Oh dear ! Now white racism causes international asian to self segregate from american asian students.
Asian students guilty of 'colorblind racism,' prof claims Toni Airaksinen New York Campus Correspondent Today at 11:16 AM EDT
An Asian American Studies professor at the University of Illinois recently warned that the interaction of Asian American students and Asian international students can reinforce "colorblind racism."
Finding that Asian international students tend to self-segregate by nationality, Soo Ah Kwon said efforts to reach out to them by Asian American students reflect the pervasiveness of "normative whiteness" on campus.
A professor claims that Asian American students reinforce “colorblind racism” by taking responsibility for integrating Asian international students on campus.
“We problematize this schema not only because it places undue responsibility upon Asian American students but [because] it also renders the experiences of racial marginalization and discrimination invisible for international and domestic racial minority students,” writes Soo Ah Kwon, a professor of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the recent issue of Race, Ethnicity, and Education (REE).
"Efforts to mitigate racial difference is understood and marked as belonging to non-white students in a colorblind society."
“In other words, efforts to mitigate racial difference is understood and marked as belonging to non-white students in a colorblind society,” Kwon and her two co-authors elaborate, basing their conclusion on interviews with students at Midwestern University (MU) and data from a four-year research project.
Kwon’s team paid special attention to members of Asian American cultural clubs, which have ramped up their efforts to reach out to international students over the last few years, given a recent major influx of such students to MU.
Noting that “Asian American students and their organizations took on the responsibility of integrating Asian international students on campus,” the article contends that “this institutional arrangement reflects the university’s management of difference by affirming the value of diversity...while overlooking the larger patterns of racial segregation on campus, and the marginalization of racial minority students, both domestic and international.”
To her dismay, Kwon discovered that despite such efforts at integration, many international Asian students preferred to spend time with classmates of their own nationality, and that most didn’t express concern over the matter.
While international students responded that self-segregation was a “preference,” Kwon was troubled by the notion, casting doubt over whether their choices are based on “past historical injustices” and “contemporary racism under normative whiteness.”
In other words, Kwon’s theory suggests that “normative whiteness” in America actually causes Asian students to self-segregate. For instance, when a student named Sam expressed an “inability to make friends beyond his fellow circle of Asian Americans,” Kwon observed that he didn’t stop to consider that this issue is caused by “forms of racial discrimination.”
The fact that international Asian students didn’t see self-segregation as a problem was troubling for Kwon, who argued that their passivity can serve to “reinforce colorblind racism.”
According to Kwon, colorblind racism occurs when “contemporary racial inequality is reproduced through ideologies, practices, and policies that support nonracial dynamics,” meaning that failing to take race into account when confronting various issues can be problematic because it ignores the “structures of power that privileges whiteness and white supremacy.”
To fight this, Kwon argues that international students’ preference for self-segregation should be actively addressed by college administrators, arguing that right now, the “labor of diversity management” unfairly falls on domestic students, many of whom try to make friends with international students but fail.”
Fixing this “must be an institutional responsibility that takes serious stock of racism and marginalization of domestic minority and international students on campus,” Kwon concludes, though she does not make any specific recommendations.
ZitatTo her dismay, Kwon discovered that despite such efforts at integration, many international Asian students preferred to spend time with classmates of their own nationality...
Who woulda thunk these kids would prefer to hang with others who speak their language and have a similar cultural background? Shocking, I know, but somehow, I'll betcha, whitey is at fault.
The favorite tool in the main stream media's (MSM) tool bag is the overt suppression of good news favoring conservatives or Republicans. Following closely behind is their suppression of bad news about Democrats.