This is not a personal attack. Really this is in self-defense of Jesse Brenner calling us the thought police (Wespeak, April 20). We are a damn mess, huh? Let’s all take “a long look in the mirror and ask ourselves exactly what went wrong here.” Why are these two Asian girls so angry? Why are they asking me to stop making assumptions about them because they’re Asian…… We find it really fucking funny that all of a sudden WE are policing what Jesse can and cannot do, say, perform, whatever, when his whole Wespeak thingy was about how we were too political, cynical, inappropriate, irrelevant and petty. We wholeheartedly disagree with you about all of these things.
NOTHING WE EVEN SAID WAS THAT RADICAL. You just don’t want to hear these words coming out of Asian mouths. Assuming what political is (that we were the only political ones in the show, that we’re the only political Asian voices on the campus) is wrong, limiting, and what is suffocating “The Revolution” you speak of. Maybe you just identify so strongly with Asian people (but not Asian people like US-the radicals!!!!) that you can’t handle being told that we’re not here to help you enjoy our culture. But that’s really the whole point of what we expressed is that culture works in weird ways in Asia/Asian America—we’re not all the same.
We were up there repping ourselves, our ideas, our backgrounds, our talents (our class- 04!), and explicitly said that we weren’t trying to do anything more than that. We weren’t pretending like all Asian people feel and think the same way that we do, we were trying to express that diversity of Asians isn’t just national affiliation. Ideological diversity and political diversity is very real and important too.
You claim to know that you knew what we were “trying to say,” (and that you agree with us, damn it!) but in actuality, what we said was what we said. We guess you missed the point if you thought you had to figure us out instead of listening to what we were saying. Perhaps you could let us know what cultural stereotypes you are “shocked by in the media and mainstream culture,” and then also let us know what else it was that it was that made you so “shocked by the conduct of the two MC’s, (US)” and then maybe also how Wesleyan is not “mainstream culture.”
It’s amazing that you see criticism of the racism of how society perceives Asian people as NOT appreciating or celebrating Asian and Asian Americans. I know you just wanted a show that you could cum and look at, watch, and go home and feel great about how liberal you are cause you saw a cultural show. Well we’re not at all sorry that’s not what you got, because our culture is political. If you wanted something that didn’t make you think about your own stereotypes about Asians and Asian Americans, you came to the wrong show. Asian and Asian American cultures are STEREOTYPED as not being political. Racial stereotypes are generalizations attached to a large group of people who are actually very diverse and often do not fit into the stereotypes. There is nothing inappropriate about talking about Asian and Asian American visibility in “mainstream culture” in a place like Mabuhay. Perhaps you wouldn’t write the same thing about Jubilee and Expressions and Shakti not being “neither the time nor the place” for political expression.
We knew going into it that people weren’t going to agree with us. We didn’t assume, nor expect, that everyone would. We said what we wanted to say in the way that we said it and if it came off as political (ha ha ha) then we’re happy. We were doing it for ourselves and other Asians and Asian Americans (which was the P-O-I-N-T) so thanks for your input.
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