Windi Sasaki:
I think I’m going to talk about now is, you know, I think in June you know, we’re seeing a lot of state colleges, universities put out statements, there were a lot of different organizations that were saying things about how to move forward. There’s a lot of people who are committing to learning. And I started to really see some of those things in the last month, because more of the things around what was happening in Asian-American communities was, was coming up and people were, you know, I’m, I’m going to commit to learning. And, and I think I have just decided no learning was the expectation, right? Like we’re supposed to do that.

Windi Sasaki:
The point of learning all of these things that we were learning about anti-blackness and how to combat anti-Asian hate and all these other things, right. Was to apply it. I need people to apply it now. Right. Like there’s a lot of things that have been said. And, and a lot now I’m going to go, I’m going to go, I’m going to go read about that. Okay. And then come back and tell me what you’re going to do about it.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs Now, I’m your host, Dr. Glenn DeGuzman. Today, we have some folks who have known for a very long time and I’ve earned a reputation for the research and work supporting Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American APIMEDA students, faculty, and staff. I’ve had the honor of learning from them for many years. So I am so excited to have them on today as we just talk story, but the ongoing challenges facing our APIMEDA communities on college campuses, Student Affairs Now is it premiere podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs, we hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every Wednesday. So you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on Twitter. And today’s episode is sponsored by Anthology, which is formerly Campus Labs and for those new to Anthology it’s a, it’s a wonderful assessment data collection site.

Glenn DeGuzman:
It’s if your goal is to engage in effective assessment, boost data fluency and empower staff with strategic data collection to do document analysis and use those results for change. It’s a great place to go, no matter where your campus is in the assessment journey and Anthology can help you figure out what’s next with this short assessment, you’ll receive customized results. Tell the recommendations to address your most immediate assessment needs. So if you want to learn more about Anthology’s products and, and meet with their expert consultants to empower your division with actual data, go ahead and visit campuslabs.com/SANow. This episode is also sponsored by Stylus Publishing. Browse, their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com. And we still have that SANow 30% off promo code. So get 30% off all your books that you want. And you also get free shipping. You can find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and at Twitter @styluspub. As I mentioned, I’m your host going Glenn DeGuzman? I’m the Associate Dean of Student and Director of Residential Life at the University of California, Berkeley. I use the he series as my pronouns, and I’m hosting this conversation today from my home in Livermore, California, which is the ancestral Homeland of the Ohlone peoples.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And before we meet our panelists, I do want to acknowledge that when we scheduled this episode, it preceded the horrific acts of violence murders, and anti-Asian violence in Atlanta, in Boulder, in San Francisco. And even in my own backyard in Albany, California.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I feel compelled to share that we are coming into this space with a range of emotions and even made some modifications to this episode, to allow us to speak our truth of the moment. We hope that the time this episode airs many in our community have found moments of peace and clarity have begun to heal. And also that finding that renewed sense of purpose to continue the struggle before us and our BiPOC siblings. I know how hard it is for all of us to be here. So with much love and appreciation, let’s meet our panelists. I’m going to start with Jacki.

Jacki Mac:
Hi, my name is Jacki Mac. I use she/her pronouns and I’m a visiting Assistant Professor of Higher Education at Northern Illinois University, which is located on ancestral and unceded lands of the Kickapoo, Peoria, Sauk and Meskwaki, Potawatomi, Miami, and Sioux peoples, what we now refer to as DeKalb, Illinois. I am a Southeast Asian-American woman and daughter of refugees and this explicit naming of who I am and how I come to identify myself would not have been possible seven to eight years ago. And it’s this fact and this understanding that draws me to our conversation today. So much of who I am and what I do is because of Asian-American studies. It gave me a space to explore myself. It helped me build and develop skills to view my family and my community as the center of my work which has so often been a footnote if that through my formal schooling. And so I bring my identities, my ethnic studies roots and my professional work in student affairs and nonprofit organization context to my scholarship and teaching now right now my work is largely focused on race racism and racialization, institutional transformation towards equity and higher education policy. I’m also particularly interested in minority serving institutions as they have a lot of wisdom to teach the rest of the field on how to do right by marginalized students.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Jacki. Welcome. Vijay.

Vijay Kanagala:
Hello everyone. Thank you for having me. My name is Vijay Kanagala. identify as a Gen 1.5 queer Desi-South Asian and use he/him pronouns. I’m an Associate Professor and Coordinator to Higher Education and Student Affairs Program at Salem State University, which is situated upon the traditional, ancestral, and unceded land of the Naumkeg Indians, the nanepashemet, of the Massachusett/Pawtucket (pa-ta-khet) Tribes First Nations, which is today called Salem, Mass. When I say I am generation 1.5, I also recognize that I am explicitly a settler colonizer and I want to pay respect to the elders, you know, past and prersent and do my part to ensure that the future generation is unharmed. When I, when I talk about Desi South Asian, and I also want to mention that I am a fellow who dissent by heritage and I also say claim Tamil identity which is what I grew up in India.

Vijay Kanagala:
Mid-Rise right. And my immediate and extended family immigrated you know, the end of the, the whole idea of chain migration integration practices either through education or work. And and I was pursuing my doctorate in microbiology at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa in a real quickly realized that that was not what I wanted to do. And through a series of, you know, long story short seems a series of events was found myself at the doorsteps of student affairs was brought in gently nurtured by a community of black student vest professionals. And so my entry point into race and race and ethnicity came in from, from a, from a black identity perspective. And I know that the, the national conference on race and ethnicity and core, and I think it was that moment when I attended the conference, gave me the language of my existence of the things that I, that I experienced as an immigrant, but didn’t have the language to name it, part of it because my family didn’t talk about race or ethnicity.

Vijay Kanagala:
And so what did it mean for me to be a racialized body became very significant. And so, so over the years it became a journey of exploration and self-discovery of my own racial, ethnic identity. But also try and situate myself and the racial identity politics that we have to kind of work through no living, living in the U S right. And so, so broadly when I think about race and ethnicity and thinking about Desi South Asian I’m trying to understand as part of my research, the, the identity the meaning-making that no college students and students as professionals. So I interfaced Desi South Asian navigate and go through. And and for folks that might be listening, there is actually a Desi Student Affair professionals group on Facebook. So try to reach out to us. It’s a strong group of 302 folks as of today, so I’m excited.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Wonderful. Thank you. We’ll add that to the the notes at the end as well for folks to access on our website. Welcome Windi.

Windi Sasaki:
Hi, thanks for having me. My name is Windi Sasaki and I use she and they series pronouns. I currently work at the University of California at San Diego, which is on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay people in La Jolla and San Diego, California. So I identify as a fourth generation, Japanese American and a third generation Chinese American and Filipino American. And it was really important to my family. My parents that we understood as kids growing up, that we were one mixed and two, that we understood the differences between what was Japanese, what was Chinese specifically Cantonese different than some of the other Chinese Americans who were around us, who were Shanghainese and what, what was Filipino, right? And, and that we had some ways to, to navigate some of those types of things because they were going to show up.

