to realize that Mr. Ehrenfeld, just as he says about the freshman who got in a “physical altercation” with the Korean Students Association, is in all likelihood misguided and misinformed. Terribly misguided and misinformed, but that isn’t his fault, and it’s not entirely the kid’s fault either. We pay Tufts $50,000 a year and the least they can do is not make us culturally insensitive reprobates.

Mr. Ehrenfeld seems confused about whether or not this is a “bias incident.” To be honest, I’m not sure if this is a bias incident either. The term (which was invented at Tufts and to my knowledge is only used as a classification at Tufts) is so vague and broad that it in itself does not do much to inform anyone about what the hell is going on.

I’ve got another term for you to think about, though. According to KSA’s accounts, the freshman started the physical violence, and no one, not even him, denies the fact that he called the students “chinks”, their dance “the gayest sh-t”, and told them all to “go back to China.” At any other school, the freshman wouldn’t be accused of a “bias incident.” He would be accused of a “hate crime.” It doesn’t matter whether or not he said the words before or after somebody got hit. If he used the word “gay” as an insult and “chink” with the intention of degrading someone, it’s hateful speech. It’s not like your brain only decides you have something against Asians minute you call them “a bunch of chinks.” That word was in his arsenal of obscenities as a golden bullet for the express purpose of hurting Asians. He used it, so he should be made to answer for the damage that it caused.

Yeah, it would be a whole different story if the kid were harassing a group like say, TDC. If he just mocked their dance and started a fight with them, Mr. Ehrenfeld is correct in arguing that it would not be a bias incident. He’d just be another dumb, drunk, and disorderly freshman if the dancers he harassed just happened to be heterosexual white students.

But what if, for example, the dancers were black? What if he called them “niggers” and told them to “go back to Africa”? I defy anyone to speak out like they do about this incident that such a case wouldn’t be called a hate crime.

And here’s where I disagree with Mr. Ehrenfeld. The issue here isn’t that Jumbos are running amok in fight clubs or that violence “has so pervaded our school” that violent conflict is hardly a big deal anymore. At least we have a proper task force to deal with violence – they’re called the police. The issue here is precisely racial insensitivity, and what is appalling to me was that it took a conflict involving physical violence to draw attention to something which many Tufts students have not spoken out on for fear of being labeled thirsty victims whining over something that isn’t a “big deal.” The power of racial slurs to hurt people is rooted in far more than one person’s ill intent. Words like “nigger” and “chink” carry with them memories of anger, hatred, and exclusion that will never be taken away. Just check your dictionaries and history books to see how for years and years these words were used in conjunction with violence to degrade, alienate, and destroy.

This pain is forever etched in the records of humanity – to forget the meanings of these words would be tantamount to denying the history and consciousness of entire peoples (Before anyone denies racism against Asian Americans, give a google to the tune of “Vincent Chin”). Racist and homophobic slurs work on a different level than ordinary “obscenities”, and this is why they are such a “big deal”: they degrade entire populations that people have been raised to take pride in belonging to. They foster division, intolerance, and fear for no reason other than differences in appearance and behavior. There is no one who belongs to a racial, sexual, or religious minority that has not once in their lives felt the pain associated with being unwanted for something they could not change about themselves. There is a problem here when students can use these words against other students and claim that they are no more hurtful than mere insults, and that they somehow can be excused in a drunken haze in the heat of the moment.

You can’t deny the hurtful power of words like “chink” and “nigger” any more than you can deny the Holocaust. Of course, if you want to deny the Holocaust, that is your right of free speech in this country and at this institution. But it is the right of victimhood-thirsting, bias-alleging, overly-PC Asian men like myself to call you out on your ignorance.

Robert Siy is a Junior majoring in International Relations.

NOTE: if the word “nigger” is censored, I requested that the daily append this paragraph:

“By the way, the fact that the Daily will print “chink” but won’t print the n-word should be telling.”

Until Proven Guilty

Really busy day today, but I just learned that the student accused in this bias incident is taking steps towards legal action. Against my friends whom he attacked, spit on, and degraded. Now he's saying he was the victim of a brutal beatdown by a gang of vindictive Koreans.

This just keeps getting better and better. The possibility that this kid can walk away without so much as a disciplinary scratch, well, isn't making me a happy camper at all.

UPDATE: I know what tonight's entry is going to be about. I feel bad in a way because I have met Mr. Ehrenfeld in person and he was kind and polite to me. I feel that those who are commenting on his article with remarks like "you make me ashamed to be at Tufts." are the ones who are truly blowing things out of proportion. But I feel that it is my duty as someone with a keyboard and an understanding of racism to make sure tha Mr. Ehrenfeld is called out on his errors and misguided assumptions.

If you're in Boston this Thursday, please come to this and show your support for the Asian American community and all those who are victims of discrimination and violence because of who they are.