Word: asianized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Living out loud also means making sure we're counted in the political system and ensuring that we have the resources, linguistic and otherwise, to raise our voices. At the same time, Asian Americans face another, and perhaps more challenging, form of silencing: silencing within Asian America itself...
Just as certain individuals get to represent Asian Americans to the general population, certain individuals attempt to present the authentic Asian American identity to the racial group itself. Oftentimes, this identity has meant Chinese or Japanese, male, heterosexual and middle class. Because individuals matching this profile have traditionally dominated our community, APAs who don't fit so well have too often been asked to stand aside, to let their concerns be subsumed by the greater cause of group solidarity. Simply put, many APA activists have prioritized race over oppressions of gender, class, and sexuality, effectively silencing those who might question...
Does this mean that Jian Wan Chen's status as an Asian sister is negligible when weighed against the call to stand in solidarity with "the race," a call that implies and obscures the privileging of a particular gender? What about the Asian American lesbian and sweatshop workers: should they also subordinate their concerns and silence themselves in solidarity with "the race...
Living out loud consequently entails an interrogation of the silences perpetrated within Asian America simultaneous to an interrogation of the silences forced on it. Being a racial minority does not exclude anyone from systems of privilege, and we must explore the intersections of oppressions if we are to realize a true social justice agenda. Admittedly, this form of living loudly is much more difficult than the first: it's a lot easier to band together against an ostensibly white oppressor than acknowledging the inequities within your minority group itself, but we can't ask for anything less. We all deserve...
Michael K. T. Tan '01 is interethnic chair of the Asian American Association. He is a resident of Grays Hall...