I remember being horrified watching the Purdue University Northwest chancellor mock the Asian American Pacific Islander community during their commencement. I couldn’t go to sleep. Tossing and turning, the incident reminded me about how Asian Americans are too often treated as the “other.”
We are treated as though we don’t belong in America, even if this is the only home I know.
WTF. Can’t get more racist than this @PurdueNorthwest administrator. Who is this person? #AntiAsianHate #StopAsianHate @AcademicChatter pic.twitter.com/Wt7d9pxM8J
— Rich Lee (@RichLeePhD) December 13, 2022
So, at 4 a.m., still having not gotten any shut-eye, I got up, took my laptop out, and began typing away. I felt passionate that what he said was discriminatory, ignorant, and plain wrong.
Maybe I can’t change the way Purdue University Northwest Chancellor Thomas L. Keon feels about the AAPI community. But, making my voice heard was a sure way to start.
The Chicago Tribune accepted my opinion piece and they published it a few days later.
Check out the Chicago Tribune to read the full commentary piece here.
An excerpt:
I was barely older than 5 the first time I experienced it. Unprovoked, a man faked having an assault rifle and pretended to shoot my mom and me in a grocery store parking lot. He yelled, “Go back to your own country.” I was terrified.
My mom shoved me into the car, locked the doors and fumbled for her keys. She was trembling — something I’d never seen my mother do before. I begged her to call the police, but I could tell she wanted to forget the incident. That day, the man took away my sense of safety and my sense of belonging in America.
My family never had “the talk” about race. My parents never acknowledged some Americans would treat the AAPI community as outsiders — even if we were born here too. The pandemic made this hate worse. Violent attacks against Asian Americans surged: 6,603 incidents against the AAPI community were reported to the Stop AAPI Hate organization between March 19, 2020, and March 31, 2021. The organization released this data around the time a white man killed eight people in Georgia — six of whom were of Asian descent.
Read his apology here:
https://www.pnw.edu/an-apology-from-purdue-university-northwest-chancellor-thomas-l-keon/
