To be left out of a civil rights movement could very well lead to the absence of how the Asian American community is also in need to legislative reform that applies to them. As explained in the Korean Resource Center's new report on undocumented Asian students, while Asian students are portrayed as having no educational struggles, this is far from the truth as the majority of Ab540 students at the University of California are of Asian descent.
Check out this discussion on the model minority idea. This is a couple weeks old, but it's a goody.
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R809121000
Guests on the radio show include:
- Doua Thor, executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, a national organization advancing the interests of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans through leadership development, capacity building and community empowerment
- Elaine Kim, professor of Asian-American studies at UC Berkeley
- Robert Teranishi, professor of higher education at NYU and co-director for The National Commission on Asian-American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, a project funded by the College Board
1 comments:
Just sent an e-mail to Prof. Kim. I've been meaning to e-mail her, and Doua haha. Everyone who was interviewed should probably know about the "Count-Me-In" campaign. UCLA and UCB students should be all over this. Thx for posting this Tam.
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Disaggregation to Appear on 2008 UC Applications, Result of Student-Led Actions
Count Me In
BERKELEY, CA
November 16th, 2007
The campaign to disaggregate the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) term on UC applications and admission data has been an ongoing movement to understand and address the diverse needs of AAPI communities. The most recent change to the UC application was the addition of the Vietnamese ethnicity box in 1996.
On November 16th , 2007 the “Out of the Margins AAPIs and Education Equity” Conference at UCLA focused on the status of AAPI communities and developed an applied and policy research agenda on AAPIs and education. There it was announced that effective Fall 2008, UC applications would disaggregate the AAPI term and by separating Pacific Islander into a new racial category with ethnic subcategories [1].
This highlights a triumph for the Count Me In campaign at UC Berkeley and other UC campuses.
Count-Me-In campaign coordinators have been working with UCLA Asian Pacific Coalition (APC) members to ensure that the campaign was not just student initiated and student-led, but that it also incorporated students from all UC campuses.
This semester, students at UC Berkeley have collected over 1200 postcards in support of creating new categories on applications for AAPI groups, gaining the support of students and other campus members, including the Chancellor.
In addition, teach-ins were held every day for a week in October and a rally earlier this month to spread awareness of the campaign.
The rally included a variety of speakers speaking the importance of disaggregating data. Pacific Islander graduate student in the Goldman School of Public Policy, Justine Lazaro, remembers this same struggle as an undergraduate at Cal.
“Three years ago I was on this very steps talking about the same issues…we went to into California Hall talking to the Chancellor about disaggregating racial data, separating Pacific Islander from ‘Other Asian’.” Lazaro's talks were not successful then, as she notes that “Pacific Islanders are not even one percent in this campus.”
Within the Indian community, “There are 7 major religions, 17 major languages, 844 dialects, and 6 primary regional classifications… Then take into account the traditions of the Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Bangladeshi populations,” discusses Shaleen Shanbhag of Association of South Asian Political Activists (ASAPA), in terms of the diversity within the South Asian community.
“But by lumping these inherently different cultures in one category, we're refusing to acknowledge the diversity that is part of the individual identity and making further inaccurate generalization about the population as a whole.”
Executive Director of REACH! API Recruitment and Retention Center, Anne Chiang, combats a common criticism that the program encounters, the notion of overrepresentation of AAPIs on campus.
“The communities we outreach to, specifically socioeconomically disadvantaged communities like in Oakland, Richmond, Stockton, Sacramento, down to Los Angeles are students who are in need of resources to enter higher education. So providing financial support [to] organizations like REACH! to outreach to different AAPI groups is crucial.”
ASUC Senator Maurice Seaty, author of an ASUC bill in support of the campaign, spoke about not "rejecting the AAPI term, but trying to highlight the diversity that exists within our community."
“This campaign exists beyond just yellow, brown, black, and white. It exists in the issues and experiences of our communities, something that continues to be hidden and overlooked. It's important to recognize that this campaign does not happen in a vacuum nor does it start and end with Count-Me-In. This campaign began when the first wave of refugees came from Southeast Asia, when immigrants first came from Pakistan. Let this campaign set a precedent for the University of California to further disaggregate not only for Asian American communities, but also for Latin@/Chican@s, African Americans and Pacific Islanders.”
Disaggregating the Asian American and Pacific Islander categories on the UC application is just the first step. Implementing the third objective of the campaign - providing financial support for outreach projects that serve underrepresented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities – is fundamental to making sure that the actual purpose of disaggregation is reached. The Count Me In campaign is more than just getting additional ethnicities listed on the UC application –at the heart of the campaign is a student movement to increase diversity across the University of California. It is essential that administrators of the University of California take an active role and support students by increasing funds to student-initiated outreach.
[1] The UC application will include separate categories for these Asian American groups: Chinese (except Taiwanese), Taiwanese, East Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan, and Other Asian. Additionally, Pacific Islander categories will include Native Hawaiian, Guamanian/Chamorro, Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, and Other Pacific Islander. UC will also being reporting Pacific Islanders separately from Asian Americans.
On behalf of the Count-Me-In! Campaign core we would like to thank everyone that helped make this change possible!
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