race | STATIC

May 08 2013

Thoughts

On the Merit of Blurred Lines

by Surabhi Nirkhe, ’13

I am tired of discourse that divides brown from white, the oppressed from the oppressors, students of color from white students, and the underprivileged from the privileged. Tracing and retracing these lines prevents us from creating identities that are much more complex, often in the spaces where these lines blur.

In her recent STATIC article, Holly Fetter ended with a powerful statement that resonated with me: “unless we confront our fears and make active changes to educate ourselves about the perspectives and experiences of those in other communities, we’ll never be able to see past the illusion of isolation”. To me, the recent mixer held between Sanskriti, the South Asian student organization, and the Stanford Israel Alliance represents just that. I did not attend the mixer, but I have been a part of similar events at Stanford, and I can honestly say that experiences which have pushed me to interact with individuals from outside my community have been some of the most valuable.

I do not mean to say that I don’t hold opinions; I do and I hold on to them very strongly. Continue reading →

Tagged colonialism, diaspora, ethnicity, family, immigration, India, Israel, Janani Balasubramanian, nationality, oppression, Palestine, privilege, race, Sanskriti, Surabhi Nirkhe, Tel Aviv meets Bombay

May 03 2013

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Thoughts

On ‘Tel Aviv meets Bombay’ and South Asian Assimilation

by Janani, ’12

My migration story looks and feels like the migration story of many South Asian immigrants in the late 20^th century. My parents were upper-caste Hindus, who, through a combination of a casteist education system and enough money to attend school, became skilled in computer science and math. We landed first in Ohio, where they both secured IT jobs, and began their relatively short ascent into the American middle class. We moved from our formerly colonized country to become settlers on this other occupied land. Our brown bodies and the professional income they would eventually carry were also gentrifying neighborhoods.

Unlike many Black, Latino, and Native communities, my community did not face disproportionate levels of police brutality, incarceration, etc. Indeed, until 9/11, when folks from across the South Asian diaspora were persecuted as possible Muslim terrorists, I did not consider myself a target for racist state violence. My assimilation was easy. I was becoming a White lie packaged in a brown body. The expectation in my household was also clear: that I would get good grades, attend a good school, continue my family’s class ascent, and not challenge or question the racist attitudes of this nation.

This strategy of assimilation has its roots partly in colonization: it was often safer to collaborate with the British colonial government than to challenge its White supremacy. Continue reading →

Tagged colonialism, colonization, diaspora, ethnicity, India, Israel, Janani Balasubramanian, race, racism, Sanskriti, South Asian, Stanford Israel Alliance, Tel Aviv meets Bombay

Apr 30 2013

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Thoughts

Facing the Shadows: Mental Health and the API Community

by Sunli Kim, ’15

During May, API (Asian Pacific Islander) Heritage Month, the Stanford Asian American Activism Committee (SAAAC) will be hosting a month-long issues series on mental health in the API community context, titled Facing the Shadows: Mental Health and the API Community. The workshops are open to all interested students, regardless of ethnic background. Not only will we be covering specific issues within the realm of mental health, but also we hope to raise overall campus awareness of Stanford’s available resources and evaluate the effectiveness of those resources to accommodate minorities’ narratives and cultural differences.

Mental health has been and continues to be an understated, unaddressed issue. We seek not only to raise awareness and critically analyze the root causes of mental health issues, but also to encourage our communities to directly confront these issues by exploring how an individual’s cultural context and larger institutional systems, such as education and law, influence mental health and promote a culture of stigma and silence. Continue reading →

Tagged activist event, API Heritage Month, Asian American, Asian Pacific Islander, depression, disability, Facing the Shadows: Mental Health and the API Community, health, mental health, race, SAAAC, Stanford Asian American Activism Committee, Sunli Kim

Apr 23 2013

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Thoughts

The Illusion of Isolation

by Holly Fetter, ‘13

This piece focuses on a post written by Jason Lupatkin for The Stanford Review, entitled “Why You Cannot Vote for SOCC.” (The uncensored version is here, the updated version is here, and you can read a comparison of the two versions here).

