Where Are You From?

by Katie Man and Hannah Chen

Asian Americans have always been a large part of American history, and are currently the fastest-growing racial group in the country. However, Asian Americans continue to face racism in everyday life. One of the most common situations they face is being interrogated about one’s background. As an Asian American, when you get asked “Where are you from?”, answers like “Philadelphia” or “New Jersey” won’t suffice. Often times, people will continue to ask, “No, where are you REALLY from?”. These ignorant comments can be unnerving, insulting, and create an unwelcoming atmosphere.

Surprisingly, instances like this occur both in everyday life as well as on a national scale. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump reportedly asked female Asian-American intelligence analyst “Where are you from?” over and over again, and did not take “New York” as an answer. He then is said to have asked, “Where are ‘your people’ from?”. The analyst finally told him that her parents are Korean, and Trump proceeded to ask why the “pretty Korean lady” isn’t negotiating with North Korea for him. Unfortunately, this is not the first instance of racism and bigotry that has come out of Trump’s administration.

In the process of finding a house to live in next year, we and our other roommate (also Asian American) have experienced this type of ignorance first-hand. Comments like, “Where are you from, China?” or “Wow you guys speak really good English” were only made because of our appearance. These generalizations were not necessary and made us feel very uncomfortable. Comments like these can prevent Asian Americans from feeling a sense of belonging in this country, even if they were born and raised here.

Will the ignorant comments ever stop? Although we cannot guarantee that, it is important to become educated about Asian American racism to prevent future situations. Today, there are over a dozen national Asian American advocacy organizations, including but not limited to the Federal Asian Pacific American Council and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Each of these organizations are fighting to end Asian American racism in the United States and ultimately create a more educated and welcoming society.

The Fight for Fairness in the College Admissions

by Devon, Erica, and Eric

While most people associate December with the coming of winter, for most high school seniors, it is the season of college applications and deadlines. Typically starting in early October for until late winter or early spring, seniors become flustered with the accumulation of deadlines and essays to write. Many hopeful students create a list of colleges consisting of top institutions in hopes of getting accepted into these top ranking schools, including the Ivy League, throughout the country. Colleges like Harvard, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, and many more receive countless applications, but a small percentage of students are able to be accepted to these prestigious institutions. For the Asians community, sadly to say, your chances of getting into such schools like Harvard is significantly lower than your peers.

To understand the reason behind this, there must be a clear understanding of the college admissions. Most colleges only accept students to fit their ‘holistic’ system which means do you fit into the school’s culture?  A lot of people would see this as a kind of meritocracy and it allows for the best and best of all to get the chance to enter.  However, these schools may be lying to the hopeful students, and that the colleges are setting quotas on the number of certain students entering their school.  Recent news reports have been on the lawsuit against Harvard University on the unfair admission process against Asian-American applicants. Several Asian-American organizations have placed their complaints and currently the Department of Justice is looking into this.

To look into the case for the Asian-Americans, they came in with the applications detailing excellent credentials, but still are passed up for others less qualifications on their papers. This is direct threat to the American Dream for the many Asian families in the United States who have faced hardships economically when newly arrived and encouraged their children to study diligently. This may be upsetting for the Asians, as in history, there has been in an increasing number of Asians in colleges. Such schools such as California Institute of Technology as report to have gone from a quarter to half of student population to be college-age Asians since 1992. With the increasing presence of competition, you would think other schools have similar growths, but not Harvard. According to the Students for Fair Admissions, Harvard has been setting up quotas to limit the number of Asians entering their school, the percentage is kept around 20%.  This is still shocking even as more Asian-Americans come in with better credentials than those past, they will still be denied to meet the quota. The organization also had cited Harvard for setting the quota based on stereotypes such as “the Asian who is quiet and wants to be a doctor.” This lawsuit isn’t really new, but it had been coming since 2014 with 60 Asian advocacy groups had sent out complaints that accusing Harvard of discrimination. The DOJ had since begun investigations and requested Harvard to surrender their admissions record containing applications, personal essays, and interviews.

