Dear Mandy Ho,
We have read your Wespeak thoroughly and many times over. We implore you to double check your information before you publish a piece of work to be displayed to the campus. It is not only deeply offensive but also ignorant. Please be considerate of other people’s work. Many hours of unpaid dedication, that you so callously disregarded, went into producing the purple-phoenix poster and t-shirts.
In regards your first comment, “First of all, why did they put Asians and Arabs together? Is it because we kind of look the same…there’s no way they could mix Asians and Arabs together.” This is completely beside the point of the month, which is to raise awareness about marginalized groups in the United States. Your focus on the physical appearance of what an “Asian” and “Arab” looks like is a bit disconcerting, because this further segregates marginalized groups making it increasingly difficult to work productively. If you meant to imply that individuals of the Middle East deserve to be considered a separate continent because their culture is so different from “Asians,” perhaps that point is valid, but by a technicality “Arabs”/ the Middle East is a large portion of the continent known as “Asia.” We are honored that “Arabs” are within the category of “Asians.” Your intense focus on these pre-conceived ideas of what is an “Asian” or an “Arab” already indicates that your understanding of EXACTLY WHY these months are necessary is flawed.
This month is about celebrating and acknowledging each community recognized in this month because in the US, they are not the dominant society. The dominant society sets the standards of acceptability and appropriateness in color, culture, and media; hence, there is a need for April Awareness Month to shine through preexisting social structures.
If you have issues with April Awareness Month, please read up on it and let’s have a discussion. There is no need to be belligerent. Again, thank you for your wonderful Wespeak and your tolerance of the Wesleyan community.
Best,
Theodora Fan, Jean Park, Jessica Tsai, Terry Wei, Cecil Apostol
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