This website is to share what it is like growing-up Asian-American. I don't intend to represent the whole Asian American population, but to hopefully give a general perspective. I was born and raised in St. Paul to parents that immigrated here all the way from the Philippines in 1972 (exact year?).
I started to have an interest on my Asian American "world" identity during high school when several Asian Americans told me about the Asian Club. I then stayed after school to hangout with some of the Asian Americans, where I began to realize the many common traits we shared.
Then at UMM, I began to explore more by joining the Asian Student Association. Check out the "Photo Gallery" down below to see pictures on my involvement with ASA during my college years from 1995-1999. Learning other Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst my peers encouraged me to search more of my own. This is when I started to have a desire to learn more about my Filipino culture.
Asian American is a very generalize, which doesn't really describe much of this racial group label. There is more to the person then this racial identiy. But, we in America have to classify groups to somewhat have a general idea of the different groups represented in our diverse nation.
Within this group are many different Asian ethnic nations, which different cultures. Within each nation there is different ethnic tribes. It boils down to the individual, which here is my specific story.
This college focus website is to give a general information of the Asian American perspective.
[1995-1996] [1996-1997] [1997-1998] [1998-1999]
Other notables that ASA has come to share their "gifts" and "talents" at UMM are:
Below are some historical "hate crimes" that I've kept track over the years here including the most recent one:
-Fall of 1996: "PFM Incident"-An Asian American female was harassed at PFM: Food Service by some guys debating about Native American Indian Tuition Waiver and other "minority" issues
-Fall of 2002: "Gook at Old #1"-I personally was present when an Asian-American college student was with a group of international students celebrating a particular student's birthday. We were entering the bar and the folks just stared at us with unpleasant looks. This particular "victim" was called "gook". We left as there wasn't much of a party. As we were leaving, several young adult "Caucasian" Americans started singing "God Bless America" profundly with ridicule (I have experienced this several times as presumed passive way of "hate" towards foreigners")
-date unknown: Cambodian American walking through town and was called names by high school teenagers
From : ASA
Sent : Wednesday, March 17, 2004 7:29 AM
Subject : Hate Crime towards Asian Students at UMM
To All of You,
We ASA members would like to inform you of the hate crime that has occurred towards Asian students on Monday, the kick-off day of the Asian Awareness Week. Some people put remarks like “All Ching Chong people are short and all Ching Chong men have small dicks; “ Ching Chong Ping Pong” on ASA flyers in the student center.
As members of ASA, we are greatly disappointed and hurt by these remarks. We don’t think this is an individual act but we believe this is just another incident to show that UMM is far from being a place of inclusiveness and racial diversity tolerance.
We, as a group, have resolved that we will take the following actions:
1) Urge intensive police investigation on who committed the crime
2) Send out informative flyers on reality of UMM campus climate
3) Make buttons against Hate Crime
4) Do sign-up sheets for support of students of color
5) Ask for support from other student organizations such as UR, KUMM and the top
of UMM administrations
6) Do an open forum against Hate-Crime, in alliance with Equality and other
student organizations
We will need your help to implement these actions and we would deeply appreciate if this can be addressed to the entire campus.
PERSONAL ACTION
-participate in local community education opportunities. I joined this program for a couple of years while I was a student with Morris Community Education, where we went to schools and shared about our cultural background. Yes, we did get "offensive" questions, but from little kids-one needs to understand their enviromntal cultural up-bringing. We can make a difference one person at a time, and when they are young-that's the best time to do so!
-pray for your enemies (see persecutions to get a beyond Morris small world-view perspective)
-share your stories of racism, so people who never encounter this will have a better understanding and idea what this experience is like
* for more other "guests" that came to UMM for an ASA function, check out the "Photo Gallery" above for links
Artist(s)
-Poetry
College
Cultural
Media
Political
Media
Ministries:
Networking
BOOKS:
Videos:
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