Windi Sasaki:
And and my parents wanted us to understand those things differently and what, what they want, what my parents wanted us to be proud of. So when I was growing up and things like that were things that other kids who most of the kids around me in Sacramento, California were not mixed, did not value, right? Like it’s this interesting thing about the ways that from very young ages, kids kind of talk to you about your identity and who you are and what that means. Right. and, and weird hierarchies that people make up. So it was this, it has always been this interesting part of my life of understanding some of this long history relatively that my family has in the US and through through multiple means of what that meant for how my family got here.

Windi Sasaki:
Especially as working class folks. Right. And then kind of what that has meant to, to end up working in student affairs through ACPA have been past Asian Pacific American network chairs has Jacki and Glenn to, to running an office and starting an office. I’m the first person that has a, my job at UC San Diego as the Asian Pacific Islander and Middle Eastern American program manager at a campus that I graduated from. So what has this meant? Right. To try and build something that I would have needed. That includes all of the people that this really big name includes in ways that understands folks. And so I feel like there’s some ways that I had to learn that around. How do I feel comfortable around people who are going to identify different or received me as identifying differently than them, even if I think it’s similar. And what does this mean for this larger group that I’m trying to bring together and make sure that they feel like they have a home on our campus.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Windi. I want to thank all of you for sharing your backstory. I think that’s really important to this conversation and Windi, I’m going to stay with you and you talked about the big name, right? And the, we all, the, the various identities that we bring, and we know that in 1968, the term Asian-American was born. And it really was an effort to unify the community, taking an approach similar to the black power movement the American Indian movement. And, and, and it really had an agenda to combat anti-Asian racism and really the pursuit of equality and so forth. And, but many within our Asian American community how defined, still struggled to embrace the identifier that identifier and that term Asian-American. And that is a challenge that, and I think our profession struggles with as well. And how do we characterize just the term Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American student experience.

Windi Sasaki:
Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s really complicated yet. My my title in my office and the ways that we’re kind of going through and talking with people about who we’re talking about, my, my office also includes middle Eastern American people, but separate from that, right? Like would be a APIDA. I go in explaining to people especially people who in community who don’t necessarily see themselves as Asian American, or identify with a APIDA as a, as a identity kind of marker, right. That, that, that term Asian American in 1968 was coined by college students at UC Berkeley as a coalition term. Part of that was to be able to build coalitions with other people of color and people who were working around some of the black power movement, and also to talk about what they needed on campus. Most of those populations at UC Berkeley in 1968 were Chinese American, Japanese American and Filipino American. Filipino-American was a lot smaller though.

Windi Sasaki:
So when the Chinese and Japanese, primarily Chinese American, Japanese American people came together to talk about that. They were told individually that they were too small for the campus to be concerned about them. But if they came together, they were a larger number of people to go through. And so they saw that as a coalition and a way for them to be in coalition with other people and to talk about what that meant for other people that might come into this grouping of people that at the time were considered Asian non-white right. And then the government has also, at some point decided they were going to use that term to classify folks and add folks to so that’s how you see it on the census. They’ve moved people over. So eventually they moved to the South Asian population. So this group didn’t know how to talk about Pacific Islander people.

Windi Sasaki:
So it just kind of added them. So that must be the same. And then kind of created this weird Asian and Pacific Islander kind of marker. And, and then other people as more people from different parts of Asia starting to immigrate to the US global like local or in Asia. So they go into this category. So you have this group of people, a lot of who came after 1968, you know, or had some, some part of the way that they identified after 1968, get hold of this is, this is the grouping that you’re in, but that’s not how people have come to understand themselves or whatever. You know, the ways that, that they have taught at have come to the U S or learned about their culture and their identity, because it was a coalition word, not a cultural, not something that said, Hey, everybody in this group is the same, but these cultural words are the, this is a coalition word, right.

Windi Sasaki:
Which meant that people who are in it actively chose to be in it and participate in this way. And so what I see on the other side, when I go to staff and say, this is who I’m working with, these are coalition words. They’re like, yeah, but everyone’s saying right. No, no. There’s, you know, like if, if we’re talking about folks who might have family members who are themselves immigrants, we’re talking about, maybe they might be speaking one of 60 different languages. There are different cultural holidays and all the other things that we bring with us in our identities, you know, different gender identities sexual orientations, religions class ways that folks came and what that means on my campus, about half of undocumented students are Asian-American right. And, and all of these other things that are part of how we relate with one another and, and, and identify, and it’s not simple, right.

Windi Sasaki:
It, doesn’t kind of just boil down to a couple of things where it’s easy for me to answer a question. When someone says, Hey, Windi, you work with APIDA students with what do they need on campus? What’s one thing I can do. And they want something easy, like active that they could just change and it switches and people feel good. And the one thing that I’m usually telling them to do is to listen to their students and understand that there are different. They want you to understand that a lot of us have a lot of different kinds of experience. My third generation Chinese Cantonese, American identity, especially as a mixed Chinese Cantonese, American person is really different than a lot of the other Chinese American students that they’re interacting with currently on campus, who might be first generation, or I had a student who was eighth generation Chinese American, right. Those are really different kinds of experiences, just, just in this one ethnic group. So what does, you know, so it’s really complex. But people want to understand it as something that’s really simple,

Glenn DeGuzman:
Right. And you’re really capturing the challenge in all of this, in the complexity of the term and how it has a coalition meaning yet it also may dismiss the, the variety, the various, and the diverse identities within the, the, the larger Penn community. I want to unpack that a little bit and Vijay I’d like to hear from you the, how the intersectionalities of that all exist. So, so does this term, this Asian American term truly capture our identity as a community and the various social generational, all of the the all of the above type intersectionalities that exist.

Vijay Kanagala:
Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, I’ve been doing this talking, I know it jogged my memory of about how, when our family moved here. And this has nothing to do with the question that you asked. This is more so in terms of thinking about how, when you’re filling out applications, now you had no African or black the box that you had to check, right. Or you had Asian Asian American, and then you had sometimes American Indian/native American or Alaska native. Right. And I distinctly remember our family debating if we were Asian-American or American-Indian, because we recognize the Indian part. Right. And come when I send things, I’m thinking about the Indian part of who I am. Right. And so, so the kind of like gets, it gives a sense, but I think, the point that Windi was also just adding to what she was saying is when, when people are talking about Asian Americans or a APIDA folks in the broadest possible sense, the heterogeneity of who we are of, of, of our makeup as a racial ethnic group is often lost in wanting to homogenize us.

Vijay Kanagala:
Right. But even within the heterogeneity of who we are people forget that there’s a lot more diversity within our group, right. Whether it is based on sub-ethnic groups, clans, cast, religion you know, when you talked about immigration status and I have family that came right after this 1965 act was passed. And then we have waves of families that came in the nineties. And now when we had the .com bubble, and then we have folks that came in the two thousands. And so, so you you’ve see these generations, even within my own family that I’ve noticed in terms of who and how we identify. And it’s interesting to see the difference in terms of how the first-generation immigrant community might know, identify themselves as and then you have the first-generation American born community. And, and what does it mean for them to actually co-exist in, and have an identity of Asian American or, you know, a APIDA, right.

