Some Resources to Discuss EDI Asian American advocacy

In Fall 2021 I’m the Instructional Assistant (~TA) for the course “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in Human Biology” at UC San Diego. I love this class and am grateful every day that I get to grow as an instructor in such a foundational, intersectional class.

My students write reflection journals every week to help engage with the material. In their first week a student of Asian American (AA) identify wrote that they were hoping to learn more about Asian American inequities and power since that population is often forgotten in the greater discussion. To grow up Asian American in the US is a very different experience in identity formation than growing up in the more culturally and racially homogenous country of your family’s homeland. This dissonance is not unique to first-generation Asian Americans, but it is the experience I can speak to, and so I sent the student the following email:

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Hello [Student]!

In your entry for the BILD 60 Journal 1 assignment you'd mentioned wanting to learn more about Asian Americans and how they/we have been placed in an ambiguous space in the American narrative of racial dynamics and power.

I realize that's not actually what your said, but I've paraphrased because there's a LOT more nuance that can unfortunately be summed up as "Asian Americans sometimes get forgotten".

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the topic, as it's something that continues to drive my own EDI work in academia but I wanted to give you a starting point for your own journey, since we won't be covering it in class.

Jenn @reapproriate on Twitter is a very active interdisciplinary voice in the field, and has lots of good resources/commentary like this one.

This thread also references much of nuance of how the history of the Asian American movement towards equity can often be confounded and dismissed by scholars working in other contexts.

Most of the dynamic discourse seems to happen on Twitter, so here are a few other cool advocates to think about: @NeedhiBalla, @KimTallBear (not AA diaspora), Dr. Sengupta (@AnonDumboOctopi), @HarmitMalik, @AngryAsianMan, Dr. Tran (@but_im_kim_tran), @jchenwriter, @xiofei_lin, @ayushi_nayak.

It is helpful (at least to me) to remember that dismantling systemic racism requires an understanding that equity is not a zero-sum game. Framing Equity as a problem of resource scarcity (even attention!) only pits groups against each other instead of all groups against white supremacy. Dr. Holly Hare talks about it more in their dissertation.

Again, I could go on for ages about this, but I know you've got midterms and this is an ongoing conversation that takes years!

Cheers,

Hema

ps. A "fun" book/memoir is Good Talk, Thanks by Mira Jacob