The “Duck Syndrome” metaphor isn’t just for stress and health — we should use it to talk about race, too.

Sometimes, it’s easy to pretend that we’re a bunch of differently-hued ducks, floating peacefully in a multicultural pond of joy. We have FACES during NSO, “Crossing the Line” as awkward frosh, and we’re good to go.

But then the Jason Lupatkin ducks come along, and write blog posts like this one, and remind us that our diverse world isn’t so calm after all — there’s a lot of turbulence and chaos below the surface that’s rarely exposed.

If there’s one thing I appreciate about Lupatkin’s post, it’s that he had the courage to say what he said. Continue reading →

Tagged allyship, communities, communities of color, ethnicity, fraternity, Greek, Holly Fetter, identity, isolation, Jason Lupatkin, race, sorority, students of color, Students of Color Coalition, The Stanford Review

Apr 13 2013

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Thoughts

On the SOCC Debacle

by Eme Williams-Blake, ’13

The broader outlook: The response to backlash of the opinion piece “Why You Cannot Vote for SOCC” was problematic to say the very least, beginning with the way in which The Stanford Review chose to handle the negative publicity. An opinion piece was posted on their website. It was widely circulated and generated negative feedback and they chose to censor the article by removing it entirely from their website. To add insult to injury, The Stanford Review, for reasons unknown, chose to repost the article under the same title, but with major changes to the wording, omitting and rephrasing statements. These changes were made without any indication on the article’s page that these edits were made: a major breach in journalism ethics. Continue reading →

Tagged Ashton-Gallagher, ASSU, ASSU Election 2013, Daniel Ashton, Eme Williams-Blake, Gomez-Patiño, Jason Lupatkin, race, racism, Students of Color Coalition, The Stanford Review, Why You Cannot Vote for SOCC

Mar 01 2013

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Thoughts

Continue Engaging: Reflections from Listen to the Silence 2013

by Van Anh Tran, ‘13 + Healy Ko, ‘13

On February 2, 2013, Stanford’s Asian American Students’ Association (AASA) held its 17th annual Listen to the Silence (LTS) conference, an Asian American issues conference that aims to empower students and community members to take action towards achieving social change. This year’s theme, “Click, Connect, Engage: From Social Media to Social Justice,” focused on the rise of social media as a force for achieving change within our communities.

This year’s conference was the largest Listen to the Silence in Stanford history with over 600 registrants, 22 workshops, 2 keynote speakers, and a high-profile Asian American artist. Through the workshops, LTS provided a space for students to learn about important issues affecting their community — from Asian American feminism to ethnic biases in public radio. Continue reading →

Tagged #LTS2013, AASA, activist event, Angry Asian Man, Asian American, Asian American issues, conference, culture, ethnicity, Healy Ko, Helen Zia, Joel Brinkley, Joseph Vincent, Listen to the Silence, LTS, Phil Yu, race, social justice, social media, Stanford’s Asian American Students’ Association, Van Anh Tran

Jan 29 2013

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Thoughts

How I Came to Co-Produce ‘Trying to Find Chinatown’

by Leow Hui Min Annabeth, ’16

On the dropdown menu on the New Student Orientation survey, I was asked for my ethnicity.

“Asian American/Pacific Islander?” I’d only been in California for two weeks; over my dead body would I let myself be counted as U.S. American.

“International?” …no, Stanford, that’s not an ethnicity.

* * *

My pink identity card, issued by the Republic of Singapore—it says so in amiably bold sans serif—reads, under the column labelled “Race,” “Chinese.” The census, last taken two years ago, prefers the term “ethnicity,” and defines “Chinese” as “persons of Chinese origin such as Hokkiens, Teochews, Cantonese, Hakkas, Hainanese, Hockchias, Foochows, Henghuas, Shanghainese etc.,” which is on a certain level tautological.

