Dear Readers,

The questions are as follows:

1. Name

2. Plans after graduation

3. Favorite hang out spot(s) on campus

4. Things you wish you knew earlier in your college career

5. If you had the power, how would you remedy the current oil 'spill'?

6. Additional comments

Hey everyone! I just wanted to say a quick shout-out about an event that's coming up: an Asian American Health Disparities Panel! Hosted by AAA, the event's happening next Friday, the 12th, at 7:30pm in the Satow Room in Lerner! As posted on the Facebook event page (linked here):

Health disparities are NEVER on the Asian American agenda, even though the average American household spends over 15% of its income on health care.

We will grow to comprise over 5% of the American population in the upcoming years and yet the Asian American voice is one of the most neglected minority voices in the United States. Health disparities are a hush-hush topic that households try to avoid, and the lack of sufficient national research studies done to support the present Asian American population is a cause for concern. Our main goal with the panel is to try to stir that sentiment, that voice!, to hope and encourage more studies done in this field.

The panelists include Ms. Alexandra Belcher, Dr. Ming-Der Chang, Dr. Shobha Krishnan, Dr. Dennis Yi-Shin Kuo, and Director Rebecca Sze.

Everyone on the board is really excited about this: we'll be exploring issues like cervical cancer and Hep-B rates, mental health, health care access, and stereotypes that may perpetuate these issues. Come on over, and bring your friends! This should be very interesting.

=) Annie

Hey, loyal readers of the blog! I know I'm late (two weeks late now, to be precise) to call out the New Year, but just wanted to say that as a new semester approaches, we at the BLAAAG and on the Asian American Alliance surely want to wish you all a good year! We will be quite busy, and with a whole lot of resolutions for 2010 (blogging more, anyone?). We will be getting ready for ECAASU soon, holding different panels such as an Asian American Health Disparities panel, holding our second Crossroads conference for Asian American high-schoolers, and much more! And I'm back from Hong Kong, ready to start a fresh semester at Columbia, as will other contributors to the site. Keep it moving! (And soon, we'll be able to say Happy New Year once again: the Lunar New Year, that is! It falls on Valentine's Day this year.)

Hey, this is Annie from all the way from Hong Kong. Yes, I am abroad, as a former AAA member asked my good friend and Barnard VP for AAA, Ai-Lin today. But wanted to bring forth an article that hit the front page of the NYTimes Page today. This has been happening for years: Mandarin is eclipsing Cantonese as the dominant spoken language in Chinatown! An influx in the Mandarin-speaking population as well as an increasing interest in learning the Mandarin language have shifted demographics. Cantonese, for those who are unfamiliar with Chinese languages, is a dialect of Souther China; Mandarin is the official language of China, and the two are quite different dialects. While the written characters are the same for the most part, the dialects are such that a Cantonese speaker may not understand a Mandarin speaker, and vice versa. In addition, many of those in Chinatown are Taishan speakers: Taishan is a dialect of Cantonese which Cantonese speakers may not understand!

Now why am I concerned? Part of it is a personal reason; Chinatown is where I was born and raised, and still consider home today. I've grown up using my broken Cantonese/Taishanese to buy groceries, wander around, talk to my parents, etc. Put in context, my parents are Taishanese, and speak Cantonese. My mother speaks a bit of Mandarin, while I believe my dad does not understand it at all. As the article mentions, historically it was Cantonese speakers who immigrated to this country and made lives here. Chinatown, especially, is a place where one can make friends, connections, a living, and generally have all you need-- without learning another language. We've seen problems at the voting polls because of language barriers and limited resources (side note: you all should consider helping AALDEF on Election Day with its Poll Voting Survey! more information is linked). This already underrepresented group (albeit increasing in awareness and political clout) is beginning to be alienated from its home, Chinatown!

And it's not just a problem in Chinatown; this has worldwide implications for whole groups of people who've lived their lives with only one language. In Hong Kong already, there are schooling shifts to teaching Mandarin and English, as Cantonese is not as widely used, primarily only used in Southern China. (The Chinese dept. at the University of Hong Kong, on a side note, only teaches beginning Cantonese to exchange students, while Mandarin is available through an intermediate level). Now I am not saying demographic shifts or the teaching of different languages are a bad thing; Chinatown was once a Jewish and Italian neighborhood, and I understand completely the role of cultural diffusion. What I am saying is that something needs to be done to make sure these communities are not alienated and eventually endangered or exploited. This is especially applicable to the Asian-American community, which has such a diverse number of languages. I understand it may be inevitable that Chinatown shifts in languages as more Mandarin speakers arrive in America, but yeah, I'll be helping my dad translate throughout. I just hope that if and when Chinatown and other places like it change, as is inevitable, that others will be helping those like my dad, my fellow Chinatown-ers and those beyond its limits.

