Hoping to “redefine” perceptions of Asian-Americans, Columbia’s Asian American Alliance joined forces with NYU, Fordham, Hunter, and Baruch to hold its second annual New York City Asian American Student Conference Saturday.
“We’ve been defined externally by other people. We can now reappropriate what’s been taken from us,” said Nhu-Y Ngo, CC ’09, conference co-director and Asian Pacific American Awareness Month political chair.
As a part of APAAM, the conference included workshops and panels intended to educate participants on Asian-American studies, immigrant rights, and human trafficking. It also focused on ways to lead discussion and organize activism.
Conference co-director and AAA political chair Marilla Li, CC ’09, said NYCAASC distinguishes itself from other Asian American student conferences in its openness and flexibility.
“Before the start of the conference, one panelist said he was concerned it would turn out like every one [conference], in that he wouldn’t be able to speak freely,” Li said. “Afterwards, he changed his mind and thought it fostered open-mindedness.”
The workshops and panels aimed—and appeared to achieve—blunt, unscripted candor. At a workshop titled “Geishas and Geeks: Asian American Gender Roles,” headed by AAA senior representative and APAAM political co-chair Ryan Fukumori, CC ’09, participants listed common stereotypes for Asian-American males and females. For women, these included “closet slut,” “submissive,” and “wannabe white.”
Fukumori noted these stereotypes were often rooted in social constructs by those in power during wartime—in the prostitution and rape of Asian women, or the tendency of immigrant Chinese men to find jobs as launderers, known as “women’s work,” because they were the only jobs available.
At a panel titled “Challenging the Mainstream: Asian Americans in the Ethnic Blogosphere,” bloggers writing on issues of race—including Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man and Carmen Van Kerckhove of Racialicious—spoke candidly about how to encourage dialogue and mobilize activism through the medium of the Internet.
Diana Nguyen of the blog Disgrasion, for example, explained the inception of the blog’s weekly feature showcasing attractive Asian-American males, “Babewatch,” to reject effeminate stereotypes. “We could sit around and complain about how people in power are cutting off their dicks, or we could show some pictures of hot Asian dick,” she said.
Ngo emphasized the importance of having a space to address issues of oppression and race, which can feature heavily in everyday life.
“It’s not just political,” Ngo said. “Culture is inherently political, and people enact and think about these issues in their lives every day.”
florence.lui@columbiaspectator.com