Deconstructing Silence

Deconstructing Silence: A Response to the Existing Conversation on Diversity & Inclusion at American University

---

Over the past four years, as the primary student organization that offers students a platform to engage in subjects concerning East Asia, PEACE has been proud of American University’s commitment to establish an “inclusive environment for its multicultural students”. In response to the national discussion on diversity and inclusion (catalyzed by the LGBTQ Rights movement and Black Lives Matter Movement), AU has promoted and sponsored campus-wide educations to translate its position of solidarity into its programs. It has strived to equalize access to student services and empowered minority students to identify disparities that the university have overlooked.

In the past year, the AU student body has notably mobilized behind student-led movements on campus, such as the LGBTQ Rights, Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights, Workers’ Rights, and Sexual Violence Awareness -- all in the effort to expand the conversation on diversity and inclusion.

These efforts are commendable, but the discussions on diversity and inclusion do not include AU’s Asian and Asian American community--and our absence goes unnoticed.

Majority of PEACE’s members, and their respective communities, make up the 6.4% of the student body that identifies as, “Asian” at AU. Despite the fact that Asian students make up a larger minority than other ethnic groups on campus, the Asian community at American University lacks adequate (if not, any) representation in its staff. Only seven percent of AU faculty members identify as Asian, in comparison to 64% White and 13.9% Black Faculty. Likewise, the staff at AU’s Center of Diversity & Inclusion Center lacks any representation of Asians and even in AU’s recent 2016 Multicultural Student-Alumni Career Connection.

Even within the current conversations about Diversity & Inclusion in this year’s AU SG Election, the issues and concerns that Asian students face on campus have not been voiced and are hardly recognized. Only 2 standing participants of AU SG identify as Asian, out of roughly 100 AU SG members--not including Class Councils. Consequently limiting the exposure of the issues and concerns that Asian students face on campus to the larger Student Body and thus, once again, excluded from the discussions about Diversity and Inclusion at AU.

This marginalization and exclusion, however, is not a new phenomenon.

The underrepresentation of Asian students at AU is driven by the intentional and historical apoliticization of Asians in the context of “American Diversity and Inclusion”.

Discussions in the United States regarding race and ethnicity have been typically formulated between white and black, historically placing Asians in the “in-between” and birthing the idea of racial triangulation, the result of when a dominant majority group puts another group above another inferior group but still keeps them as outsiders.

The concept of Asian America is also negligent to the ethnic diversities within the Asian American Identity that are systematically simplified by the term, “Asian”. The seemingly harmless “Model Minority” stereotype of Asians in America has been used to not only racialize the African American community, but to also systematically enforce the portrayal of Asians as passive and simply outside any discussion regarding politics or social issues.

Any discussion regarding Asian America has never been for or in concern for this demographic group, but rather closely linked to power struggles within different racial groups in the U.S. Because the cultural hegemony of the American society typically accepts this notion that Asians are the “Model Minority", the illusion that Asian Americans have successfully assimilated into the White American society has been accepted into this group to be “of its own” has further been created.

We are considered “white but not quite” and thus clearly are not fully welcomed to participate and stand in equity with those can identity as White. In that respect, we stand in solidarity with other minority groups, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and other non-ethnically specific movements such as LGBTQ Rights, Women’s Rights, Workers’’ Rights, Immigrants’ Rights, Disability Rights, and many more. However, lack of expression of solidarity from other minority groups for the Asian demographic reinforces the notion that the Asian political voice and representation is not of equal importance to their own.

The unique issues that are specific to Asians are underrepresented, on-campus and in greater society, and are viewed as secondary to the minority groups it stands in solidarity with because there is simply a lack of voice in this community.

If there is one key takeaway, it is this: Solidarity means standing together in unity. It means diversity. It means together. It means EQUAL inclusion.

#EQUALinclusion