Hi,

As a PhD student in counseling psychology at Columbia University, I am currently working on my dissertation regarding the Asian American experience with racial microaggression (a contemporary form of racism). I was wondering if it would be possible to send out the survey link/following email through your listserv/blog or post it on your website?

Survey link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ejZ2mHdOih8PuAUYMz5yoA_3d_3d

Thanks for helping to further research on racism against Asian Americans!

Annie

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Asian American participant,

As a PhD student in counseling psychology, I am currently recruiting Asian American participants for a study on experience with racial microaggression. The data collected will assist researchers and educators in understanding how Asian Americans experience modern forms of racial discrimination.

Your participation is completely voluntary and confidential. There is minimal to no physical or psychological risk involved in this study. The survey should take about 20 minutes.

Survey link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ejZ2mHdOih8PuAUYMz5yoA_3d_3d

Please forward this survey link to as many of your Asian American friends/family/colleagues/listservs as you can and ask them to forward this on.
If you have any questions about the survey/research, feel free to email me at ail2103@columbia.edu.

Thanks in advance!

Annie

I am utterly stunned and captured by Varun Gulati's (SEAS '10) response to a column posted in the Spec by Rajat Roy. In his column, Roy makes some strong criticisms regarding the existence of "cultural" groups on Columbia's campus, and how they can sometimes be too insular to merit their funding.

Race was, is, and always will be a divisive issue on this campus. However, we have created a new word that doesn’t spark as much controversy but means essentially the same thing to the layman (and yes, even though we are Columbia students, we, for the most part, are still laymen). This word has some truly nefarious implications, and at Columbia, we have seen how big an issue it can be.

This word is—“Culture.”

I am not joking. “Culture” is causing more harm than good at Columbia. Let me clarify—culture in and of itself is inherently good. Every person needs to be cultured and be exposed to other cultures. However, Columbia does “Culture” in a way that only hurts the overall community. It wouldn’t cost that much in terms of man-hours or money to rectify this situation. In fact, changing this could increase the amount of money available to all students.

And Gulati puts him into perspective.

From the explicit identification as “cultural” within each constitution, cultural groups under the Activities Board at Columbia received only 4.4 percent of student life fees for clubs, the equivalent of less than $7 from each undergraduate. Especially in recent years, these groups have made extraordinary efforts to create collaborative programs and outreach to the entire Columbia community with little funding, contrary to the insinuation that an organization’s “worth” is entirely dependent on its funding.

Through five major cultural showcases in the 2008-2009 academic year, nearly 3,000 students, families, professors, administrators, and New Yorkers were given a glimpse into the communities that make up the diverse cultural fabric of Columbia University. The real problem here is not the lack of open cultural events, but the unawareness and apathy towards these hundreds of events. Ultimately, this causes the perpetuation of repulsively ignorant statements, including “’Culture’ is really a definition of insularism where people of the same group can meet and hook up.”

Bigoted generalizations such as these inappropriately dismiss the genuine interest of the thousands of students who engage in events thrown by the cultural organizations, none of which are exclusive in membership or attendance. To label these groups’ funding needs as unworthy or their intentions as incestuous is oppressive and insensitive. [emphasis mine]

Though Roy does give examples of "cultural" groups that, in his view, make good use of their funding allocations, I can't view as legitimate the argument that "insular" groups don't deserve their funding. What kind of campus culture would we have if we could only experience the "cultures" of those who could successfully market and sell them to their peers? Shouldn't we also value the groups whose priority is to support constituencies that experience a lack of resources or representation?

Hey, all: this is Annie, all the way from Hong Kong catching you up on the latest news. It still baffles me somehow to see so many Asians in office here in Hong Kong, as I'm generally not used to the sight back in New York or in America in general. I'm taking a class here called "Hong Kong and the World," which is all about Hong Kong's role in this globalizing world; it's been really interesting so far. I recently got to hear Margaret Ng, Legislative Councillor, speak about rule of law over here in Hong Kong and the ever-confusing Chinese influence on Hong Kong (well, at least to me: I have a lot to learn). But enough about Hong Kong. Here's the real news:

I found out via multiple Facebook postings/statuses/etc. that John Liu recently won his runoff election against David Yassky (as the Times reports)! While the poll sites were pretty empty on the 29th (as is typically the case for runoffs), Liu won convincingly, beating Yassky 56-44, and will face Joseph Mendola in November to become Comptroller, the equivalent of the city's accountant. Although Liu's rival for Comptroller, Joseph Mendola, is a Columbia Law School graduate himself, I'm sure the Columbia Blaaag crew would agree with me that it'd be much more interesting to see NYC's first Asian council member become NYC's first Asian-American comptroller. Congrats, Liu! (Although a Daily News editorial doesn't seem so quick to congratulate him or his campaign financing)