Dr. Melinda L. de Jesus
Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University

Dedicated in love and struggle to HHT, MCS, AA, BH, SS, the ALANA student activists and their allies

This essay explores what I have come to regard as two sides of the same coin: my experiences as a diversity-initiative postdoctoral fellow at an intensely white New England university and as an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the San Francisco Bay Area. The title refers to "Kake Walk," a University of Vermont (UVM) institution based on the minstrel shows of the 1890´s. Below, I delineate how my fellowship at UVM was predicated on a specific kind of "kake walk:" I was to demonstrate my gratitude and appreciation for UVM´s pursuit of "diversity" to its (white) administrators amid a climate of racial hostility and intimidation towards the small yet vocal and militant students of color and their supporters who were agitating for the establishment of Ethnic Studies and programs for the retention of students and faculty of color. Later I outline how my former position in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University demanded a different kind of kake walk: the "rice kake" of my title was predicated on my demonstrating eternal obligation to Asian American Studies´ cultural nationalist agenda, as well as my ignoring the blatant misogyny, homophobic heteropatriarchy and anti-intellectualism which my former colleagues promulgated in the name of "ethnic" solidarity.

My Postdoctoral Year in Vermont

In a packed gymnasium, five thousand white people and perhaps two or three people of color watch intently as two white college students put on a caricature of African Americans. Their hands and feet are white, exaggerating the fact that, to some whites, blacks have large hands and feet, whose palms and soles are not the same color as the rest of them. The students´ faces are colored black but not a human color. Rather, like the "pickaninny" dolls of the nineteenth century, this black is unnatural. Large white eye and mouth sockets exaggerate the perception whites have that eyes and lips of African Americans are too big, stand out too vividly against their skin color. Outlandish kinky-haired wigs complete the effect, not so much comic as mildly repulsive, although the audience seems to view it with affection. The students now begin to strut and kick up their legs in a ritual called "a-walkin´ fo´ de kake." When they have finished, they bow humbly to a white couple with crowns on, seated in a place of honor. They shuffle off like Stepin Fetchit in the old Hollywood movies. The crowd shows its appreciation with wild applause. This . . . is UVM Kake Walk, an eighty year fascination with a stereotype of blacks in the whitest state in the Union.

James Loewen

support an African American or Latino/a American for one or two years as he or she engages in teaching, research and scholarship at The University of Vermont. The fellowship experience is expected to contribute to the development of strong credentials for assuming a faculty position at The University of Vermont or another institution of higher education.

In July, when I first came out to New England to look for an apartment, I was overwhelmed by the sea of green below my airplane window, the verdant carpet a soothing contrast to the dry, brown Northern California landscape I was used to. Once on the ground I was even more astounded by the state´s incredible whiteness. Strolling along the main shopping plaza with my Anglo partner, we observed people wearing turtlenecks-and it was 85 degrees . . . I was never so aware of my physical differences as when I moved within this sea of white faces. "Do you mind if I ask what you are?" the perky salesgirl inquired. "Yes," I replied. . . In mid-August, we drove out of Santa Cruz for Vermont, my little blue car crammed with my computer, books, CD´s and other necessities.The highway stretched before us like a shimmering ribbon. Once we left the painted desert, America took on a surreal sameness. Everything resembled Pennsylvania, my home state, replete with green rolling hills, acres and acres of corn shimmering in the afternoon sun, the ecstatic "Jesus is Lord!" billboards. We started playing a game called "ÀCuantas personas de color est‡n aqu’?" Each day the count never amounted to more than three (including myself). . . We drove into Burlington in early autumn, when the trees had just begun to show their changing colors, and my partner, after helping to settle me in, took the plane back to California. . . .

As an old and respected small liberal arts college, Whitney catered mostly to Caucasian students from wealthy families on the East Coast. Gita´s first new classes left her with a blurred sense of blond hair, designer clothes, and ruddy health. Certainly the college was trying hard to bring in financial aid students from a diversity of backgrounds, but there was a certain truth to defacement of the n in the Whitney sign by the main gate. No matter how often campus authorities repainted that sign, or how often the small white campus security car patrolled past, that n continued to be missing. (171)

The ALANA activists at UVM are a core group of African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American and mixed race students (less than 5% of UVM students are of color). They are incredibly impressive: articulate, outspoken, focused; they model a truly multiracial coalition united to work for racial justice on campus. Organized, committed, eloquent, they are unafraid to challenge the administration. Never have I experienced such a sense of community and coalition.

Throughout a series of heated meetings between ALANA students and ALANA affiliated faculty and administrators, I find myself sitting exactly between the two groups, trying to build bridges. If forced to choose, with whom would I align myself: the militant ALANA undergraduates or with the faculty members and administrators?

The period of Kake Walk´s founding, 1888-1893, saw more blacks lynched in the United States than any other time in our history. . . Reflecting [the] white supremacist mentality [of this period], UVM students routinely built their skits around racial themes, including cannibals, lynchings, American Indians, "Orientals," Jews and the Ku Klux Klan. It was no accident that Kulled Koon´s Kake Walk contained three K´s. Later, "Kake Walk" was sometimes set in type that emphasized its three K´s. (354)