This isn’t the first time the government has been involved with college admission processes. Most of the cases have called upon the race-based affirmative action to achieve diversity in college life. For example, in 2013 and 2016, the case Fisher vs University of Texas saw a student being unfairly rejected because of a school’s goal to achieve diversity.  The Supreme Court has since ruled in favor of the university with a 4-3 standing and the issue may be revisited. For now, the investigation is still ongoing and as more Asian-Americans apply for college, it is unknown what the future may hold for them.

https://nypost.com/2017/11/28/ending-ivy-league-bigotry/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/harvard-justice-department-discrimination.html

Asian American for Net Neutrality

By: Joyce Zhang & Arianne Go

Imagine having to put in your credit card information every time you wanted to just access Facebook.com. Crazy, right? Well, that’s the whole problem with the debate about net neutrality. What is net neutrality though? It is the principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should give consumers, us, equal access to all content and applications without exhibiting favoritism. Historically, net neutrality or open internet policies have been debated over and over again by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In 2015, a policy was finally decided to enforce net neutrality, which restricted ISPs from favoring their provided services over other content providers. For example, big ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T, cannot slow down delivery of content by content providers they do not own, like Netflix or Amazon. Without net neutrality, ISPs could charge us for the usage of other content providers that are not affiliated with them; thus, filling their already full wallets even more. Recently, however, the efforts of consumers and content providers alike are beginning to unwind in the new administration.

On December 14th, 2017, the FCC is set to vote on whether or not to allow ISPs to regulate which websites and online services consumers will be able to use. An Obama-era regulation made to ensure that ISPs would treat all web content equally could be completely undone within a span of the next two weeks. Companies such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T would be able to block access to and charge customers for quicker speed of various websites. Ajit Pai, who was nominated to be the new head of the FCC by Trump in January, declared to undo the net neutrality rules established by the Obama administration as his top priority. He justified that the regulation was an example of government overreach. The image below is an example of monthly “plans” that an ISP could offer for your internet usage in addition to already high monthly fees for an internet source:

This plan has been supported by conservatives as well as ISPs while it has been opposed by activists supporting net neutrality, technology giants, as well the majority of consumers. The plan requires the ISP to maintain transparency about their practices and violations of the transparency rule could lead to fines by the FCC. This policy would also allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to sue companies for violations of prior statements and claims they have made to the general public to ensure that companies will treat their customers fairly.

We’ve talked all about the history and background of the current net neutrality debate, but why is important to us as Asian Americans? As many of you may know, international phone call cards are extremely expensive. For example, rates can get up to $50 for 3000 minutes for US calls to China, which is barely enough for 3 days, but if you have family living across the ocean, it’s worth it to pay the price. The magic of the internet, however, has given us so many new free methods of communication, as long as both sides have access to the internet. Free chat applications like Line, WeChat, Kakaotalk, Facebook, etc allow for free phone and video calls to anywhere across the globe with internet access. These apps are like other content providers that are not associated with big ISPs, so if net neutrality is undone, then we face the risk of having to pay hefty prices to simply talk with family once again. We not only have to pay for a wifi plan, but we also have to pay to use that wifi.

Additionally, Asian Americans recently have made many Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) advocacy pushes, especially through the use of social media. Some examples are the trending hastags, #whitewashedOUT and #praisintheasian, which addressed the lack of asian media representation in Hollywood, and being proud of asian heritage respectively. We also generally use the internet to spread awareness of Asian successes in America, which include the recent casting of Liu Yifei as Fa Mulan in Disney’s live action, and BTS’s win in the the Billboard Music Awards. With the loss of net neutrality, however, we also lose that major platform to further spread AAPI advocacy issues because many advocates may not even be able to pay the repeated fees of using social media. We cannot let this happen, especially when we have come so far with Asian representation and Asian advocacy.

As expected, there has been much backfire about the possibility of blocking net neutrality through social media. Websites like FaceBook and Tumblr have been the leading the fight in educating the general public and spreading the word about how to protest this plan. If you would like to learn more in how to take action, please visit https://www.battleforthenet.com/

Fraternity hazing reveals struggle for self identity

by Diya Goyal and Theresa Lim

Nobody was supposed to get hurt, let alone die, in the hazing process Michael Deng went through while rushing for the Asian-American fraternity, Pi Delta Psi, at his local Queens college, Baruch.

The hazing process at Pi Delta Psi did not go without thought. It was intended to simulate the hardships and abuse immigrant parents went through, an education of what racism their predecessors were faced with through a physical simulation called “the Glass Ceiling.”

