YouTube video mocking Asians stirs UCLA campus
llie Grasgreen, Inside Higher Ed

“When a University of California at Los Angeles student, in a video she posted online, used a mock foreign language to imitate Asian students talking loudly in the library, she probably didn’t think twice about it. But for many, that moment — along with others in the video — was yet another illustration of students’ willingness to openly criticize their Asian peers.

And while UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block acted swiftly by issuing a statement and video saying the young woman’s speech “has no place at UCLA,” the reality is that it’s commonplace.

The reputation of Asian Americans as a “model minority” has long plagued students of that ethnicity. They have said that professors hold them to higher standards. Affirmative action debates often touch on the fear that without the policy, students of Asian descent would replace other minority populations on campuses. And satirical articles in student newspapers have mocked studious Asians in very public fashion. (The student newspaper at the University of Colorado at Boulder suspended its opinion section and pledged to undergo sensitivity and diversity training three years ago, after it published an anti-Asian satire.)”

Read the rest of the article here.

I think this article hits very close to home and the experiences I had while at school.

I’m glad people are speaking up.