Here in America, where “Asian” is a race all to itself, I always dither over the “East Asian” and “Southeast Asian” checkboxes, especially when “Chinese/Japanese/Korean” are helpfully enclosed in parentheses beside the term “East Asian.” Continue reading →

Tagged A3C, activist event, Allen Xu, Asian, Asian American Theater Company, Chinese, David Henry Hwang, drama, ethnicity, Jennifer Brody, Justin Bui, Leow Hui Min Annabeth, Listen to the Silence, nationality, Pearl Wong, performance, race, Sarah Jiang, Sharon Wei, Singapore, Stanford Asian American Activities Center, Stanford Asian American Theater Project, theater, Trying to Find Chinatown, 慧敏 Annabeth

Jan 28 2013

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Thoughts

White Fetish

by Janani Balasubramanian, ’12

A failing of the word ‘activism’ is its designation of certain activities as political engagement and the rest of our lives as some other floaty and apolitical space. In reality, we are always enacting and interacting with the structures of power and social positions each of us inhabit. My friend Alok and I were at a queer conference this weekend in Atlanta to facilitate the same workshop that we’re presenting tonight: ‘Because You’re Brown Honey Gurl!: A Dialogue about Race and Desire’. Our intention was to bring to bear a conversation on spaces where desire, sex, and romance circulate as political spaces. The project of queer liberation isn’t limited to our policy engagements or our organizing work — it is also about considering how we desire and are desired in white supremacist realities.

We use the term ‘sexual racism’ to describe the ways that racism and racist traumas inflect our romantic and sexual relations. Continue reading →

Tagged activism, activist event, art, colonialism, Creating Change, desire, Janani Balasubramanian, liberation, love, poetry, politics, queer, queer liberation, queer sexuality, race, racism, revolutionary art, romance, sex, sexual racism, sexuality, spoken word, White, White Fetish, white supremacy, whiteness, workshop

Nov 29 2012

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Thoughts

Surrender

by Raina Sun, ’13

It takes mom four months after
I tell her I’m dating a black boy
to mention his complex hair
and the dusk in his skin.

Marry a white man, she finally says,
your life will be easier and
your children will look better.

This is no time to tell her that
I don’t really have any
ambitions of matrimony or maternity—
let alone sway her opinion by showing her pictures
of beautiful mixed people like Kimora Lee Simmons,
so I simply shrug and say,
Oops, I forgot. Continue reading →

Tagged China, Chinese American, ethnicity, feminism, immigrant, interracial relationship, poem, poetry, race, Raina Sun, sexuality, Spoken Word Collective, White men

Nov 26 2012

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Thoughts

Why We Should Listen to the Silence

by Van Anh Tran, ’13, + Healy Ko, ’13

The Listen to the Silence (LTS) staff and the Asian American Students Association (AASA) are proud to announce that we will be holding Stanford’s 17th annual Asian American issues conference on Saturday, February 2, 2013. LTS began at Stanford in 1995 out of the need to increase the visibility of Asian American issues and to educate those in the community and beyond about the conditions of the Asian American community. The conference goals have since expanded to include the empowerment of Asian American students to take direct action to improve their communities and work towards social justice in solidarity with other communities. Through the various workshops hosted by students, nonprofits, and community leaders, LTS provides a platform for discussion about the intersections of history, identity, and social change as an avenue for taking action and creating cross-cultural and cross-campus coalitions. In the evening, we will have a concert celebrating Asian American artists. Ultimately, the LTS conference aims to provide tangible tools and resources to inspire, educate, and empower participants to work towards creating a more equitable and fair society as part of the broader movement for social justice.

This year’s Listen to the Silence conference is titled, Click, Connect, Engage: From Social Media to Social Justice, and will focus on social media as a platform for activism in the Asian American community. Continue reading →

Tagged Asian, Asian American, Asian American issues, Asian American Movement, Asian American Students Association, conference, Connect, Danny Chen, Engage: From Social Media to Social Justice, ethnicity, Healy Ko, Jeremy Lin, lick, Listen to the Silence, race, social media, Van Anh Tran

STATIC

A site for Stanford activists to connect and create.

Tag Archives: race

On the Merit of Blurred Lines

On ‘Tel Aviv meets Bombay’ and South Asian Assimilation

Facing the Shadows: Mental Health and the API Community

The Illusion of Isolation

On the SOCC Debacle

How I Came to Co-Produce ‘Trying to Find Chinatown’

White Fetish

Surrender

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