“The pledge is supposed to be thinking about his parents and the sacrifices they made as immigrants...and the oppressive invisibility of Asian lives in America,” according to Jay Kang of the New York Times. “The pushing, the tackling and the racial abuse are meant to be the physical expression of their struggle.”

Pi Delta Psi aims to educate its pledges about everything they will have to face in the real white America and respect everything their predecessors have suffered through. The end goal is for the pledge to realize that the only way to survive in white America is to stick with his fellow Asians.

But after taking too many hits, Deng fell unconscious and passed away the next morning; thus unearthing the legal issues the Glass Ceiling raised.  

Officially, the national fraternity does not allow the physical abuse and tackling that took place at Deng’s initiation, and a lawyer representing the Pi Delta Psi frat referred to it as a “direct violation of the fraternity’s policies.” At least, it does in theory. According to Kang, a multitude of people he spoke to at various chapters of Pi Delta Psi spoke of their own initiation process having something similar to the Glass Ceiling ritual at Baruch.

“In reality,” Daniel Li, the former president of Pi Delta Psi during the time of Deng’s death, stated that the national Pi Delta Psi leaders “knew what was going on.”

In search for his Asian-American identity, Deng lost himself, but self identification is not an issue that Deng alone dealt with. Self identity becomes a larger issue in the Asian American population.

As both Asians and Americans, there is always a dilemma present: do we identify more with our social, American upbringing or our cultural, Asian upbringing. This dilemma gives way to a disconnect, which we see through underrepresentation of Asian Americans not only in the media but also in history lessons taught at school.

One fraternity brother, Sheldon Wong, said that until he pledged Pi Delta Psi “he did not know how badly his people had suffered.” The more he immersed himself in Pi Delta Psi’s history of Asian-American oppression, the more he grew frustrated with the gaps in his New York City public education system. Pi Delta Psi allowed him to become more open towards his parents, and truly learn about the hardships they faced in immigrant America.

Pi Delta Psi allowed Michael Deng the same opportunity - to become more in tune with his Asian identity - but at what cost?

In his article, Jay Kang stated that “Asians are the loneliest Americans:” a fitting, yet ironic statement in light of Deng’s death.

He stated that “the current vision of solidarity among Asian-Americans is blurry and relegated to conversations at family picnics, in drunken exchanges over food that reminds everyone at the table of how their mom used to make it.”

Kang goes as far as to state that “Asian pride is a laughable concept to most Americans,” which is something that has come about by constant racism being treated without any real outcry.

While clumsy and definitely not at its best, Pi Delta Psi was a step towards setting down a precedent in finding self identity for Asian Americans. Michael Deng’s death only made this cry of independence and confrontation with being both Asian and American aware to the rest of the world, allowing the process to be rectified in a way that would not hurt anybody else.

Does “The Problem With Apu” have a solution?

By Anna Stollman and Wanyan Ma

In the America of today, especially among young people, representation of minorities in the media is something frequently discussed. Do the demographics of film and television reflect real-life demographics? If representation matters, then how does it matter? What is indicative of “good” representation? These questions are ones that comedian and filmmaker Hari Kondabolu seeks to unbox in his new documentary, The Problem With Apu. The titular “Apu” refers to Apu Nahasapeemapetilon of The Simpsons, a character who is of ambiguous Indian origins, runs the local convenience store (although he has a PhD), and is portrayed with an extremely stereotypical accent. That last feature is made even more egregious by the fact that Apu’s voice actor is white. “[Hank Azaria is] a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father” Kondabolu says. “I don’t find Apu offensive, I find him annoying and insulting... It’s insulting to my parents… [and] when that's the only depiction you have, that’s how the world sees you.”

The documentary focuses on the experiences of Kondabolu himself, and other notable figures such as Aziz Ansari, Aasif Mandvi, Kal Penn, and Whoopi Goldberg. It also features several interviews with various people involved in the creation of The Simpsons. Comedians, actors, and public figures of all races discuss Apu and the deeper problem in society that he represents: the otherization of non-white immigrants, as well as the harm that stereotypical and inauthentic representation can cause. Apu not only serves as a stereotypical representation of an “Indian immigrant”, he also is barely fleshed out as a character. His ethnicity is unclear and, at different times, has characteristics that are South Indian, Bengali, Tamil, and Kannadigas.

