Sharma, Nitasha. “The Racial Studies Project: Asian American Studies and the Black Lives Matter Campus.”
- Questions the role of ethnic studies, specifically Asian American studies, in student activism towards universities
- Campus activism as multi-coalition based instead of the segmented identity-based groups that institutionalizing ethnic studies creates
- “Their transnational, crossracial, and issues-rather-than-identity-oriented frameworks suggest a unified racial studies project, rather than a growing commitment to the circumscribed subfields we are hired into as a result of increasing institutionalization.” (49)
- Proposes that ethnic studies (a collective racial studies approach) could prevent Asian American studies being co-oped by the institution
- Crisis as a central theme of Asian American studies
- Asian American studies is “generally not heard”, similarly to what Yu talks about in Asian American studies’ failure to have public impact
- Identity-defined groups limit their intellectual contributions
- “Asian American studies students sought guidance on when and where to enter conversations on race that were taking place on campus.” (57)
- I personally resonate with this – how to know your place and what is appropriate?
- “Perhaps it is time to consider the death of Asian American studies in favor of an expansive racial studies project that more fully attends to race, racism, colonialism, imperialism, settler-colonialism, militarism, and the shared political project of liberation. If the autonomous structure of these programs discourages relational and time consuming work across ethnic studies, undergraduate student activism reveals other wise.” (58)
- NU Black Lives Matter activism led to the creation of a Asian American Studies major
- Identity-based studies should lie under the larger umbrella of racial studies
- “Black Lives Matter should not matter to Asian Americans because Asian Americans have also faced police violence and have died in police custody. It should matter to Asian Americans because Black lives matter” (61-62)
Yu, Timothy. “Has Asian American Studies Failed?
- He means failure in the failure of Asian American Studies to have public impact
- citing the internment of Japanese Americans as reason to reject Syrian refugees
- internment as one of the foundational narratives of the Asian American experience that
- “For of course, to ask whether Asian American studies has failed is to ask what the goals of Asian American studies are in the first place” (38)
- he wants to make Asian American studies more public
- Jeremy Lin case study
- his desire to identify with “asian american” over Chinese or Taiwanese american
- Yu calls this a success of the Asian American movement, because identifying w this label comes naturally
- Question for the group: Do you agree with this? Does the label Asian American feel natural to you?
- SCA 5:
- media commonly said that “Asian Americans” were leading the charge against AA, when it was really just a few active Chinese American groups
- intertwined network of younger Asian American scholars, activists, bloggers, and journalists mobilized to counter this flase narrative
- How can Asian Americans respond rapidly to public affairs?
- Twitter / hashtag activism
- is this real activism? its powerful but but short-lived, requires a lot of emotional engagement and labor
- Yu calls hashtag activism a challenge, not a failure
- How can we turn these hashtag activists into real activists who engage with their outside worlds?
- Bc clearly these people care about Asian American issues
- Thinking about #stopasianhate. How many people who reposted stuff on their story actually did some thing in real life?
- How can we turn these hashtag activists into real activists who engage with their outside worlds?
- social media is a conduit between Asian American academics and mainstream media
- Twitter / hashtag activism