GOOD ARTICLE: ANTI ASIAN AMERICAN BACKLASH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

The Angry Asian Man brought my attention to a well written article that does a great job of outlining the unique problems and challenges faced by Asian American students today on all college campuses from the elites, such as Princeton to the state schools like most recently at University of Colorado where the pretense of "satire" has provided an oft convenient vehicle for attacking Asian American classmates with racial stereotypes, images, and symbols. While browsing through the reader comments for some of these essays, I found this to be the most frequent response from defenders: B-b-but First Amendment! I feel that when these people first learned about our constitution, they listened to only the first five minutes of the lecture and then left class or fell asleep. And afterwards, never ever took another history, political science or government class again.

Imagine for a minute if student leaders at elite college campuses devoted themselves to mocking black people or Jewish people or gay people. I’m not talking about drunk students posting pictures of their offensive parties on Facebook, but student newspaper editors – thought of as being both smart and progressive – giving space over for the sole purpose of making fun of people because of their background. It’s hard to imagine. And yet recently this phenomenon of racial caricatures as “satire” has emerged with Asian Americans as the object of the jokes.

I HAVE TIMES SELECT!!!!!!

This bit of news, courtesy of the ever brilliant and vigilant members at Metafilter (myself, cough, included), that the New York Times's "Select" aka Times Select--which provides access to their columnists, designated articles, and archives--is now FREE if you have a ".edu" e-mail address, and that made me very happy because I was able to use my current Columbia University e-mail for this.  However, I'm not sure if the "alumni.brown.edu" will work.

YOUR TODAY'S MUST-READ STORY

(Via) I don't even really know how to recap this investigative piece about mysterious letters anonymously sent to various random students at Grinnell College.  The writer, herself (himself?) a recipient of one of these letters decides--almost obsessively--to track down the author of these creepy notes.  Although I don't have the energy or time to research its veracity, it does make for a super fascinating read.  I can see it being expanded into a novel or even a film.

As early as 1992, students at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts school in Iowa, began receiving strange, anonymous letters in the mail. The letters contained homemade greeting cards with crudely drawn pictures—men crawling on the ground, toilets and trash cans, twin closet doors—and jokes that didn’t make any sense. Q: What would a duclod like about the land of the giants? A: Standing in two closets without touching either knob.

In one mysterious letter the sender defined the made-up word duclod as the fusion of two words, dual and closeted, meaning a person who hides his or her sexuality from both gay and straight people. Another letter described the duclod as “bisexual, homophobic, heterophobic, confused.”

The letters were always sent in groups, from four to seven cards reported at a time. They were always postmarked from different, seemingly random parts of the country and always sent during school breaks. Mostly, the letters targeted gay and bisexual seniors. Sometimes they were sent to the student’s school address; sometimes home, possibly in an effort to out the student to his or her parents.

That’s all anyone knew for 14 years.

It's all very creepy stuff.  To read it...click here.