University of Southern California and University of California, Los Angeles have put their rivalry to rest to join together to fight alleged on-campus racism.
A few weeks ago, USC’s Asian Pacific American Student Services and UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center received fliers spewed with racial and sexist slurs.
The fliers are riddled with obvious spelling errors. They feature an image of an Asian girl covering her mouth, and they target a number of different groups.
The creator(s) of the flier left little to the imagination with their word choices.
Written on the flier are sentiments such as: “Honkie c**nts are RACIST, they don’t date Asian men!” and “f**king honey white boy iz sick of hiz ugly and fat Honkie c**nts.”
This flier left no one unscathed … except Mexican women. The flier does say “bravo Mexican womyn!”
The bashing of women and referring to them as “c**ts” affects all women, but I’m surprised the flier spelled women as “womyn.”
Spelling “womyn” is an alternative form of the traditional term and is often related to the feminism movement. Replacing the “men” in “women” creates a gender-neutral term.
I’m not giving the creator(s) that much credit though. Through the use of glaring, chauvinistic expletives, the flier was not intentionally sensitive to gender equality.
The USC and UCLA police departments are investigating the flier distributers, according to NBC.
Alleged racism students face on campus has inspired the Asian-Pacific Islander (API) organization from both USC and UCLA to move towards a change in the campus climate. They are hosting seminars to raise awareness on the issue, and people from all backgrounds are joining together to combat future incidences.
Three years ago, the public stared at the face of racism through Alexandra Wallace’s infamous YouTube video “Asians in the library.” Wallace was a UCLA student at the time and made a public video ranting about the way Asians conduct themselves in the library, in apartments and on campus.
She said Asians are obnoxiously loud on their cell phones, saying “ching ching chong,” while she was trying to focus on her studies.
The UCLA administration went on to defend Wallace, claiming she was expressing her freedom of speech. Wallace said she and her family were continuously harassed with death threats, and she left UCLA shortly after, according to NBC.
I suppose it’s nice to see UCLA supporting the Asian students this time around, even though it would’ve helped if they had stepped it up three years ago.
UCLA has probably started taking into consideration that the highest ethnicity in its undergraduate student enrollment is Asian, 34.8 percent of their student population, according to the UCLA website.
Additionally, Asians make up the second highest ethnic group at USC. Female enrollment makes up the majority in both universities.
The way I see it, this needs to become a human issue, rather than an “Asian” or a “woman” issue.
Racism and sexism of any kind affects everybody, not just Asians.
Although USC and UCLA have come forward, saying that all ethnicities are joining together to fight this issue, I would like to see a non-Asian person interviewed on this matter.
The public needs to hear from the general student body from each university, not just the USC and UCLA administrations or the spokesperson for API.
I also theorize that the creator(s) of the flier might be Asian themselves because the flier targets Asian women. This screams jilted-lover syndrome.
It’s tragic that university communities still deal with racism and sexism, as if time has stood still since the 1950s.
But seeing as how more than 60 years later, Asians and women are the majority at USC and UCLA, the flier bombers can suck it.
To view the flier, visit daily49er.wpengine.com.