As a member of the Mabuhay Planning Committee and one of the students who was “exotic enough” to be called onstage, I thought I’d share my feelings about the show and Jesse Brenner’s 4/20 Wespeak. First off, the performers are not cultural whores whose purpose is to satisfy Wesleyan’s lust for the exotic, and Kendra and Una weren’t put up on stage to help the audience get off and ejaculate their ideas of cultural “appreciation” and “celebration” onto our brown and yellow faces. News flash: Asian American culture is political. It was built on radical politics and continues to thrive on them, and it isn’t anyone’s place to tell us that the show should not have been a venue for political expression. How dare anyone consume our cultures then get pissy when we start to talk back? Brown, yellow, and black people were not put on this earth to entertain white men (and neither was our music, FYI). It isn’t our job to make sure we aren’t offensive, and one big happy Wesleyan family is not our goal. People of color are not helpless without white allie—we can and do get things done on our own. And we have the right to express ourselves at OUR shows without giving a fuck who feels alienated by our “divisive” politics.
Mabuhay has a right to be political
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