On the cover of last Friday’s Argus, there is a picture of four smiling white male individuals, being celebrated like Wesleyan’s heroes of activism. Inside the editorial reads, “Anyone wishing to affect change can learn from Herman, Brenner, Ahl and Tuck’s success and vision.”
I don’t know anything about the members of this inspiring group of men, except that I recognized the name Jesse Brenner, because the Argus interviewed him a few months ago. And I also remembered that Brenner has appeared in the Argus once before. Last spring, on April 20, 2004, Brenner wrote a wespeak condemning Mabuhay, the annual Asian/Asian American show in April for being “too political,” as if our culture and politics are two completely separate things, as if he as a white guy had the right to tell us what our show should have been about. In the wespeak, Brenner writes, “What should have been an appreciation and celebration of Asian and Asian American culture was instead appropriated to serve as a soapbox for a string of political tirades, thinly veiled in tasteless humor and the played-out ‘irony’ of which we are so fond at Wesleyan. While cultural appropriation, exoticism, and ethnic ”invisibility“ are certainly relevant issues, Mabuhay was neither the time nor the place for these issues to be expressed, and the methods that were used were inappropriate and petty.” Brenner concludes with, “Let’s put the ‘open-minded’ back into ‘liberal’ before we make all radical politics on this campus completely irrelevant. Let’s not suffocate The Revolution with its own shortcomings.”
There were a lot of us who were angry with Brenner for his harsh, unwanted, criticisms of our show. But with these trivial bygones aside, I would just like to thank you, Jesse, for showing me what you think social change is all about, and for enlightening me about a better and more effective medium through which to channel The Revolution: iTunes! Maybe this year, if we really want to make Mabuhay political, we should simply turn the show into a CD, sell it on iTunes, and donate the money to Amnesty International to help put an end to the millions of human rights abuses in all of Asia that are happening each and every single day.
The community should all feel so happy, so relieved that this new form of activism at Wesleyan is a kind that is recognized positively by the Argus, other local papers, and not to mention Doug Bennet; it’s devoid of extremist radical politics, and it doesn’t create controversies. It makes us feel good about ourselves without requiring the questioning, the changing—or the “policing”—of our thoughts. Finally, it is a cause that really matters for once! Because local issues are irrelevant and people of the third world are the only victims, because identity politics are not connected in any way to social change discourse. Having worked those petty matters out, on to save Sudan! We shall all unite and take a stand together, raising our iPod-clutching fists high in the air, in a revolution that is for them, by US.
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