Why students of colour don't want to return to school this next week

I don’t want to go back to school. 

Here’s the fact of the matter. 

No matter how early I have to get up (5:30am anyone?), no matter how cold it is outside, how many credits I’m taking or how small my room may be—I love to learn. I love interacting with people who love to learn. 

But for me, I don’t want to go back to school and that is making a statement. 

I don’t want to go back to school because I’m scared. 

I am scared for myself but most of all, I am scared for others. I am scared for the first year students of marginalized identity, I am scared for the transfer students who have yet to know the state and climate of our university. I am scared for my collegues. I am scared of losing my friends to this well-intentioned, but racist/sexist/heterosexist/clueless/PROBLEMATIC AS FUCK university. 

The cohort of students of colour and my friend group that I arrived with on this university are almost all gone. Transferred, or dropped out. The university’s goal is to raise our “diversity” to 20% by 2024 and let me tell you something. 1) That’s not going to happen. 2) If it DOES so miraciously happen, then the issues and incidents of harassment on campus will only get worse. The tension will get worse. Retention will get worse and honestly, I’m about ¾ ready to start a campaign to let people know that my university is NOT a good place to go for students of colour, or a white student who wants to learn how to be a decent human being in cultural competency. 

I don’t think my university understands how shitty it is to be a student on this campus. Administration can go home and sleep at night and wake up in the morning without even thinking about their skin colour. They get to leave it all at school to deal with the next day or hope that students graduate and get cycled out and forget about the shit that happens on campus. 

I deal with this fear every day I wake up. I have fucking anxiety over this shit. I have depression because I’ve been told that my worth has been put into my skin colour and nothing else. I know people who are borderline suicidal. 

So coming back to a university that claims that they’re ‘working on it’ is fucking scary. Coming back to a university that pretends everything is ‘okay’ is fucking scary. Because the most fucked up people in this world are the people who try to hide the fact that they are fucked up by painting a pretty face. 

That’s what my university is doing by brushing racist and homophobic events under the rug, by victim blaming female students who go running on our trails, by telling the public the university is not represented by these incidents BUT THEN GO ON AND TAKE CREDIT FOR STUDENTS WHO ORGANIZE FOR CHANGE ON CAMPUS.

Always asking students: “What do you want us to do?” as if we have the fucking answers. 

News flash: We are fucking students. We have fucking lives. We have homework and our PRIMARY FUCKING JOB IS TO BE A FUCKING STUDENT. It is YOUR FUCKING JOB to ensure that we aren’t fucking dying on this campus. YOU MAKE YOUR LIVING BECAUSE WE PAY YOU. If you have the fucking audacity to ask us what to do, then I fucking suggest you need to start paying us. 

There is no quick fix. I suggest that instead of using money to br[AND], you use it to make some actual change to label our campus as Anti-Racist. You’d really earn some fucking money then. Even then, this would take probably 4 years at least to do. I understand. I know that students of colour aren’t a priority on this campus. 

So I want to know what is on the top of your list right now. What are you having meetings about? With whom? Where is my money being spent? Because god fucking forbid it be spent on some new paint on a wall when blood is shed faster than that.

 I’m scared to go back to school. 

I fear that this may be the semester I lose my fucking mind. The semester where my grades drop so low because I’m so busy trying to do the administration’s job. The semester that kills me. The semester that kills my friends, my brothers and sisters and colleagues in arms. 

Just remember: We don’t forget the ways in which we have been marginalized and tokenized and dehumanized and ignored. And we definitely don’t forget the people of the institution who made that possible.  

Women of Colour Censorship

As I write this post, I’m finishing up a Reading Response I wrote for my class—Culture of 3^rd Wave Feminism. In this particular reading response, we watched an episode of Torchwood and talked about The Evil Demon Seductress (think Mystique from X-Men) who use their sexuality as a weapon to lure men to their deaths. We also touched up on this idea of hypersexualizing Asian women. But rather than focus on the demons and seductresses of the Torchwood episode, I couldn’t help but watch this episode in dismay as the seduced character in this episode was not a man, but behold, an Asian woman.

Let’s get on the same page about this—the creation of Asian women in popular media includes such stereotypical roles: Dragon Lady (seductive, aggressive, mysterious, and probably knows some sort of martial arts to kick your ass), the Lotus Blossom (virginal, submissive, you know…the uniformed schoolgirls you want us to be).  These roles feed into this fucked up message that Asian women are therefore objects to be sexualized in the eyes of the heterosexual male gaze. It’s important to note that not only are Asian women oppressed by ideas of racism, but also gender. They share many of the same types of discrimination that Asian men experience, such as (the model minority[1]) but also share the aspects of living in a patriarchal society that other women experience.

