KeJia Sista
Jul 13th, 2005, 08:50 PM
Jeff Chang's Commentary on the "State of (Asian)
America"
JEFF CHANG SPEECH
On Monday, June 20, 2005
Asian American Studies Commencement Speech
http://www.cantstopwontstop.com/blog/2005/06/asian-american-studies-
commencement.cfm
Oh man. This was the toughest 10-minute speech I've ever had to
write.
I saw a bumper sticker in Berkeley today--yeah it's a bumper sticker
kind of town--"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember
what you said." The problem is getting to the truth in the first
place. Sheesh.
Thank you to the 2005 graduates of UCLA's Asian American Studies and
best of luck!
To Dr. Min Zhou, Dr. Don Nakanishi, the Asian American Studies
department faculty, the Asian American Center staff, Dr. Sue Ann
Kim, Dr. Kay Song, Irene Soriano and the student graduation
coordinating committee, and most of all, to the 2005 graduates of
the UCLA Asian American Studies Department, please let me extend my
heartfelt gratitude for being granted the honor to speak to you this
afternoon. To you graduates, let me offer a hearty congratulations
on your great achievement.
You are graduating into a dangerous world, a much more dangerous
world than the one I graduated into 10 years ago.
During the time you have studied here, you have witnessed the
unveiling of the U.S. as a warfare state. Indeed, the last three
decades of warsóin Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle
East, in domestic wars on graffiti, on drugs, on gangs, and on youthó
seem but a prelude to this imperial moment.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the kind of politics that conditioned the
emergence of the hip-hop generationónamely the politics of
containment and its twin, the politics of abandonmentóare on view
daily.
The logic of abandonment that left the Bronx and Watts to burn now
leaves Kabul and Baghdad shattered. The logic of containment that
has led to the incarceration, disenfranchisement, and dehumanizing
of 2 million people in the U.S. takes on an ugly, globalized form in
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
War is the backdrop to even the most pressing local issues. The
plague of joblessness, the resurgence of gang violence, the
explosion of interracial and interreligious tensions, and the debt-
driven real estate speculation that is driving massive racial
displacement are all effects of war.
Every day we ask ourselves the question: how do we begin to turn
back such catastrophic trends?
In a single, startling line of hope, Arundhati Roy has
written, "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way."
But what will that world look like? And will Asian Americans be
there to help midwife her birth?
ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND TRANSFORMATION
Twenty years ago, I took my first Asian American Studies course at
UC Berkeley, a freshman composition class. On the first day, the
teachers told us the theme would be "transformation".
Now when you take an Asian American Studies class, things happen.
Some people get very good grades. Other people get a lot of phone
numbers. But everyone undergoes some sort of transformation.
You start thinking about the way you grew up, how you were
socialized, who influenced you. You remember the first time you were
made to feel different, and the way you reacted. You look at the dry
cleaner, the bus driver, the waitress, the seamstress, your parents,
your grandparents, your siblings and cousins, all a little
differently.
Sometimes you develop a profound rage that you feel you have to
unleash.
You walk into an Abercrombie & Fitch store and you can't believe
they're selling t-shirts that say "Wong Brothers Laundry Service:
Two Wongs Can Make It White".
You watch a sports show and you can't believe a basketball superstar
is insulting another by making fun of his Asian accent.
You turn on your favorite hip-hop radio station, and you can't
believe the African American host is defending a racist song about
the tsunami by saying Asians who don't like the song probably think
they're superior to Blacks.
Sometimes you stay there in your anger. Your first rage is so
powerful, it's blinding.
Sometimes you think about it a little more, and you wonder about the
sweatshop workers being forced to manufacture those racist t-shirts.
You wonder what kind of masculinity requires an athlete to mock his
opponent in racial terms. You wonder what happened to make that
Black radio host want to be so hurtful.
Sometimes you then acquire a deep sadness, a disabling melancholy
that you don't feel you can overcome.
Asian American Studies is a different kind of intellectual
experience. It always takes you somewhere, and it also never leaves
you.
THE CRISIS AFTER MULTICULTURALISM
When I was at UC Berkeley during the 1980s, multiculturalism was our
rallying cry.
At its best, rainbow multiculturalism unveiled race in the
production of knowledge, culture, and power. And it proposed
alternatives, such as affirmative action or independent community-
centered arts. Jesse Jackson's presidential bids and Spike
Lee's "She's Gotta Have It", the anti-apartheid movement and the
redress and reparations movement, the push for diversity graduation
requirements and Don Nakanishi's successful tenure fightóthey were
all part of this moment.
Times have changed.
I was part of the first cohort of graduate students to enter the
Masters Program here after the Los Angeles Rebellion in 1992. Those
riots shook Asian American Studies to the core. The idea of Third
World solidarity that had guided us from the founding of Ethnic
Studies seemed to be in ashes. And in many ways, we are still
sorting through the rubble.
After the rebellion, multiculturalism was absorbed into global
capitalism, made easy for consumption. Its insurgency was contained.
