Workshop with Daryl Maeda, Asian American Affinity Groups

Sometimes it’s good to be reminded.

Daryl Maeda’s workshop contained a familiar retelling of Asian American history for me.  The “Yellow Power” Movement, the Red Guard Party, and the Third World Student Strike of the late 1960s, particularly as they all occurred in the Bay Area, took over my imagination when I was a college student.  I understood this, and still do today, as American history.  The images of Asian youth looking angry, demanding better, acting self-determined, was a revelation.  Before I saw a black and white image of Richard Aoki, one of the first members of the Black Panther Party, wearing a beret and sunglasses, I didn’t know it was possible to be anything more than the fulfillment of the model minority myth personified.  That photo, and the subsequent others I poured over from this time, changed the trajectory of my notions regarding who I could be and what I could become.

Richard Aoki

Aoki, Brown, Delgado

Yuri Kochiyama

Still An Activist

But in the day-to-day, it’s easy to forget this part of my people’s history and that I can draw on the work of these elders for strength.  On some days, the images above barely register in my memory, and I am nothing like Richard Aoki in his sunglasses and beret.

And that’s because we all breathe the same air, regardless of who we are.  We all breathe in and receive and internalize the same messages, even the ones that are hurtful and directed toward us.  Daryl Maeda, a scholar of American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Japanese American history, helped the audience understand that the model minority myth is a relatively new concept, only coming into play in the late 1960s, used effectively to pit Asians against African Americans, and today, to pit Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans against African Americans, Latinos and other People of Color.  From firsthand experience, it sort of feels like being the teacher’s pet, without doing anything to earn the dubious honor, yet you are resented all the same.

How do we help make visible our Asian American and Pacific Islander American students in a context framed in a binary narrative that sometimes tells us that AAPIA students are essentially “white”?  As an Asian American educator, what is my response when other Asians I meet do not consider themselves People of Color?  What is my response when other People of Color think I am not a person of color either, perhaps because I haven’t been sufficiently wronged “enough” in a side-by-side comparison?  It’s not a power grab for first place on The “Most Oppressed” List, but do we ever stop for a moment and think that the stories we believe about each other might not have been structured in a way that allows the true complexity of our lives, and our ancestors’ lives, to be heard?  Not so that we may more accurately place them into a hierarchy of oppression, but in order for us to more clearly determine the very nature of the issues themselves?

Daryl Maeda and Jay Rapp, Director of Programs, Leadership Equity and Diversity

I sat in the Asian American affinity group this afternoon, considering these and other questions.  I was honored to listen other educators speak their truths in our small group.  Every story was just like mine, and at the same time, nothing like mine.  It reminded me about the importance of context, about feeling strong inside, about recognizing the things I need to own, and about the things that have nothing to do with me.

But then again, doesn’t it all really have to do with me?  Or, in a less self-centered way, can’t I use the way I’ve been placed in this society to a greater advantage?  What are the things I can say because of the level of acceptance that has been bestowed on straight AAPIA women, for better or for worse, that my other colleagues of color and LGBT colleagues cannot?  How can I reclaim what has been a source of personal pain as a source of power, and use it to serve the larger movement?

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