Here we are at the end of May and most places of higher learning have completed finals and convened their graduation ceremonies.
Earlier this month, people had already started to check out. Not a good time for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month on campus. To overcome the logistics issue, some campuses celebrate Asian-Americans as early as October, while other campuses with large numbers of Asian and Asian-American students tend to treat every day as a heritage month day. Few seem to be addressing the real need: to go beyond the simple food festivals and make APA Heritage Month a more meaningful engagement between the campus and America’s diverse Asian cultures. You can always bring in a speaker.
Show a movie. Have a sushi demonstration.
But that’s old school.
What sort of thing could build the kind of awareness that will stop the Internet meme from becoming a new virulent form of 21st century racism? If you haven’t seen a meme, it’s a viral image with text, like a cartoon or graphic that is spread on the Web. Too often, the theme is racist, ugly and specifically anti-Asian. It’s the new Internet irritant, a forum for racist jokes. And, on campuses, the target seems to be Asian-Americans, focusing on their culture, their intelligence, their sexuality.
An example of a meme shows the actor Leonardo Di Caprio from the movie “Inception.” Only his eyes have been slanted.
Another mocks Asian-American sexuality. A stack of books has this text: “My idea of a one night stand.” Benign? Good clean fun? People used to tell Polish jokes at the water-cooler. Now they’re Tweeting and sending racist memes over the Internet. The impact on the targeted group is clear.
