Save the Date: DEIB Speaker Series

Please mark your calendars for the first DEIB speaker of the new academic year on Wednesday, September 6th, at 6PM. Our guest speaker, Dr. Jennifer Ho, will present: “Not Your Model Minority: Understanding the Complexity of Asian American Lives.” Join us on Zoom, at the link below.

Ahead of the event, please watch ‘Not Your Model Minority’ by Jon Osaki, which reveals the many ways the model minority myth has been used to create a wedge between communities of color and perpetuate divisive narratives, and also examines opportunities to build power and make progress toward addressing systemic racism in America.

Talk Description

Yellow Peril rhetoric and the Model Minority Myth are two sides of the same coin that have stereotyped Asian Americans, limiting portraits of either the “bad” or “good” Asian. The recent Supreme Court hearing on Affirmative Action engaged in Model Minority stereotypes and ignored a more complicated and complex history of the relationship of Asian Americans with white supremacy and the coalition building of Asian Americans with Black, Latine, and Indigenous People. This talk will start with a very brief history of Asian Americans, particularly around anti-Asian racism through the last century, talk about Yellow Peril and Model Minority tropes, and end with what all of us can do to embrace anti-racism.

About Dr. Ho

The daughter of a refugee father from China and an immigrant mother from Jamaica, whose parents themselves were immigrants from Hong Kong, Dr. Ho is the director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts and Professor of Ethnic Studies, where she teaches courses on Asian American culture and Critical Race Theory. She is past president of the Association for Asian American Studies (2020-2022), the editor of three essay collections, the author of three scholarly monographs, and a number of essays and articles, both research oriented and public facing. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Ho is active in community engagement around issues of race and intersectionality, leading workshops on anti-racism and how to talk about race in our current social climate. You can follow her on BlueSky and Twitter @drjenho.