Laurie Chin’s Reviews > Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century – A Hard-Hitting Scholar-Activist Memoir on Revolutionary Politics > Status Update

Ethnic studies as part of healing work; Academia & the assimilation of the colonized intellectual

Interpreting silence by Asians in social justice movements not as apathy but a combination of self-preservation and lack of clarity on where we fall on the spectrum of racial discrimination (often presented as a binary) and feeling displaced.

We as Asians cannot conflate our racial suffering with what Black people have suffered at the hands of white supremacy. It’s not less legitimate, just a different form. Asians must acknowledge how we have benefited directly from anti-Black rhetoric.

Colorblind racism, homogenizing AAPI, Asians being allegedly overrepresented (statistical parity) but still excluded in PWIs and PWI-WAAs, white systems weaponizing model minority (+ conservative East Asians who subconsciously want to be considered white adjacent) to dismantle affirmative action

Wish I could slap this book onto the laps of everyone in my Asian ethnoburb / upbringing / community because why is this TOO real 😭

Discusses intra-racial divisions within Asian Americans based on socioeconomic status, level of acculturation, and immigration status,

Fight internalized model minority myth and desire for proximity to whiteness by being unassimilated