IC News

In the wake of recent incidents and growing anti-Asian sentiment across the country, the annual Focus Asia Month programming put on by Ithaca College’s Asian American Alliance (AAA) — a student organization — is especially timely this year.

The monthlong observance includes a series of events designed to celebrate Asian and Asian American culture on campus and to educate the campus community about various issues related to that culture. Over the past year, the Asian American community has been subjected to Covid-19-related sinophobia and vulnerable to hate crimes, such as the shootings in Atlanta last month.

AAA co-presidents Hana Cho ’21 and Elena Chang ’21 prepared this year's virtual programming and worked to balance public educational platforms with safe healing spaces within the community.

“We hope to open the door to an interest for racial justice,” the pair said. “We will be providing many resources from the Asian American perspective and will continue to advocate for all BIPOC even after the month is over. We are inviting students to become allies and take advantage of our events to broaden their horizons.”

At one event last week titled, “Stopping Asian American Hate: Mobilizing Collective Grief Against White Supremacy,” assistant professor Wendi Yamashita spoke about the anti-Asian climate and ways to mobilize collective grief against white supremacy.

“These attacks, specifically the Atlanta shooting, is not a form of extremism,” said Yamashita, who is assistant professor in the Center for Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity (CSCRE), and coordinator of the Asian American studies minor. “It’s happening all of the time, historically and now. It’s not an aberration, and seeing it as such is a privilege.”

Yamashita also spoke about the history of anti-Asian discrimination and violence in the United States and called attention to the need to create solidarity and alliances with other communities of color who are disparately affected by police and military violence. The goal in doing so is to dismantle the systems and structures that perpetuate inequality, premature death and white supremacy.

“My hope is that we can mobilize this collective grief we are experiencing to push us to think expansively about the changes we want to see in our world,” Yamashita said. “It is my hope that grief can make us see where we as Asian Americans are positioned within white supremacy, our privileges and also our oppression.”