Multicultural Education 2014

Last Friday my friend and I went to Philadelphia, as we were walking down the main road of China Town we stopped to wait for the red light. It was then when a Chinese man looked at us and turned to the woman next to him; he pointed at us and said in Mandarin “Look, that one’s Japanese and that one’s Korean.” with a very stern tone too. I guess he probably didn’t think I understood Chinese, and I actually thought it was kind of funny and wanted to respond to him in Chinese and ask him why he thought we were Japanese and Korean. But of course, I didn’t. I think sometimes just as people, we are easy to judge and make assumptions based on looks, the way one dresses, and a lot more physical features. 

When I think about it now, it is like we always talk about microaggressions or racism and direct them toward whites. Yet, it happens so often between ethnic groups too. From smaller examples like I’m from the South and you’re from the North so we’re different, to issues more related to one’s “color.” This also reminded me of what we focused a lot on in my Asian American Community class, how we say Asians, but a lot of us naturally refer to East Asians, and sometimes don’t consider others as part of the “Asian” group.

After an excruciating 13 hour flight from Seoul to New York, I waited in line to get through immigration. I was pulled away from the line by an officer after peering into my passport and led into a plain room. On our way there, the officer jokingly commented on how there were “so many of you Lee’s and Park’s” (which is partially true - Korea's most common last names are Lee, Jeong, Kim and Park but each of these last names have a very unique Chinese root and can be distinguished by region, class, and clan) and I nervously laughed and agreed, unknowingly giving into a micro-aggressive comment and leading him to think that statments like that would not offend anyone. The room was filled other international students like me and there were families with young children who were anxious to start their vacation. I was not in any trouble and the immigration office just merely wanted to make sure and interview us that we were indeed college students. The process took a long time and I sat in the room staring at the blank walls and listening to the conversation amongst the officers. However, an instance that stuck out to me was when an officer read someone’s documents and started laughing and passed it around with his coworkers. The officers were laughing at a name because it sounded funny but what struck me the most was that they did not care that we were in front of them and could hear and understand every word.

I’ve never understood the variety of Whites or Caucasian as you may point out. In Malaysia, the media often portrays a single type of White, the privilege one. There’s no such thing as poor whites, Latinos or a Jewish background. As long as you have white skin, you are considered “Guai Loi” which means ghost guy or white person. My experience at Bryn Mawr has taught me otherwise. A lot of my close Jewish friends taught me that Jews have been through a lot to get to where they are now. One of my most memorable lectures that I saw my Jewish friends fall into tears was a speech by Norman Finkelstein’s “How to Resolve the Israel-Palestine Conflict”. As a fellow Malaysian who indirectly supports Palestine based it’s cruel history, seeing my Jewish friends blamed for being Jews was quite heartbreaking. I can never understand the true power dynamics that was involve. I find it quite interesting how a significant number of Jewish people I know come from hardworking families but are also blamed for their cruelty towards the Palestinians. I can see some form of grudge sometimes through silence. This will forever remain a sensitive topic at least in my circle of ‘diverse’ friends.

One of my favorite meetings of ASA was when we were helping make posters for the ASA Culture Show. We all wrote quotes on papers referring to something memorable that happened to us or a stereotype that we wanted to disprove. When we were sharing these quotes that we made, someone talked about something that happens a lot. It’s when people ask us “where are you from?”

It's a difficult question to answer, and my answers vary depending on where I am and who I'm talking to. At Bryn Mawr, I always answer this question by saying “I’m from Taiwan,” just because it’s simpler than explaining how I’m American but moved around a lot growing up. But it’s also funny when people say “wait, but you don’t have an accent when you speak English…” 

My friends who is Japanese American grew up her whole life in California. She’s never been doubted for being from California until she came to Bryn Mawr. It’s happened multiple times where people ask her “where are you from?” And once she answers “I’m from SoCal.” They say, “no, where are you really from?” It always frustrates her when people doubt that she’s American, or when the question isn’t clear enough.

Are you asking where I grew up in? Or are you asking what’s my ethnicity? It sometimes feels like being denied of our own identity.

It's that time of year when everyone is scrambling to find internships. I was planning to apply to an internship in the field of education sponsored by Haverford. A few weeks before winter break this year, I had scheduled a meeting with the head of the Haverford program to talk about the internship. I told her my reasons for wanting to apply to the internship. She seeemed to be interested in my reasons and the experience I had with that field, but then informed me that the organization was looking for a person of color, so if I applied for the internship I probably wouldn't get it because I am white.

