At this year’s National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education earlier this month, two very different images of Asian-American males were on display.
Oakland’s Lee Mun Wah rings a Tibetan bowl to begin one of his well-attended “StirFry” seminars. The acclaimed filmmaker and educator wears a no-collar Tibetan shirt, his hair in a ponytail, his face anchored by a Confucian-like beard.
When the sound from the bowl fades, he introduces himself simply. “I am a Chinese man,” he says.
Frank Wu comes at you more traditionally. Taller, garbed in a tailored wool suit, his hair is short, his face clean-shaven. He’s sans black-rimmed glasses, but you can imagine them on him. As the chancellor and dean of the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, he comes with the weight of a keynote’s full introduction.
As one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in academia, he’s beyond “model minority.” Wu walks the walk and talks like a guy in a suit.
Let’s get ready to rumble?
While Wu was an afternoon keynote speaker, and Lee gave workshops throughout the conference, they both represent stark contrasts in how to talk about race. For me, it was Lee’s race whisperer versus Wu’s perfectly modulated careerist in the battle to get to the truth about racial diversity in America.
