Okay, okay, here I go again, with the Taiwan thing.
Two years ago when I was applying to attend UCLA, I complained bitterly about how the UCLA Graduate School application states that students who identify as “Taiwanese” should check “Chinese” on the application. I explained that this practice replicates the same existing oppression that people who are Taiwanese already face from China (you don’t get to decide what to identify as, we do) and also is inconsistent with official University policies, which collects data on Taiwanese students.
The first week I stepped foot on campus, I marched straight to the admissions office and requested a form changing my ethnicity to Taiwanese. So you see, it IS possible for graduate students to be counted at Taiwanese at UCLA…if you are accepted, and if you go to the administrative office window, in person, during class hours, and request a specific form to do so. The form is not available online. If you weren’t an undergrad you probably wouldn’t even know of the option to check Taiwanese.
It was too late for me, though, in the sense that the diversity report for my graduate division had already been produced, counting me as “Chinese.” In the section that counts “Domestic Asian admitted students by ethnicity, 2010-2011” it lists Asian categories like Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Samoan, etc. It states that in my cohort there are 12 Chinese students and thus, one out of 3 Asian students in the MSW program is Chinese; and thus Chinese form an Asian majority in the program.
Well, that’s fucking wrong. I know it’s wrong because it reports zero “other” Asians. Since Taiwanese is not explicitly listed, I know I am an “other Asian.” Since I know at least three other Taiwanese American students in my cohort, I also know that we were all counted as Chinese instead of as other Asian. If you take us out of the calculations, then Chinese students suddenly stop appearing like the majority (becoming tied or fewer than students of Filipino descent) and Taiwanese students make up approximately 10% of the cohort. So this is actually a situation where A) Not only were Taiwanese students denied self-determination in self-identification but B) It had a significant impact on the data and assumptions of over-representation in the graduate program. Which in turn impacts financial aid and diversity scholarship distribution, as well as recruitment.
I didn’t find out about this report until I was asked to join a task force to write the diversity report for next year. I’m seriously starting to doubt if I have the “objectivity” or rather, the emotional stamina, to conduct this study or write this report.
We were trying to consult with a professor about creating a survey instrument. The professor agreed that the diversity results in most recent report were certainly off; she felt her classes were far less diverse than reported. I said I agreed that the report was off, and noted the over-representation of Chinese students and erasure of Taiwanese students due to the flawed data collection.
The professor chuckled and said, “Well, I don’t think we need to quibble about something small like that.”
Quibble. Quibble. I could feel all of the good will I had towards this professor—who had generously offered to help us with his project—shriveling up in my chest like a dead houseplant. Maybe it’s something small to her, a white American woman, maybe it’s something small because she doesn’t have relatives living on a tiny island an ocean away with thousands of missiles pointed at it. Because she doesn’t have grandparents who speak about this tiny island and the oppression they experienced, and the value of freedom, with passion and ardor. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t assume, maybe she is of Georgian descent or something and knows what it is like after all.
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A few months ago I ordered a batch of Keep Taiwan Free t-shirts for myself and for my like-minded brother. They sent me some free totebags.
Since I had an extra tote bag, I gave one to my mother. She was excited, since she is part of her church choir and needed a tote. My mother said, “Thanks, this is a cute bag. I can use it to carry my songbooks.”
Then her face fell and she said, “Well, actually, wait. I can’t take this bag to church.” I asked her why not, and she said, “A lot of the other people who are in the choir are from China. I wouldn’t want to offend them.”
To me, this was so mindboggling! Not because I am used to offending people, but because a part of me still can’t understand why the idea that a Taiwanese person carrying a tote saying “Keep Taiwan Free” would perturb someone who has nothing to do with Taiwan, when the belief or saying in no way threatens to disenfranchise them.
(Actually, on second thought…I don’t know why this surprised me at all. There are plenty of people who are bothered by other people’s “gay marriages” or people who will never need contraceptives or abortion offended by people who are gay getting married or people accessing reproductive medical care.)
I just wonder if incidences like these have made my amygdala primed to throw up unnecessary shields. Like maybe I subconsciously chose to use my Keep Taiwan Free totebag to carry leftover UCLA drive supplies for the marrow donor drive I ran at my mom’s church last Sunday, rather than transferring those supplies to a new tote, just to assert myself. To be defiant towards the Chinese choir. (God, how Taiwanese of me.)
Because it’s starting to get to the point where I anticipate that if I am working with an international student from China, I fear that I should either never mention I am Taiwanese, or prepare to fiercely justify why I identify as Taiwanese American.
I keep doing things subconsciously, like this morning I was going through t-shirts and thought it would be cute to wear my green Taiwanese American shirt because it is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and it’s been the first time in my twenty five years of life that I have really been into it. But then halfway through the day I also realized that today was a Diversity Survey meeting day. So of course I had chosen to wear (gird myself with?) the most pro-Taiwanese Independence t-shirt I owned in my arsenal. Was it a coincidental, subconscious decision or am I doing that thing again, where I create symbolic protest and strewn it in my wake?
At the meeting, one of the students on the work group, who is a Chinese male international student, suggested that on our survey we should just have an “Asian” check box for Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students, instead of separate check boxes.
I wanted to rip his throat out! I know it wasn’t his fault; he probably doesn’t know about the years and years and years and years that it took for the Asian Pacific Coalition at UCLA to get data for Asian groups dis-aggregated, including getting legislators and assembly bills involved. He probably hasn’t taken an Asian American studies class or read about the dangers of assuming Asian Americans are a monolithic minority.
Yes, I was angry. I stammered out that I disagreed and then firmly laid out why. But that part of me that does the second-guessing started eating away at me, too.
After I stated my vehement disagreement, that workgroup member said nothing for the rest of the meeting while I was there. (I had to leave early to return to work.)
It reminded me of what my Critical Race Theory professor had written to me in her evaluation (a parting shot to a tempestuous student-teacher relationship). She wrote, “you sometimes came across as angry and while you have a right to your anger, it can limit the ability of others to securely enter a discussion.”
I am “culturally competent” enough to know that an Asian woman is NOT supposed to be vehement, or vocal, as I do, or dress or act butch, as I do, or god forbid act anything other than demure; lest I come across as too masculine, too assertive, and angry by inference. I know better than that, right? So maybe I was feeling defensive and trying to make this Chinese guy feel defensive, because I was feeling defensive. Was I in fact doing that? Was my professor right? Do I silence people? Or should I factor in what yet another professor has been teaching in her lectures about group dynamics—that in groups, contrary to what is widely assumed, silent members do so by choice and can actually hold a lot of power and control by withholding their participation. Why is my self-awareness all over the place?
Was I more on the defensive because the person who was against dis-aggregating the data was Chinese? Am I turning into a…nationalist? (Sorry, Taiwanese politics joke.)
Last week I met with a professor, who is South Korean and likes to ask me about being Taiwanese, even though I am technically Taiwanese American. She told me about how in the 1980s, when she was at university in California as an international student, she had many Taiwanese friends. The day after South Korea cut diplomatic ties to Taiwan and began working with Communist China, these Taiwanese friends ostracized her. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to become so intolerant of difference of opinion that I am like a church choir member that would be affronted by a tote bag slogan.
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