Vijay Kanagala:
And then the other part of what, what does also doesn’t necessarily do is when we talk about intersectionality, the power structures that exist between our communities now from back home, right. Quote, unquote home, because obviously we have to call home and not this as home. Right. And so within that context when I think about South Asians, now, the tensions between Pakistanis and Indians, or but it’s Christian and Hindu or Hindu and Muslim, right. Those tensions that exist before, but we still bring that pain, right. We, we still bring that with us in it. It’s an it we exist with, and I still remember this. I I’ll never forget this. This is one of my first few years of in student affairs as a student professional. And there was a Pakistani American get, you know, a student who had advice who was a new student. And the father came in and noticed that I was know this Indian guy and his reaction was, no, I want somebody else. Right. And the tension that existed right. In the, the amount of healing that needed to happen after that, not only for the student, but for myself and all of those things that not necessarily understood because we tend to call is around this one identity of who we are. Right. So I’ll stop there

Glenn DeGuzman:
And let’s, I’m going to stay with you, Vijay because you, you hit a, a truth for in your story. And, and I know how how you identify in that, the term Desi may not be fully understood with many folks. I’m curious to learn more about its origin and if you could expand and share more on.

Vijay Kanagala:
Sure. so, so just following up on on Windi’s comment about how higher education, and not even even racial categories were being formed. Right. And we had Asian American, Asian, Pacific American, Asian American, Pacific Islander all off the off shoots of Asian American. Like, that’s the, that’s what I think of as another term. And when you think about the, the prevalence and the slow growth and involvement of South Asians in higher ed, especially within the discipline of student affairs you see you see a growth of, you know, of what I call my people in the profession and recognizing that those terms don’t actually, or necessarily speak to my experience in my existence. Right. And so over the years you know, we’ve talked about it and then, you know, Dr. Mamta Motwani Accapadi, who’s the Vice Provost of Student Life at UPenn.

Vijay Kanagala:
She proposed and expanded the term API to from API to APIDA, right. Asian, Pacific Islander, basic American. And that’s how that APIDA came to be as a way for us to acknowledge that they see part of the Asian heterogeneity of who we are. And, and so, so I say that had been out before I actually explained what they Desi means. I’ll also say that the use of Desi is also it’s not necessarily embraced by everyone. Not everybody wants to say that I’m a DC it’s not without controversy. And I’ll explain why that might happen. Within our group. They seen itself as actually a word that has origins in sanscript and as a Hindu, and it will do word dish, right. Dish, meaning country, or Homeland, and it’s and they see is the person and it’s a pre-colonial term that means, or indigenous reference to the peoples of the pre-colonial Indian sub-continent.

Vijay Kanagala:
And even within that, we privilege Indian. Right. we don’t say we don’t use another framework to call the sub continent. And so when you think about the Indian sub continent, now we have several nation States, so that, that exists as of today, right? So, so we have India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan Naipaul Srilanka and Maldives, and sometimes Afghanistan gets included as part of that because of how now, if you go back thousands of years ago that that existed, that, that geographic territory as part of the larger community. And so when you think about Desi it’s in-group identification much like how we speak about Latino and Hispanic is two terms, right? Hispanic was coined by the government for the census, and then you have Latino, which is much more you know, from the community based on geography and not necessarily language.

Vijay Kanagala:
And so in this case, we’re also using a very similar analogy. If you will, referring to Desi people from the land, and these are the lines that they come from. And then when you think about it being adopted over generations, you know, whether it’s first generation immigrants or second generation, or much later in relationship with the word, you know, the, the phrase South Asian it’s accepted and it’s contested, right. And that you have both of those happening. And it’s also one of those words because of it’s Hindi and now do origins is, is contested in a way that it’s, that it’s not inclusive, right? It’s linguistically not Northern sub-continent. Right. So when you think about Pakistani or or the Northern part of India, these are the folks that tend to use it.

Vijay Kanagala:
And so when you have South Indians within the group, now, people who was always is then you have Sri Lankans who often don’t think of themselves as Desi right? The idea of South Asian may appeal to them, but not necessarily as Desi. And then this is something that I, a few years ago, I met a doctoral student who also introduced the idea of, of the diaspora. So when you have the South Asian community living in the Pacific islands, living in the Caribbean and living in Africa no migrated either because of their own will, or as now forced laborers to Australia, the Oceania. Right. So and so on. So you have these communities also who either use or don’t use, partly because of the tensions that exist between own systems of migration, but they hadn’t yet.

Vijay Kanagala:
Sure. I think when I, the, the other part of, you know, what I also think about is well, we think of countries nation States, India, and Pakistan, Bangladesh, these were all different princely States different communities that co-exist the stood for centuries. Right. and, and when the British colonized, or when the Portuguese colonized in different parts of, you know that sub-continent. You have this idea of of not, I’ve not necessarily connecting with each other. I do visit the, the divisions are sowed into this divide and rule is what we think of again, Pakistan. Right. And when you, you think of these, these centuries of hardships in subjugation in, in, in literal deep colonized, the wounds that people had to endure for generations. So you have, again, generational trauma that comes into being, and then now when you have modern States that are pitted against each other based on diligent language cast and skin color, these are the primary ways in which those, those countries were formed.

Vijay Kanagala:
You, you have deep distrust of each other, right. And so, so then you bring that history and those wounds and that trauma into another migration pattern to the US ordinary America, because Canada also sees just one word to capture all of us, we’re trying to unify us. Right. And we have 400 years is of deep trauma that nobody actually thinks about or, or wants to address, or is global about. Right. And so that’s one part. The other part that I just quickly wanted to mention was how, I think, I think when you was talking about this earlier in terms of where do, where do I situate myself in South Asian and the, and the racial categorization that we see in the U S right. And when I heard plani, he’s a legal scholar. Yeah. A good friend.

Vijay Kanagala:
He ended up writing and introduced the idea of Desi crit which is an offshoot of Asian crit, but which is an offshoot of critical race theory. Right. And so, so within Asian-American critical race theory, he then constructed and theorized where Desi crit was. And part of it was now he talks about this, this notion. Yeah. We’re, we’re kind of like put in between clean black and white paradigms. Right. But also asked to be racial in racial solidarity with Asians so that we could ascribe to now blackness and not necessarily to whiteness, because then now we have we have history of ascribing to whiteness. And so he brings in that idea and within Desi crit, he’s also wanting us to think about how South Asians can become a race conscious. Right. And so how do you become aware of your own ambiguous and that’s the way that he talks about no, because we can blend in and not talk about race and exist yet.