Now dark skinsólike Jet Li or the Wu-Tang Clanóprovide global
entertainment. Alberto Gonzales and Condoleeza Riceónot Yuri
Kochiyama and Philip Vera Cruzóare presented as American icons of
racial struggle and success. Universities and corporations
increasingly see the value in diversity in a globalized world. And,
post-affirmative action, it is Asian American bodies who largely
provide that value.
For us, the Duboisian question is turned upside down, and is made to
haunt us: How does it feel to be a solution?
TOWARD ANOTHER WORLD
Cast this way, we cannot avoid our responsibility. We can only
dispatch ourselves with clearer purpose, principle, and integrity.
If we were to describe the world that we want, would it be a world
in which professional athletes are tested for accent sensitivity the
way they are tested for steroids? Would it be a world in which
Abercrombie and Fitch only sells us yellow-power t-shirts?
I ask, because this world is certainly possible. But it's not what
we should settle for.
Hot 97 radio personality Miss Jones tore open unhealed wounds with
her comments on Asians' supposed perceptions of superiority over
Blacks. But how do we heal those wounds? Where did those wounds come
from?
We cannot begin to answer these kinds of questions if we allow
ourselves to be caged by our first rage, or incapacitated by our
first sadness. That rage and sadness can block us from understanding
our truer roles, our unfulfilled responsibilities, our necessary
allies, and the larger forces at work against us all.
They prevent all of us from healing. They blind all of us to the
possibility of another world. We need to act from love.
So the transformation that we begin in Asian American Studies does
not end once classes do.
As the great Glenn Omatsu reminds us, the fundamental practice of
Asian American Studies is to build community. Building community
goes beyond centering the self. It is about imagining what it takes
to revere justice, to respect difference, to reduce hurt, to correct
wrong, to nurture growth, and to discover joy. It is about
activating and propagating these values within a conception of "we"
that continually expands, and is always concerned with caring for
the least of us first.
For us, the possibility of another world can begin with the project
of recuperating a progressive Asian American identity, one that
stands against the totalizing push of global capitalism and the new
imperialism, the disintegration of an anti-racist movement, and the
destruction of other oppressed communities, particularly African
Americans and indigenous peoples.
That possibility, in fact, begins with you.
To you, the graduates of Asian American Studies, here in this
dangerous moment, I regret to sayóand I am also happy to sayóthat we
place a lot of hope in you. I regret it because it means in some
sense we have not fully done our job. I am happy because I know our
faith is well-placed.
We look to you to lead the way forward toward a new Asian American
left, a new progressive movement, and the shining new world waiting
to be born.
Thank you for this opportunity, and once again, congratulations on
your most important achievement.
Ke Jia
America"
JEFF CHANG SPEECH
On Monday, June 20, 2005
Asian American Studies Commencement Speech
http://www.cantstopwontstop.com/blog/2005/06/asian-american-studies-
commencement.cfm
Oh man. This was the toughest 10-minute speech I've ever had to
write.
I saw a bumper sticker in Berkeley today--yeah it's a bumper sticker
kind of town--"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember
what you said." The problem is getting to the truth in the first
place. Sheesh.
Thank you to the 2005 graduates of UCLA's Asian American Studies and
best of luck!
To Dr. Min Zhou, Dr. Don Nakanishi, the Asian American Studies
department faculty, the Asian American Center staff, Dr. Sue Ann
Kim, Dr. Kay Song, Irene Soriano and the student graduation
coordinating committee, and most of all, to the 2005 graduates of
the UCLA Asian American Studies Department, please let me extend my
heartfelt gratitude for being granted the honor to speak to you this
afternoon. To you graduates, let me offer a hearty congratulations
on your great achievement.
You are graduating into a dangerous world, a much more dangerous
world than the one I graduated into 10 years ago.
During the time you have studied here, you have witnessed the
unveiling of the U.S. as a warfare state. Indeed, the last three
decades of warsóin Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle
East, in domestic wars on graffiti, on drugs, on gangs, and on youthó
seem but a prelude to this imperial moment.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the kind of politics that conditioned the
emergence of the hip-hop generationónamely the politics of
containment and its twin, the politics of abandonmentóare on view
daily.
The logic of abandonment that left the Bronx and Watts to burn now
leaves Kabul and Baghdad shattered. The logic of containment that
has led to the incarceration, disenfranchisement, and dehumanizing
of 2 million people in the U.S. takes on an ugly, globalized form in
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
War is the backdrop to even the most pressing local issues. The
plague of joblessness, the resurgence of gang violence, the
explosion of interracial and interreligious tensions, and the debt-
driven real estate speculation that is driving massive racial
displacement are all effects of war.
Every day we ask ourselves the question: how do we begin to turn
back such catastrophic trends?
In a single, startling line of hope, Arundhati Roy has
written, "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way."
But what will that world look like? And will Asian Americans be
there to help midwife her birth?
ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND TRANSFORMATION
Twenty years ago, I took my first Asian American Studies course at
UC Berkeley, a freshman composition class. On the first day, the
teachers told us the theme would be "transformation".
Now when you take an Asian American Studies class, things happen.
