Published June 1, 2007
To my fellow API graduating class of 2007: we sure have come a long way in the last four years.
Way back in high school, we probably didn't know a thing about the internment camps or the trappings of the Model Minority Myth. We either wished that we were white or because we listened to a lot of rap music convinced ourselves that we were black.
The history of our communities were either mentioned in passing in tiny blurbs or not even acknowledged at all. With the exception of movies like "Better Luck Tomorrow," there was no way in hell that our kind of people (read: yellow skin, slanted eyes, black hair) would ever get any kind of representation in a way that made us look cool.
And like any good Asian, we accepted all this without question or protest.
But then we came to college. We took our first Asian American Studies class our freshman year and got hooked on big ideas like social progress, self-empowerment and access to higher education. We joined student-run ethnic organizations out of whim during orientation week and eventually learned that the best way to attract members of the opposite sex was to play taiko.
We all started checking angryasianman.com on a regular basis like our personal Bible and decided that it was time to get angry.
During my four years here at UCLA, I've been lucky to meet many of you through nation-wide conferences, club meetings, academic classes and drunken after-parties celebrating the end of a Cultural Night show.
I've been blown away by your superhuman time management skills as presidents of big ethnic organizations, organizers of political rallies for immigrant rights and editor-in-chiefs of socially conscious newsmagazines. Because seriously, how the heck did you manage to do all that without failing any of your classes?
As I near the end of my college days, I realize that if it weren't for many of you, I would have never found the courage to step up, speak out and get involved - such as waking up at five in the morning to go to the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage with fellow JA students. Or pushing myself to act, direct and write in an AA collegiate theater group that was subversive by its mere assertion that AA are capable of telling their own stories however they want. Or applying for the Nikkei Community Internship in Little Tokyo, which was how I started writing for the Pacific Citizen in the first place.
I have grown to realize, with many of you, that when we make a conscious decision to become an active part of the AA community, we experience our collective struggles and triumphs together as a whole.
Remember back in 2004 (three years ago!) when we fumed over that stupid "Gay or Asian?" Details magazine article that was not only racist, but just didn't make any sense? Or how we all, regardless of different ethnic backgrounds and cultural upbringings, bonded together through our collective abhorrence of the William Hung craze, the "Memoirs of a Geisha" movie trailers, and ridiculous Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirts that were trying to be funny but weren't?
Those were good times.
So thank you, fellow API students. Thank you for being there with me in my personal journey in learning to love my AA identity and not only that, love our diverse, beautiful melting pot of a community that is always struggling by the minute to define itself and defend itself. Most of all, thank you for inspiring me with the knowledge that young people our age are capable of doing many great things bigger than ourselves.
I know I'll be running into many of you again - as lawyers, professors, non-profit organization directors, filmmakers, doctors, business leaders, politicians, artists, and whatever else - all contributing in your own special way to bringing our constantly changing community to a better place.
As we grow past our college selves, I can't wait to see and experience what we will be accomplishing together for the future of the generation that comes after us.
Keep in touch, API class of 2007. Especially the ones who know how to play taiko.
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