I was shocked. For one of the first times, my race was a disadvantage, not an advantage. I understood the reason why the organization would look for a person of color- because the intern would be working primarily with students of color, they wanted the role model of a successful college student who was also a minority. In my head, I understood this and it made sense, but in my heart, I was hurt and offended. As someone who wants to work in urban education, it is hard to hear that my race is a disadvantage. I have read articles in my eduation class about how minority students should have a minority teacher and how white, middle-class teachers cannot understand the needs and background of low-income minority students. Where does that put me? Should I limit myself to teaching in a predominately white, middle-class school? Is wanting to teach low-income students part of my white savior complex?

Since the beginning of my sophomore year, I have worked extensively in Haverford’s Office of Admissions. My experience in these various roles and, in particular, my understanding of Haverford’s desire to attract and create a diverse student body—has led me to think much more critically about the types of supports we provide to students who actually enroll at Haverford. It is one thing to attract a diverse student body; it is another to support and cultivate that diversity.  

In particular, one thing that really concerns me is Haverford’s lack of explicit support for first-generation college students and students coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Haverford has clear support systems in place for students of color, regardless of class background, including special weekends for prospective students, affinity clubs, etc. But I worry that a comparable system of support is lacking for low-income white students.

This issue first really came to the forefront for me when I learned that one of my friends was a first-generation college student. He and I had been casually playing tennis over the summer, talking about our families, when I first learned about his background and his journey to Haverford. I’m embarrassed to say that because of the way he dressed and acted, I had always just assumed he came from a comparable class background to my own.

When I was in high school, I took a class that culminated in a group project in which each group had to teach the class about a subculture. One group chose gangs as their topic. They started by showing pictures of different groups of people and asking the class to raise their hand if they though that the picture could be classified as a gang. No one raised their hand when they showed pictures of children playing and happy families, but when they showed a picture of a group of Hispanic men, almost everyone raised their hand. One of the girls in the presentation group then informed us that it was a picture of her dad and uncles at a family picnic.  The whole class went silent. The girl was the only Hispanic member of the predominately white class, and I immediately felt guilty. She showed us our internal prejudices, and it was one of the first times I realized my own prejudices and my white privilege. We did not classify any of the pictures of white people as gangs, but immediately assumed the Hispanic group was a gang. Whenever I think about diversity, multiculturalism, privilege, or prejudice, I always think about this moment and how it made these issues relevant for me for the first time. 

Switzerland is known to be a neutral country and home to numerous international organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank and Red Cross. As a result, one would assume people living in this country to be open-minded, diverse and non-discriminatory. However, one of my experiences living in Switzerland as an international student challenged my assumptions and demonstrated otherwise. It was frightening enough adjusting to the new temperature, language, people and food. I always had the belief that western teachers were friendly, creative and open to new suggestions. I left Malaysia in seek of a new life, perhaps a hope for a burst of inspiration that would expand my exposure of the world. The International Baccalaureate program allows me to pick a foreign language as one of my six subjects. It was either German or French. I picked French since I was living in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and I thought that the language was easier than German. I remembered entering French class on my first day of school. I was the second student that entered the classroom. The classroom was located in sous-sol, known as basement in English. I remembered how badly-lit and bone-chilling the setting was. When the teacher saw me, she greeted me with a smile and said bonjour. I smile and replied bonjour et merci. In Malaysia, I was always taught the importance of the teacher as an authoritative figure and it was necessary that I remain polite at all times.

Hi Friends,

In the spirit of our conversation on Eve Tuck's "Letter to Communities", I wanted to think about her ideas of "change," "theories of change," and whether or what Tuck might give her readers to help them/us feel empowered in diverging from entrenched models of "change." Tuck critiques traditional policy-oriented research methods for what she identifies as their failure to focus on, value, or hold up the desires and unique personhoods of its subjects. Rather, she argues, they focus on the deficiencies of their subjects vis-à-vis "normal" examples (that condition, perhaps, to which victims should be brought). She is certainly critical of research geared toward litigation and electoral success--not in their entirety but in the ways they fail to recognize their subjects as "complex" emotional beings. One of her examples of such research producing widespread societal change is Brown v. Board of Education.* I don't think many of us, Tuck included, would feel that the case shouldn't have happened and shouldn't have resulted in the outlawing (at least, theoretical outlawing) of discrimination. And yet, there's still some discomfort about how "change" should be brought about and what change means.