Asian Americans and the #NotYourAsianSidekick Movement
BY DELIA SHEN for CHINESE STUDENT ASSOCIATION
Today, Asian Americans are often viewed as a “model minority,” a minority group that achieves higher levels of success than the general population. This term not only overlooks the many Asian Americans who live in poverty or face health problems, but also diminishes the power of any call to action against Asian American injustice. Many simply use cultural differences as justification for the lack of voice behind Asian American advocacy, but the issue stems from a lack of education about Asian American history. This topic is often overlooked in US history books despite Asians having been in this country for hundreds of years. However, the tides are changing, and Asian Americans are finding new outlets in social media for their voices to be heard.
Suey Park has recently brought this discussion back into the limelight with the #NotYourAsianSidekick movement. What began as a simple Twitter hashtag to initiate discussion on Asian American feminism quickly became a trend that expanded into a forum for people to talk about racism, prejudice, microaggressions, social justice issues, and stigmas. Asian American activists have been tackling these issues for decades, but Suey Park has made it accessible to everyone, regardless of their background. This movement provides an example of how social media can link members of a community together to address social justice topics. But now that these issues have been thrust into view, we must build off this momentum and continue educating ourselves to work towards making a positive change.
Asian American issues have certainly been addressed previously on Wash U’s campus, with the school recently offering a course on Asian Americans. However, despite the multitude of Asian cultural clubs, there is still no cohesive Asian community. WashU’s CSA (Chinese Students Association) has been going through a transformation to move in this direction and create a larger impact on campus. While we tend to align with being American more so than being Chinese, our heritage is still something that we are proud of and do not want to lose. We spent a long time this past semester discussing how to go beyond simply giving away free food and move towards building a community, facilitating conversations about Asian American social justice issues, and immersing ourselves in and giving back to the St. Louis Chinese community. However, these are issues on our campus that we cannot discuss without help from the entire Asian community. We hope that all the cultural clubs on campus can embrace these types of issues together in the future and continue discussion and education on diversity.