Vijay Kanagala:
No. Have either benefit from, from not, not participating in racial discourse or being victims of racial discourse. Right. So, so he, he gets into that kind of discourse and and I think, I think part of when you think about Desi like I mentioned, I think, I think people use it but don’t necessarily understand how it applies and often uses it as synonymous synonym as term tosouth Asian. And so what does it really mean? And I, and the other part of it is now we have to mention, this is we have a Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, right. Who is the first black woman, black American, and is also the first South Asian Indian American woman to, to become the vice president to be elected vice-president. Right. And so what does it mean for us to engage and have conversations around the term Desi?

Vijay Kanagala:
And I specifically think about folks only understanding South Asian as a unique group. Again, going back to the Asian heterogeneity of who we are within the South Asian group, there’s such a diversity of who we are based on religion, based on cast, based on language. And so how do we then account for all of that? And so when, when, when, when you hear I think Kamala Harris, his acceptance speech, and she uses the word right now, and she is, he recognizes. That’s a tumble word. Right. And so Twitter just blew up when that happened, just like everybody was like, Oh, Oh my God, like notes. She, like, you cannot believe that the future vice president or vice principal candidate would actually use a demo word. Right. And and I think to me, that was kind of like, it felt like she was introducing Donald American identity to all of us. She became that person right now in addition to her being a black woman.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you so much for providing that overview and there’s lots of knowledge and information and what you just shared. I learned quite a bit. So thank you for sharing that I’m going to shift, and we’re going to bring Jacki into this conversation. And Jacki, we have known about the model minority myth for decades. And, and I remember writing about it when I was in grad school and it’s still here. What is it and why is it still persisting on college campuses?

Jacki Mac:
There was a period of time that if I heard that phrase, I had like a visceral reaction to it. And I probably still do to some extent. And it’s a really good question, Glenn, and it’s probably one that we could, I mean, any of the questions you’ve posed, we could spend a whole episode and then some right. Kind of really getting into the depths of the complexity. So I’ll try, I’ll try to do both. I try to try to talk generally about it, but also get, it gives some specificities in the terms of, in the form of stories. So the myth is commonly talked about and characterize, as Asians are doing fine they don’t need any help. They experience universal success. Asians are outperforming white students. The Asians are doing better than our other black and Latin X student populations like mainstream population.

Jacki Mac:
So they’re fine. Another way to define the myth is to consider for consider for context, right, why it exists and to define it as a white supremacist racial project that strategically frames Asian Asian-Americans as a universally successful group. And I specifically said Asian, Asian American, because that’s typically who is talked about at the expense of other groups under this heterogeneity heterogeneous group that we’ve already spent a bit of time really kind of grappling with. Right. and that type of framing is really integral to maintaining larger systems of oppression. So it’s important to understand that it’s not just harmful for Asian Asian-Americans or APIDA members or those who are perceived to be Asian Asian-American, but the framing also enacts different forms of violence on all communities of color. So I’ll talk a little bit more about that. And more specifically to what it might look like on the college campus.

Jacki Mac:
This violence looks like the racial exclusion of Asian-Americans and sometimes specific Islanders from many aspects of academic, the academic and social fabric of that particular community. For example, it might look like omitting Asian-Americans and challenges that, that our communities face in the curriculum. It might look like exclusion of our community from educational equity initiatives and other policies aimed at increasing access and success. It also looks like just eraser of the lived experiences and realities that we’ve been talking about underneath this umbrella, right. For other communities, it looks like a perpetuation of this deficit belief in that blames that actually, but denies that there are inequitable structures that exist, but also then blames the individuals to families, the communities of color for not working hard enough or not having the right set of values. And so what happens then and what has happened and can also happen again in future is that the myth is used to pit Asian Asian-Americans against other communities of color and that type of pitting against each other is a way to hinder social and racial justice efforts.

Jacki Mac:
I think it’s also important for, for us and for listeners and viewers of this episode to keep in mind that the myth it existed, it exists before the students arrived on to campus and it’ll exist thereafter, right? So it’s, it’s a continue, it’s a continual thing. And there’s particular way that the myth shows up on campus. And so I’ll share a little bit about my lived experience with it. Even at the time, I didn’t really understand what was happening. But for me, it looked like my high school guidance counselor telling me to not apply for the Gates Millennium Scholarship program. Because they were probably not looking for students who looked like me. And at the time I was like, I don’t understand, but I guess if this person’s telling me not to do it, then I’ll I’ll, you know, Oh, okay, it’s fine.

Jacki Mac:
But it wasn’t until I worked with the national Asian American education nonprofit that supported Asian American Pacific Islander students who were gate scholars that I realized, no, I was absolutely eligible. I was probably somewhat, they were looking for, cause I was first gen low income, you know, daughter of refugees. And I was wrongly advised to not apply. But also through my work with this program, I also realized that gate scholars who were awarded these wonderful financial scholarships to help them go to college, they were still navigating policies on campus that made it really difficult for them to access the necessary supports that they needed to be successful in college. So the law and the short of it, the short answer is it persistent society in general and other college campuses in particular because systemic racism and white supremacy still exists. And the myth is a violent tool to maintain that system. So the day we don’t talk about it anymore, it’s probably the day that white supremacy starts crumbling.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And I look forward to that day. And I also appreciate you sharing your personal story and how it, how the model minority myth intersects with your story. So Windi, you know, kind of building off of the, the numbers on the size of our community, if you look at and combine the APIDA population, many folks can see that as strength and number you know, building off their coalition comments earlier, but this may come with negative outcomes. And what concerns you when communities are merged together like that?

Windi Sasaki:
Yeah. I think, I think there’s a lot of different kinds of things.

Windi Sasaki:
Right. I shared a little bit about, you know, some of the ways when I talked to staff and faculty and sometimes students right on my campus they’re, they’re expecting that all the people that we put under this descriptor right, are the same, right? And so they expect that everyone will need the same thing or experiencing the same thing will react the same way. And, and the, the, the fact is that it, it’s hundreds of different ways that the population of our campus is going to react to any one kind of thing. That sometimes means, okay, well, this might happen here and this might happen here. And so it’s, it’s this weird thing of trying to, and I’m one person, right? So I look at this as, as a campus where I’m the one staff member expected to explain the hundreds of ways that somebody is going to react in a way that everybody else can predict and is going to understand.

Windi Sasaki:
And so that that’s really challenging to do because it’s not possible, right? Like it just isn’t going to happen that way. What that looks like a lot of times when, when we’re seeing this is that we get this big data number. Right. I, I imagine that most of the people, if you’re watching, you’re listening and you can go look on your institutional research page to go look for statistics, you won’t see Pacific Islander even named unless you’re in Hawaii. And a couple of other campuses will do it. Sometimes you have to dig a little further if you want to go find it, but, but you probably aren’t finding that. So that, and if you go ask, Hey, where’s the number what’s under Asian. Why wouldn’t, you know, that it’s there because it’s different because somebody just put it there. And it’s probably says Asian, even if they have desegregated international students instead of Asian American, because there’s a bunch of other things that are also wrapped into some of the other stuff we talked about.

Windi Sasaki:
And this other thing called perpetual foreigner stereotype that just assumes that everybody is foreign. And it’s not necessary to put that there. So we have that there, right? And if we look at the US census, the number of ethnic groups and people who mark Asian and write in their ethnic group is well over 60 different ethnic populations, right? So there could be 60 different things under there with the multiples of different kinds of migration patterns and histories in the US and in all of these other kinds of cultural language, types of differences that are now under this one category. So what happened and they’re all different sizes, right? So on my campus, the smallest group that we count, cause we don’t count them all is 20 people. And that population in the state of California has one of the highest or the lowest rates of access to higher education retention, higher education and graduation in higher education.

Windi Sasaki:
The largest of those populations is about, is over 3000, right? And that group has one of the highest rates of access to higher education retention and higher education and graduation rates from higher education in the state. And now we put this group of 20 in the same group of this group of 3000. And now what you can’t see is anything about those 20 people in this large data number. So I do a lot of talking about visibility because the other thing that happens is on a campus like mine, which is going to vary, right? They’re going to look at this and say, compared to the state, this large number of everybody who put together represents a higher percentage of students in the undergraduate population, because nobody’s looking at the graduate students then in the state. And so you’re there for over-represented. So I don’t need to be worried about anybody in this block and what has done is made all of that stuff that I talked about, the differences of people and how they experienced higher education and the stories that they came from, where there’s refugee populations, where they’re undocumented students, where there’s you know, first generation, low income students, independent of that into this group that has just kind of lost over and said, you’re overrepresented.

Windi Sasaki:
We’re not concerned about you. We have the largest group here or, or whatever else. So then we combine that with the model minority myth. It is you don’t need anything. And we don’t have to worry about what is happening in this block, because most of you were at some high part percentages going to graduate. So if it doesn’t happen, but if all of those 20 students, I said in that small group drop out that number compared to this whole group of people that they’re in, isn’t significant for anyone to have noticed that everybody in that ethnic group didn’t make it that’s really bad. Right. If we said that about any other group, people would know it would be taskforce. It was trying to figure out what is happening with this group of students. Instead I go and ask questions, right? That, that group on my campus is Hmong, Hey, so we’re worried about our Hmong students and whatever else.

Windi Sasaki:
And they’re like, yeah, but when the Asian American system, none of them, I wasn’t talking about everybody, just some of these smaller groups I’m lucky if they know who I’m talking about, I’m lucky if they’ve heard the word Hmong before, you know? So, so yeah, so it’s just this interesting thing. And what happens too, is that those students, those, those 20 Hmong students think I’m different than the rest of even the Asian American administrators that they interact with, because I know who they are. Right. I recognize they exist on the campus. We have about 50 Sri Lankan students. They’re surprised. I knew what that was. We have students who are like that and that, that makes it difficult when they’re supposed to look at also the Asian American staff and faculty on the campus and say, Oh, well, someone will say, Oh, well they’re Asian American, or they’re Asian, go, go, go see them.

Windi Sasaki:
They might already just have into, I don’t have anything in common with that person. Do they even know anything about me, my experiences, my culture and that, that creates a lot of other challenges I have to go in and kind of prove it. Yes, I know my last name Sasaki I’m here. This, I understand trying to make sure that people understand what, what you’re experiencing or you’re going through. I know you need to find each other because there’s only 20 of you. So I’m going to help you figure out that proactively rather than help you find the student organization. So it’s, it’s a lot of different kinds of challenges that are kind of different with what happens when you put everybody together.

Glenn DeGuzman:
It’s this challenge of, you know, taking small groups with larger groups, you combine it. And we, somehow we lose the, we lose and their students who are truly impacting, we lose sight of them and they fall through the cracks.

Windi Sasaki:
Well, and you lose the texture of like, who is in this group, right? Like, you know, everybody on this call, right? Like we all identify differently. We wouldn’t necessarily, you know, like there might be some overlaps in the ways that we experienced culture or talk to our families or celebrate things. Right. And there’s also differences in the ways that we do that. But this grouping would assume that it’s all the same.

Vijay Kanagala:
Just a quick thing. I think when when you was talking about now numbers and talking to the institutional research office and, you know, thinking about where the two students, right. Then oftentimes it’s clubbed under, let’s say Asian group on the Asian, Asian umbrella. But the other times you also hear people saying, well, it’s two, it’s only two people insignificant. Right. So when you think about in a statistical way they don’t necessarily have value on that college campus. Right. And so it’s, it’s okay for us to task them out because they are the outliers. We don’t nearly have to, we account them under one category or we actually don’t have to because they come on the other. Right. And the other part of it is also, I think we’re talking about geography of where people know, what I think groups, ethnic enclaves, if you will, for lack of a better way to phrase it.

Vijay Kanagala:
In I was recently on a call talking about HBCUs and HSIs and how those campuses are grappling with, how do they serve the community because they haven’t necessarily, you know, going back to Jacki’s point about the model minority myth. Now these are communities that HPC is also bought into the idea that now Asian, Asian folks, they know how to do this. Now they’re good at a few things and they can be successful in college. But then when you think about Louisiana and then think about the Vietnamese population there, how do you support now, if you have, if you have, if you have a community college there whether it’s along the coast where the Vietnamese folks came in, and resettled refugees. Right. And so how do you, how do you then shift from this idea of students at predominantly white institutions, but they also exist at these NSA’s pneumonitis serving institutions and how do we serve them? Because know we get lost even in that mix too. Right. And so what do we do?

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you. I’m gonna shift our direction. And I want to raise a topic that has been obviously in the news recently. And the violence has been occurring. I want to talk about the impact of anti-Asian racism, violence obviously within our community nationally and on college campuses and reports are coming in and indicating that since the the beginning of the pandemic as well, there has been, and this is a staggering number for me, 1900% re increase of hate crimes against our community, particularly towards our elderly. And Jacki, I’m going to direct this question to, but what are the implications to our APIDA community on college campuses? What comes up for you?

Jacki Mac:
Thanks for the question. This is, this is me speaking in draft form. This might be draft number two, maybe. I shout out to amplify RJ for sharing that language of speaking in draft. So for viewers and listeners, this is a draft as of Thursday, March 25th. There are a couple of things that come up for me. And as, as someone who’s a very well socialized academic, I’m going to go to my heart and not my head. So counter to the academic socialization what comes for for me is immense rage, like immense, immense levels of rage, rage at the continued invisibility of community members, even in death, you know, even we’re dying, there’s, there’s, there’s not a visibility. So it’s slightly surprising that there is a little bit more visibility, but in that, that visibility, there’s also invisibility happening.

Jacki Mac:
So it’s I have I’m angry at the eraser of misogyny as a critical component of these shootings. Especially in Atlanta, I’m, I’m enraged by the ratio of social class and generational status as, as critical components of this Island. So, you know, part of this rage is connected to ongoing rage by particularly black women, the community who, who, who have said for, for a long time. Now, even after Kimberle Crenshaw gifted our world with this concept of intersectionality, we’re still unable to see the interconnected nature of race, class, gender, and that these forms of oppression are happening. And our lived in our experience simultaneously in ways that are impossible to really pull apart and to, to, to pull them apart is to humanizing. So there’s a lot of rage. And then the flattening, right, that, you know, when he was talking about this flattening of, of the community, and I’m also grieving I am trying not to cry, but I think the grieving is, you know, folks have been killed, you know, who are, who are trying to make a living and trying to make a life.

Jacki Mac:
And that to me is really painful because I see my, my family’s experiences in, in these individuals’ experiences, these families experiences, they’re very they evoke very familiar images and emotions and textures to, to my upbringing. And, and I’m, I’m grieving that Asian women and our elders are being treated like they’re disposable and insignificant. So I’m also hurting with many people in our, for communities who are, who are, who are hurting also for those who have decided, you know what, no, one’s going to pay attention anyway. So why am I even going to be bothered to feel anything about this? So all of this has been, has been up for me as far, like thinking about our APIDA communities on college campuses. I, I’m not anyone who knows me knows I’m not necessarily an optimistic person. I’m actually quite on the skeptical side.

Jacki Mac:
But I think what keeps me going in among all of this that’s happening, all this rage and grief and feelings is, is discovering and highlighting the possibilities that even in such pain, that there are some possibilities for, for a better future. So one of those are possibilities that moving forward, hopefully we’re better able to articulate and connect what’s happening. These heinous acts to the us empire in history and in the present, there are possibilities for individual healing, but also collective healing. Like this conversation we’re having right now as part of my collective healing because we’re holding each other virtually but closely during this time, but we’re also being held by other communities of color. And for me, particularly black communities and black women and films in particular are, are I feel right. That type of support. And, you know, I think I’m also motivated by the possibility to see through the crabs in a barrel mentality, the fighting over crumbs and small slices of pie crap that we all got to deal with, but the possibility of working towards collective liberation with other communities of color, with the black folks to combat racism on campus and the way that the military and prison industrial complexes have invaded our college campuses there are possibilities and that, that keeps me going.

Vijay Kanagala:
Yeah, I think, thank you. Thank you, Jacki for that. Yeah. I mean, it’s, when you, when you speak from your heart, it’s always it’s always hard to follow that, that kind of, because all of this is kind of like an intellectual exercise right. In many ways, but, and it is also so deeply, deeply who we are as people. Right. And so, so for me, it’s, it’s, it’s been interesting, right. I mean, we were talking about COVID a year of COVID that all of us are exhausted. You know, the, the foggy mind has been there for a whole year. And then on top of that, you have the shootings. And I still remember I was, I was shopping my mom and I was shopping. And I don’t, I don’t think we got, I mean, I didn’t pay attention to my phone going off.

Vijay Kanagala:
Right. And I didn’t really think about it. And then when I got home was when I realized that didn’t happen. And part of it was for me, anything that’s not Asian, basically sedation is, is how do I, how do I fit within, within the narrative? Right. Because not one person has actually talked about this with me. You know, what, I work with, the people that I know other than my Asian, Asian family. Right. other folks have not reached out to say, Hey, how are you feeling about this? Right. So one, this going back to the idea of invisibility within that structure, right. And then two, how do I also, as somebody who’s really not like I wasn’t impacted with the misogyny. I wasn’t impacted with coding code now. People started talking about, I think, I think it was a couple of days after people started saying, well, we need to say East Asian, right.

Vijay Kanagala:
We need to categorize this. Or how do we, how do we frame these people in a way that actually represents them and not just now collapse them under the Asian umbrella? And so for me, those were points when I’m like, okay, how can I be part of the conversation rather than think of myself as this is not impacting me. Right. And I still remember that. I think the next day I told my mom, no, you’re not going out to walk on by yourself because I don’t know what’s going to happen like this. This is going to give somebody permission to do something to us. And we can think that this is how it happened to another community. Right. But in a larger context of who we are, we’re all Asian. No, I think of this as the Asian family. Right. And so when you think about students on college campuses, not necessarily understanding the coalition building that needs to happen to support each other, because we’re, we’re literally one gunshot away from now from following the previous community.

Vijay Kanagala:
And that’s how white supremacy works. It’s going to divide us and then kill us. And so how do we then work together to make sure that that doesn’t happen so that we don’t, de-humanize another community in our understanding of what this is, right. When the second shooting happened in Colorado? God, like, I mean, I, I was like, I didn’t want him to look at the TV because I was like, well, is this a, is this the second now imitation? Now what’s going to happen. And then what, now I have cousins that live in Boulder and it’s a part of me was like, okay, how do we, how do we reconcile with this? Right. And especially the grocery store. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s tough. And I think part of it is how do we, how do we keep engaging our students? Because sometimes it’s, it’s the education that’s gonna make the difference for them to understand who they are and how we belong together.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you for Vijay. I think that it’s the education, and I think too, how you both brought your voices into this conversation and to this specific question it’s about being vulnerable. So I think both Jacki, thank you for sharing and, and really speaking from the heart. And both of you also from the head, because I think that that’s how having these conversations and connecting the two allows us to move forward, to heal, to educate and to persist. So think about a close, tie to, you know, obviously we we’ve had these incidents and it concerns me about the mental health among our APIDA communities. And historically within our communities, it’s oftentimes hidden. And researchers would often describe how we do that as avoidant coping strategies. I think about my own person experience, I’m often I was raised to, to minimize my pain, you know, not to not to disclose for bringing potentially the belief that I would bring shame to the family or show signs of weakness. And, and, you know, obviously with the recent awareness of anti-Asian racism Windi, I’d like to direct this question to you, how is this impacting the mental health of our community? And to connect it back to the college space, how can university leaders, student affairs professionals help our APIDA community in, in as it intersects with their mental health, with students’ mental health.

Windi Sasaki:
Only are about the model minority myth, right? And that that’s already something that has affected your students. And that has also already affected, you know, people’s mental health and the ways that they think about help. So combined with what you’ve just shared, right? Culturally all of the APIDA kind of ethnic groups generally are communalistic kinds of cultures and communities. You go into this understanding that you’re part of this bigger whole, it’s not just about you. It’s about your immediate family, your extended family, the community that you’re in the culture, the right. And so those things might affect, but if you bring those things back, right, sometimes it is, you can’t say these things because, you know, like that will affect the rest of the group in this way that they’ll they’ll judge or, or it, people might think that about the rest of the group, but also I don’t want to burden everybody else.

Windi Sasaki:
And so I should be able to take care of that. And then when you come down compound that with the model minority myth, right. It is the, and everyone expects that. I’m okay. And we’ll be able to figure this out on my own. And since we’re all not talking about it, then what that means is everyone assumes that everyone else has figured it out on their own. Right. Well, I’m the only one who’s dealing with this because I don’t see anybody else dealing with this because they must just be figuring it out by themselves. And this just compounds right. To the, I can’t ask for help. And so what we’re seeing too with COVID and everyone from work, you know, like initially, right, it was just, everyone needs to be remote. Was that meant that everyone was hearing these things, not in spaces where they were with other people by themselves.

Windi Sasaki:
So any chance that you had, where you could have seen somebody struggling with how they were reacting to somebody saying something racist, we’ve seen incidents at college campuses where classes have been zoom bombed. If you’re in a room by yourself and you see that you aren’t in a room where someone has yelled at in the classroom and saw other people who identified like you reacting. Right. And so, so there’s this pull back of, maybe this only affected me this way and what does this mean when I go outside? You know what I mean? Like some of the things that Vijay was sharing about, like telling, telling your mom, you can’t go outside and walk because I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Has been part of some of the ways that some of our students that I have sometimes felt about like, can I go outside by myself?

Windi Sasaki:
Is it going to be okay? I’m certainly not doing it after dark. And you know, all of these other kinds of things, when we have students who are needing to also do things like grocery shop, or, you know, if they, if they stopped at 10pm class and do that on public transportation or, or any of the other types of things that we’re doing. So we see those things compound and what we see in our campuses and what has been the, the existing structure is that there I’ve, I’ve been speaking on mental health for over 15 years and student affairs. And one of the things that has not changed is the feeling that we have enough culturally competent counselors on our campuses to, to, to work with this population who we see mostly by the time they are willing to go to counseling and psychological services when they are at crisis.

Windi Sasaki:
And, and so what does, what does that look like? And, and how do, if, if all that other stuff that I was saying about what happens when we put everyone in the same group that gets applied here, how do I then get that counseling group to look like the diversity of the students that we have, that, that also exists on campus and the ways that they might be responding and differently? Right? So COVID has provided more than one challenge besides what people are saying in anti-Asian racism. And the incident Atlanta, we’ve seen more mass deportations to Southeast Asian American people all, and, you know, like there, there are challenges with healthcare. There’s a lot of healthcare workers in different parts at different levels. In Asian American communities who have been differently effected there’s some documented populations who have different access to healthcare, like all of these different things.

Windi Sasaki:
So you pick any combination of those things and those things ramp up. And then how do you talk about that when you’re in a group that culturally you might not supposed to be talking to somebody about it the institution you’re in expects that you’re fine. So you don’t need to talk to anybody. And that’s why you’ve never asked for any of this kind of thing before, and you don’t need help. Like, sometimes that’s literally the words you’re going to be fine. You don’t need help. I started to change language in the ways that I’ve talked to students around this, but it’s not help. Right. Because as soon as I say the word help, like, forget it like that, that’s only something you need in crisis. Right? So before crisis, how has this preventative, how are we talking about what it means to explore the different resources that you have?

Windi Sasaki:
How are you being a good problem solver about what’s going on? How do you still have the energy to continue to do all of the things? Because sure, okay. Maybe you are good at this. And maybe the way to be better at this is to use this free service. That is part of the toolkit that we provided you as a university, because we know you needed it already. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here would be free, right? Like, those are different ways to talk about some of those things. And then trying to make sure that where we have the opportunities to kind of figure out who we do have on the different staffs, whether that’s our counseling and psychological services staff, whether that’s on community partners, whether that’s other staff that are not in those departments, but can help refer, right? Like where are the places where we can slowly start to get people into these places of, okay, how do we understand?

Windi Sasaki:
How, how, how do I get this student to get more comfortable towards this place of talking to somebody earlier, the ways that we’re going to do this stuff has to be preventative. All the ways that we’re trained about suicide prevention and college campuses does not serve this population because we’re not seeing them in the same way as, until until crisis. So we have to do something to prevent the crisis rather than wait till pre-crisis to go do something. So there’s some of these things that, that are parts of those processes, I think the other thing is that we have to figure out how to diversify the staff particular counseling centers. And in some of the other places that might provide some of the kind of counseling supports that’s academic advising, if that’s career services, because students will go to those places to go try and figure you know, or figure out some of the other kinds of things that might be side effects of it.

Windi Sasaki:
What’s going on. How, how do we have more people who represent the diversity of the students that are coming, who are under, who are culturally competent and understand these things and the, how are we also working with folks to encourage more folks to go into those fields who have some interest and then maybe come back and make sure that those departments are kind of well-suited. I think what we’re seeing generally outside of APIDA populations is a higher need for mental health services and things like that on our college campuses. And so when we see those staffs increase, if we’re not seeing diverse counselors in those spaces, then that’s a problem for not seeing diverse counselors who have different other identities. Right. We’re not seeing counselors, if we’re like, I don’t know, a Pacific Islander counselor at a college anywhere, you know, like how, how do we, how do we find those folks?

Windi Sasaki:
How do we recruit them to, to this? How, how do we retain them at our college campuses? Cause this is also hard work for them. So it also means understanding that what has it meant for the staff and faculty who sometimes are the people that leaned on, right. And, and how, how are, how are we being cared for? Cause that doesn’t always happen either on that side. Right. so watching my colleagues leave and leave the field right. Has been harder because when you look at some of these, just like, well, we needed you, you really, you were really good students, loved you, and this was hard for you. It was hard for you to be here. So thinking about the impact that has when we’re, when we’re looking students who need people to talk to, and sometimes the, the person on the campus isn’t in the counseling, psychological services, sometimes academic advising, sometimes there are multicultural center.

Windi Sasaki:
Sometimes there are faculty, right. If we can’t keep them or retain them at our campuses we’re not just lost this person’s knowledge, right. We’ve lost the ways that they’ve supported full populations of students and probably retain those students. Right. and so it kind of compounds a lot. So we need to find some ways to kind of think about some of those things and in a different kind of holistic way. There’s a lot of labor that a lot of people of color do on campuses outside of our job that I think we need to figure out how to support different things.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Windi. You brought awareness. I think you, you, you lended some strategies and, and I think that it’s not also just the individuals APIDA students in their own mental health, but you know, oftentimes they’re bringing the issues that their families may also be struggling with because that’s a big part of their existence. We are at time. And we always close with the question and you know, this podcast is called Student Affairs Now. And if you can really take a minute to summarize what you’re pondering questioning excited about or troubling, you know this is how we like to close our show. So I’m going to turn to Jacki, why don’t you kick us off?

Jacki Mac:
Sure. and the first thing I’ll share it, you know, it’s really connected to what, Wendi highlightled by is how many faculty, supervisors, peers, classmates are just moving about their day. Like this is normal, none of this. And I’m gesturing wildly for listeners. This, none of this is normal, but there’s, there’s this, there’s this error that we can just move about the day, like it’s normal and completely not recognizing the enormous amount of labor and stress that many of our students, both undergrad and graduates, our colleagues are handling and holding. As we still, you know, deal with perpetual racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. And at the same time I’m really excited about the possibilities that the number of ethnic studies legislation is present across the country. Like it just brings me so much joy and excitement because I, I hope that this legislation can bring to our formal education, the opportunities that I know exists within education, Asian American studies and ethnic studies that could really help shift conditions on our college campuses for not just future a APIDA students, but also other students of color.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Windi.

Windi Sasaki:
So I think a lot of things, but the one that I think I’m going to talk about now is, you know, I think in June you know, we’re seeing a lot of state colleges, universities put out statements, there were a lot of different organizations that were saying things about how to move forward. There’s a lot of people who are committing to learning. And I started to really see some of those things in the last month, because more of the things around what was happening in Asian-American communities was, was coming up and people were, you know, I’m, I’m going to commit to learning. And, and I think I have just decided no learning was the expectation, right? Like we’re supposed to do that.

Windi Sasaki:
The point of learning all of these things that we were learning about anti-blackness and how to combat anti-Asian hate and all these other things, right. Was to apply it. I need people to apply it now. Right. Like there’s a lot of things that have been said. And, and a lot now I’m going to go, I’m going to go, I’m going to go read about that. Okay. And then come back and tell me what you’re going to do about it. Because there’s been a lot of people who have for, I guess, generations maybe said, I’m going to go learn that.

Windi Sasaki:
And they finished reading the thing and put it down and said, okay, well, that was nice. And maybe that’s where we get to the people, you know, going about their day and doing the things. But I think the ways that we have been outreached in the moment around, the thing that happened and decided that we needed to learn more and means that we are then expected to use what we’re learning and apply those things to policy, to the way we do our work. The ways that we’re teaching other people, the ways that we’re choosing to give our money, if that’s what we’re doing right. That, that there has to be more than just, I’m going to go learn it. I’m just going to go learn it with a purpose of applying it and doing something different. So so I say that to me in a lot of things, but, you know, if this is the thing that you have chosen to learn by listening to this I hope that you take a second no more than a second, but you take a few moments after this to think about what this means you’re going to do now that you have this information.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Vijay don’t you close up?

Vijay Kanagala:
Well, for me it feels like to think you know, think Windi and Jacki for allowing me to be part of your conversation to today. Yeah, I think, I think for me even as a, as people are having this conversation now, just with this recording too I had to go back and now really quickly think about how humbling it is to actually be here today. Right. that an immigrant kid who didn’t really understand my own racial identity is still working through all of that. Right. And I think, no, I think Windi and I were talking about this now, I still remember, I figured it was ACPA or when I met Windi years, years ago, maybe two decades ago. And, and how, when you look back and the community that is that I’ve been able to create for myself.

Vijay Kanagala:
Right. and I started to count the number of people I now within the theater community. And I think it’s probably 600 to 700 folks now. And I still remember my first APEN meeting when I was APEN or EPINCORE with one of the two meetings I walked in, didn’t feel connected because people didn’t look like me and I quietly just slipped out. I mean, I sat there for 45 minutes or whatever business meeting and I slipped out and I am thinking, and now I am here today with no relying on my cousins to kind of help me through whatever, whether it is my personal life or my professional life that I’m able to tap into the coalition. Right. And so how important was it for me to actually have that support over these years? It wasn’t built overnight, but it took, it took about two decades for me.

Vijay Kanagala:
So it’s the folks. Now students who are listening probably for this this episode think about it right now that you’re going to have those networks. The, the thing that I’m really, really excited about. And this is in a very selfish way is to think about the DSAP group now the Desi student affairs professionals group that’s, there was a really small group. And I still remember when I first started in student affairs, I thought if it is four people, and I denied it and myself, and then now we have 302 people. No, when I look at the Facebook group, right. And, and what, what a joy to see that happen. And to also understand that I’m in community with my cousins within the APIDA group. Right. And and that’ll close with one last thing that I often, I usually don’t get to say this when I was taking my student development theory course I still remember we were talking about Asian American identity and it was, it was not even a full class.

Vijay Kanagala:
It was half a class, right. Because people didn’t really have nothing to talk about. And I sort of remember going back then for the next class, with a map of a geographic map, a third grade map a blank map, the class and asked all of my classmates to, to tell me which countries actually made up Asia, great, a simple exercise like that. And people will stand, they can name any of the countries. And that, so part of me was like, how are you going to do the work for the Asian community if you don’t know who they are. Right. And, and so when I think about the faculty who teach and he said programs because I’m coming in as a putting on my faculty hat, right. What kind of, how are you taking care of Asian community within your programs within the student, HESA programs and how are you knowledgeable about the he’s a community or their peer community, right.

Vijay Kanagala:
In terms of making sure that those students are supported, because oftentimes I, I meet a bit of Desi students at conferences and they tell me that an institution, whether it’s now, whether it’s a Desi student or if it’s a broader APIDA identification. And I would have had a conversation with that faculty member, but never had the faculty member mentioned to me that, Hey, we have a student that you may want to connect with or that introduction. Right. And I, and I’m hoping that that’s something that people actually do it now do it organically from now on that the APIDA students graduate students, and HESA programs also need that support, whether it’s at the master’s level at the doctoral level, that, that hopefully that’s something that people can ponder and think about. So thank you.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you. Thank you all three. Jacki Vijay, Windi thank you for being my guests today. I will acknowledge and point that this is probably one of the hardest episodes I’ve had to host because this is near and dear to me and you all near and dear to me as well. And I know that I’m appreciative of how we support each other and even just doing this episode. I want to thank everyone out there who is watching or listening listeners, just a reminder about this and other episodes. If you want to know more, just subscribe to our Student Affairs Now, newsletter, you can also browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Our episode list is getting longer and longer, and we’re excited to see the attention that is drawing again. I want to thank our sponsors today. Stylus Publishing and Anthology. Please subscribe to the podcast and by others to subscribe, share us on social or leave a five star review. It really helps a conversation like this, reach more folks and build our community so we can continue to make this free for all of you. Again, my name is Glenn DeGuzman. I hope you learned something new, go out. And as, as this panelists beautifully said, go out and do something and go out and do something for yourself. And for someone you love, thank you, everyone take care.

Websites: 

After 50 Years of a “Asian American,” the term is more essential than ever

‘I Will Not Stand Silent.’ 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality 

Self-Care Tips For Asian Americans Dealing With Racism Amid Coronavirus 

National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA) COVID-19 Response Toolkit

How to support Asian American colleagues amid the recent wave of anti-Asian violence

Hollaback! and Asian Americans Advancing Justice Bystander Intervention Training to Stop Anti-Asian/American and Xenophobic Harassment

In 1968, These Activists Coined the Term “Asian American” – and it Helped Shape Decades of Advocacy

AAPI Data

Project Yellow Dress

Resources for Staff and Faculty – APIMEDA UCSD

Podcasts: 

They Call Us Bruce

NPR’s Code Switch

Model Majority Podcast

Videos: 

PBS Asian Americans

Chinese Virus: Why Anti-Asian Racism is so Contagious

Tritons Tackling Xenophobia: Battling Racism in the Era of COVID-19