Some people get very good grades. Other people get a lot of phone
numbers. But everyone undergoes some sort of transformation.
You start thinking about the way you grew up, how you were
socialized, who influenced you. You remember the first time you were
made to feel different, and the way you reacted. You look at the dry
cleaner, the bus driver, the waitress, the seamstress, your parents,
your grandparents, your siblings and cousins, all a little
differently.
Sometimes you develop a profound rage that you feel you have to
unleash.
You walk into an Abercrombie & Fitch store and you can't believe
they're selling t-shirts that say "Wong Brothers Laundry Service:
Two Wongs Can Make It White".
You watch a sports show and you can't believe a basketball superstar
is insulting another by making fun of his Asian accent.
You turn on your favorite hip-hop radio station, and you can't
believe the African American host is defending a racist song about
the tsunami by saying Asians who don't like the song probably think
they're superior to Blacks.
Sometimes you stay there in your anger. Your first rage is so
powerful, it's blinding.
Sometimes you think about it a little more, and you wonder about the
sweatshop workers being forced to manufacture those racist t-shirts.
You wonder what kind of masculinity requires an athlete to mock his
opponent in racial terms. You wonder what happened to make that
Black radio host want to be so hurtful.
Sometimes you then acquire a deep sadness, a disabling melancholy
that you don't feel you can overcome.
Asian American Studies is a different kind of intellectual
experience. It always takes you somewhere, and it also never leaves
you.
THE CRISIS AFTER MULTICULTURALISM
When I was at UC Berkeley during the 1980s, multiculturalism was our
rallying cry.
At its best, rainbow multiculturalism unveiled race in the
production of knowledge, culture, and power. And it proposed
alternatives, such as affirmative action or independent community-
centered arts. Jesse Jackson's presidential bids and Spike
Lee's "She's Gotta Have It", the anti-apartheid movement and the
redress and reparations movement, the push for diversity graduation
requirements and Don Nakanishi's successful tenure fightóthey were
all part of this moment.
Times have changed.
I was part of the first cohort of graduate students to enter the
Masters Program here after the Los Angeles Rebellion in 1992. Those
riots shook Asian American Studies to the core. The idea of Third
World solidarity that had guided us from the founding of Ethnic
Studies seemed to be in ashes. And in many ways, we are still
sorting through the rubble.
After the rebellion, multiculturalism was absorbed into global
capitalism, made easy for consumption. Its insurgency was contained.
Now dark skinsólike Jet Li or the Wu-Tang Clanóprovide global
entertainment. Alberto Gonzales and Condoleeza Riceónot Yuri
Kochiyama and Philip Vera Cruzóare presented as American icons of
racial struggle and success. Universities and corporations
increasingly see the value in diversity in a globalized world. And,
post-affirmative action, it is Asian American bodies who largely
provide that value.
For us, the Duboisian question is turned upside down, and is made to
haunt us: How does it feel to be a solution?
TOWARD ANOTHER WORLD
Cast this way, we cannot avoid our responsibility. We can only
dispatch ourselves with clearer purpose, principle, and integrity.
If we were to describe the world that we want, would it be a world
in which professional athletes are tested for accent sensitivity the
way they are tested for steroids? Would it be a world in which
Abercrombie and Fitch only sells us yellow-power t-shirts?
I ask, because this world is certainly possible. But it's not what
we should settle for.
Hot 97 radio personality Miss Jones tore open unhealed wounds with
her comments on Asians' supposed perceptions of superiority over
Blacks. But how do we heal those wounds? Where did those wounds come
from?
We cannot begin to answer these kinds of questions if we allow
ourselves to be caged by our first rage, or incapacitated by our
first sadness. That rage and sadness can block us from understanding
our truer roles, our unfulfilled responsibilities, our necessary
allies, and the larger forces at work against us all.
They prevent all of us from healing. They blind all of us to the
possibility of another world. We need to act from love.
So the transformation that we begin in Asian American Studies does
not end once classes do.
As the great Glenn Omatsu reminds us, the fundamental practice of
Asian American Studies is to build community. Building community
goes beyond centering the self. It is about imagining what it takes
to revere justice, to respect difference, to reduce hurt, to correct
wrong, to nurture growth, and to discover joy. It is about
activating and propagating these values within a conception of "we"
that continually expands, and is always concerned with caring for
the least of us first.
For us, the possibility of another world can begin with the project
of recuperating a progressive Asian American identity, one that
stands against the totalizing push of global capitalism and the new
imperialism, the disintegration of an anti-racist movement, and the
destruction of other oppressed communities, particularly African
Americans and indigenous peoples.
That possibility, in fact, begins with you.
To you, the graduates of Asian American Studies, here in this
dangerous moment, I regret to sayóand I am also happy to sayóthat we
place a lot of hope in you. I regret it because it means in some
sense we have not fully done our job. I am happy because I know our
faith is well-placed.
We look to you to lead the way forward toward a new Asian American
left, a new progressive movement, and the shining new world waiting
to be born.
Thank you for this opportunity, and once again, congratulations on
your most important achievement.
Ke Jia