Is stereotypical representation better than no representation at all? Maybe it was several decades ago, when most minorities ere lucky to have a character similar to them at all. Today, though, lack of representation and lack of authentic, non-stereotypical representation continues to have harmful consequences. In the documentary, several South Asian American actors discuss incidents that have happened to them at auditions: for example, being asked to use the “Apu accent.” If they don’t, they are often not hired for the job. Many other Asian Americans who work in the entertainment industry have also talked about similar experiences, such as Anna Akana when she visited Pitt as a speaker.

Characters like Apu reinforce the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype and are part of the reason that Asian Americans are frequently told their English is surprisingly good or asked where they’re “really from.” Characters like Apu are the reason a foreign Asian actor is more likely to be accepted by American audiences and filmmakers than an Asian American one. Characters like Apu help prolong the existence token minority characters. Characters like Apu are background decorations that seek to add diversity and a sense of inclusion but are really nothing more than flat, animated cardboard. Of this, as well as the typical roles South Asians are typecast into, Kondabolu says, “You're either a cartoon that is weak -- that has no control of their lives -- or you're a terrorist or you're a cab driver... What's that cab driver's experience? What is that convenience store owner's experience? ... That's never relevant because they're props.”

Kondabolu doesn’t condemn The Simpsons as a whole; in fact, he called it one of the greatest shows of all time, saying that it was possible to “still take value from other aspects of it.” He also expresses admiration for figures in the South Asian American community such as Mindy Kaling and Aziz Ansari. Kaling and Ansari, among many other Asian Americans actors and creators, are trailblazers. They are normalizing the Asian American experience in the media and reclaiming a narrative that has long been told by a demographic it does not belong to.

The documentary, itself a mix of serious and lighthearted content, ends with a bit of black humor on Kondabolu’s part––he is, after all, a comedian first and foremost. He compares The Simpsons to a racist grandfather: “if he can’t change, maybe it’s time for him to die. And you can just remember the good stuff about him.” Let The Simpsons persist and be praised for the good things it did. Let Apu stand as the fossil he is: representative of an older time and ideas we shouldn’t regress to.

Make Edison Great Again

By Kris Ramstrom & Jeremy Lu

Imagine opening your mailbox only to see a flyer featuring your face with the word “deport” plastered over it. You look down your street and see that your neighbors have all received the same flyer, labeling you as a danger and a disgrace to the community. As you turn over the ad in your hand, the unsettling message starts to sink in: WE don’t want YOU here.

This recently occurred just last week in Edison, New Jersey, to school board candidates Jerry Shi and Falguni Patel. An anti-Chinese and anti-Indian campaign was plastered on the doorsteps of the Edison community, pinning the word “deport” over the faces of the candidates and promoting the Trump-inspired slogan “Make Edison Great Again”. “I was borned and raised in New Jersey” Patel said when talking to the interviewer, “to see the word ‘deport’ on my picture ….. Really it’s just outrageous.” The police couldn’t identify who sent the flyers because they were sent anonymously and do not indicate who paid for them. The candidates along with the township were of course appalled by the flyer, but expressed that this kind of racism is nothing new. Khyati Y. Joshi, an education professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said, “It’s not just in Edison. It’s a long line of anti-Asian sentiment that goes back to the 1800s.” The dramatic increase of the Asian population in Edison is what most likely sparked the fear expressed here. The current political climate has shown this kind of bigotry being directed mainly towards African American and Mexican communities, but proves to affect other minorities as well.

This is hardly the first instance of discrimination against Asian Americans in the political sphere. In the past there have been numerous examples of Asian American citizens running for office or positions of power, who have been neglected because of the stigma that comes along with being Asian. Both Asian American men and women are typically seen as submissive, so when they attempt to assume a authoritative position they are ridiculed and discredited. Ted Lieu, a congressman from California and an outspoken advocate for the Trans community, is one of the main faces in the political struggle for Asian American rights. He has tackled issues such as immigration and background checks, all while feeling the pressures of systematic racism in the government.

We need ambitious Asian Americans like Jerry Shi, Falguni Patel, and Ted Lieu to speak for the voices that have been silent for far too long. Hopefully they can inspire a new generation of young people, to take up the fight that was handed down to them, through generations of struggle.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/campaign-fliers-targeting-two-asian-american-candidates-shock-new-jersey-n817021