Which brings me back to Torchwood. Toshiko embodies the stereotype of a Lotus Blossom and me, being the naiive and hopeful person I am when watching movies, was deceived into thinking that she would be anything but a stereotype.

Way to go.

It fucking disgusts me that I as an Asian woman have no other worth than to satisfy the sexual appetite of the person who decides to gaze upon me. That gaze itself, whether it comes from a male (most often) or even another (white) female, creates this power dynamic to which I am supposed to satisfy.

That, if nothing else, I am the virginal computer nerd, or school girl, or easy target to be taken in and sheltered, only to be sexualized, without even knowing it. That is the power of a gaze.

That, if nothing else, I am the badass who kicks down doors and fucks up men’s lives by using my sexuality as a weapon to lure them into my trap because “hahaha, how could you be so stupid?”

While yes, it’s true that many woman choose to take control of their sexuality as a means to fight back against the system that told them they could not.

Don’t these stereotypes perpetuate patriarchy’s power over women, in how a woman’s only social power is using her sexuality? And don’t these stereotypes also perpetuate this idea that men have, that women are conniving hoes who can’t be trusted?

I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been called exotic and been told to take it as a compliment, or someone has suggested that Asian women are submissive.

But the point of my post is to talk about my reading response, to which has a few expletives. I want to break down the psychology of the structure of my mind because it is still decolonizing.

I want to know why I considered putting a warning up, saying “Strong language” to warn people of my opinions, of my thoughts, of the power of my words that I carry so heavily on my shoulders and my skin, every, fucking, day.

And I stopped myself.

Why do I need to tell people that what they’re about to read is *gasp* my experiences, and that my experiences are ugly, they include pain, they fucking suck, and they tell people that this world isn’t as perfect as we think it is?

Why do I need to cater to white, male fragility in the way my words spit my own personal truth?

Because women of colour are so used to being silenced by the whitesplaining of white women and the mansplaining of men[2]. Because people claim to know us better than we know ourselves.

Because when I speak, people tell me that anger will get me nowhere, and that when a white woman speaks for me, or tries to say it in a “more professional” fucking tone, everyone suddenly fucking understands.

I don’t need professional. I don’t need to sugarcoat my experiences because there is/was/will be nothing sweet about them.

I don’t need civilized. I need people to see this anger that I feel, because it always seems that people are telling me to calm down, when I OBVIOUSLY DON’T WANT TO FUCKING CALM DOWN. They’re always telling me to use a different tone of voice when THIS IS THE ONLY TONE OF VOICE YOU WILL LISTEN TO. AND TAKE SERIOUSLY. BECAUSE YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHY THIS ASIAN WOMAN HAS THE AUDACITY TO CHALLENGE YOUR FUCKING AUTHORITY BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU’RE THE SHIT.

Someone I look up to said to me that the only reason why we still have the problems we have today is because not enough white people are angry enough to change it.

I don’t need any of this white and male fragility bullshit when explaining my experiences because I don’t care if I hurt white people’s feelings, I don’t care if I hurt a man’s feelings. I especially don’t care if they are a white male and they are going out of their way to invalidate my experiences.

I don’t need to censor myself because I’ve come to realize that I don’t need to cater to people’s ‘comfort level’ just because they’re uncomfortable with confronting the reality that the world they live in is built for them to succeed, and the guilt that comes with this idea that we don’t live in a perfect world is too much for them to bear.

Well, fuck you, then.

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[1] Model Minority

the model minority is a concept that Asian Americans don't cause trouble or ‘rock the boat’ because they’re the good people of colour. Also to note that since ALL Asian Americans have SUCH a high level of success due to their amazing work ethic (meritocracy at its best) and are SO self-sufficient...they may not get appropriate assistance for their needs. (notice the sarcasm in this, except the last part). 

[2] Whitesplaining is when white people feel the need to interject with their own explanation of something in a situation that does not call for them to speak, especially in an environment with many POC. Or when they take up a shit ton of space to talk (condescendingly…) about how people of colour feel, should feel…etc., as if POC don’t already know how to experience racism.

The same goes with mansplaining; a man feeling the need to explain something (to a woman) in a manner that is condescending and/or patronizing. With the intersection of race and gender; you can imagine how I feel about this shit. I don’t like it. 

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I know there’s a proper way to cite shit according to APA/MLA format that I’ve been taught in this fucked up system…..I’m getting there.

The Evil Demon Seductress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VeCjm1UO4M

Hypersexuality of Asian Women: https://thoailu.wordpress.com/independent-research/hypersexuality-of-asian-femininity-and-black-masculinity/

Helpful Terminology: http://hmongstudiesinitiative.org/resources/terminology/

Mansplaining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining