#NotYourAsianSidekick: Can a social movement start on Twitter? | http://t.co/4vIK8ha3K7 via @reappropriate Thx for writing this.
— Erin Pangilinan (@erinjerri) December 26, 2013
The recent success of the Twitter hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick generated a heated discussion in the bloggersphere about Asian American feminist issues with 45,000 using the hashtag.
But the China Daily reports it also inspired a counter hashtag, #AsianPrivilege, questioning whether Asian Americans could consider themselves an oppressed people.
NayNayCantStop, wrote: “#AsianPrivilege means being overrepresented at universities then changing the narrative to make it like you’re oppressed,” and later: “I’m all about having Asian allies, but not until they check their #AsianPrivilege. They’re richer than even whites.”
To that blogger Jen Fang of Reappropriate.com said “It’s a fair argument that Asian Americans earn more than other minorities, but what we lose in that conversation is that what privilege we have does not negate the discrimination we also face in the workplace. The notion that privilege and oppression are mutually exclusive is a way of denying the Asian American experience of discrimination, and a means of saying that we’re too privileged to have disadvantages.”
It’s an interesting discussion that raises questions about how do you balance some of the economic and educational successes in the community with the poverty felt by many in the same Asian American communities, particularly the Southeast Asian communities and immigrants living in Chinatowns across the country.
How do you explain the lack of upward mobility felt by the Asian American community, even among those who have excelled in education?
Read the piece in the China Daily and share your thoughts.
RE: Asian American feminists answer backlash against #NotYourAsianSidekick: Her success is a success in the same sense that Charlie Sheens public meltdown was a success. I agree with her in principle, but not in practice. Asian females are treated like sex objects and subjected to enormous social pressures but she’s very hateful, radical, and extreme. She can’t lead like that. It incites extremism, not fruitful discourse or positive change. She uses her platform to call out character executions against people she doesn’t know, based solely on their skin color. She judges people only by their sex and color of their skin. She’s not helping feminists by getting famous for being someone who’s emotionally unstable, vivacious, and a loose cannon.