A Story: The Woman of Color´s Burden

The biweekly feminist reading group was the highlight of my fellowship experience. I met many wonderful, brilliant men and women from all over campus, and our lively discussions were much more compelling than my graduate seminars had ever been. For one meeting in March we read and discussed Elizabeth Fox Keller´s "Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature´s Secrets" which explored the androcentrism of scientific rhetoric. Fox Keller ends her article with the example of the Manhattan Project, and how the creation of the atomic bomb is a salient example of gendered scientific knowledge: tracing the rhetoric of male birth throughout, she notes that women closest to the Manhattan Project were probably the secretaries of the great men building weapons of mass destruction; not even the wives of the bombs´ creators knew about this top-secret project until the very end. Our discussion, as I recall, centered around how scientific and mathematical knowledge is deemed the domain of men, creating a vicious cycle of disempowerment for women. We brainstormed ideas on how we might reverse this trend. I listened for about an hour then finally posed my questions: how are racism and sexism intertwined in this example? Why is Fox Keller, so outraged that women were not privy to the Manhattan project´s information, so blasŽ about the intended victims of this knowledge? What did it mean that the bombs created to end the war were designed to be dropped on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while simultaneously Americans of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast, two thirds of them American citizens, are being held in concentration camps, denied their civil rights? How does Fox Keller´s whiteness privilege her relationship to this history of science, her demand for equal access to the power of this knowledge? What of coding the term "women" here to mean "white women"? Moreover, how did our reading group´s whiteness enable it to make the same assumption? Would white women scientists, if allowed on the Manhattan Project, oppose such an act of destruction or would they regard it as a necessary tool of nationalism and world peace? Isn´t it more important to discuss how science is imbued with power (and by whom), power it then wields against those deemed "undesirable"--for example, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or even the working class white women sterilized without their knowledge through eugenics experiments right here on UVM´s campus? I spoke of the need for more complex analyses of the range of hegemonic affiliations and investments surrounding this historical moment, Fox Keller´s analysis of it, and our own reading strategies. But what I really wanted to ask was this: why is it my job to problematize the intersection of race and gender in this reading group every time we meet?

This final anecdote best describes the day to day reality for people of color at UVM. I left Burlington in May, 1996 to begin working at San Francisco State. A few months later I received email from a black female colleague in UVM´s administration concerning her harassment by a white student engaged in completing a course assignment entitled "Diversity Scavenger Hunt." The well-meaning but naive Anglo instructor of the "Race and Culture" course, hoping to demonstrate to her students how few people of color worked for the university, assigned them the task of a locating a specific number of staff/faculty of color all over campus and securing their signatures as "proof" of student interaction with each "target". Needless to say, the targets of the "hunt" found the exercise humiliating, embarrassing and infuriating, just another example of UVM´s racist status quo.

"Go West, Young Woman:" My Job at San Francisco State

But let me warn those who ally themselves too closely with the feminist movement: Feminism is a white women´s movement, originally designed to reduce the voting power of black men [sic]. Alice Walker and Amy Tan are fine writers. But once they attack their own race, they become the worst traitors to their communities.

Even white cultural colonialists can´t get away today with portraying men of color as animalistic. When supposedly enlightened women of color so willingly back stab their culture, it´s unforgivable.

Hoyt Sze

This doesn´t mean that we have placed our loyalties on the side of ethnicity over womanhood. The two are not at war with one another; we shouldn´t have to sign a "loyalty oath" favoring one over the other. However, women of color are often made to feel that we must make a choice between the two.

Mitsuye Yamada

What we remain sorely in need of . . . is a retheorization of a more diverse and inclusive field that also entails newly framed visions of relevance and accountability. [T]he bottom line is simple. We can no longer rely upon the exhausted tropes of cultural nationalism, whether these be "ethnic specificity," the essentialized unity of ethnic-specific experience, ethnic solidarity or even "the community". . . . . The pursuit and evaluation of what constitutes Asian American Studies should be self-determined by a collective body of Asian American scholars, committed to a range of theoretically informed practices, rather than by distanced practitioners of traditional disciplines. Only then can the critical integrative field of Asian American Studies continue to grow and evolve in its own right as a component of Ethnic Studies which was the very point of its creation in the first place. (361)

I enter my very first classroom on this, my first day on the job, to teach my course in Filipino American literature. It is amazing for me, still Pennsylvanian after all these years, to step into a classroom and see so many Pinoy faces-and not one from my own family! From my hometown of about seventy Filipino Americans (in town of 72,000) to a region with over 25,000 . . . As I distribute the syllabus and prepare to present my course rationale, a Pinoy, possibly in his 40´s and dressed like Che Guevara, beret and all, interrupts me and makes it clear that he´s here to check up on "what I think I´m doing on campus, what I think I´m teaching" as "´they´ don´t know me," and I´m "just a name on a piece of paper." My heart begins to beat wildly, and my face is hot. More than the usual doubts ("I´m an academic fraud!" or,"This student is old enough to be my dad!") this is worse: suddenly I am in an indefensible position. My scholarship and pedagogy in Asian American studies have become eclipsed by the fact that I am just an "inauthentic" Pinay from somewhere on the East Coast; I´m not really Filipino because I´m not from Daly City (where many Filpinos live), and I´m not part of the "community" (so loosely defined). Theories about the construction of subject positions and identities are obscured by identity politics. Despite thirty years of excellent scholarship, "Filipino" in this case still means male-centered, straight, manong- and California-centric. . . The students watch, some with grins, as he informs me that "everyone" knows him as a "community activist." Che, who must make a nice living as he can afford to come to my class midday and heckle me, continues to try and distract me and my class. I´m rattled but go on with my course introduction. Later I check with my department chair: he´s somewhat sympathetic, tells me I need to take care of it myself, and reminds me that I don´t have to allow unregistered students to audit my class. Next time Che appears, I´m ready. Students stare as I demand that Che leave the room and speak to me in the hall. Once I confront him, though, Che is suddenly meek; he won´t look me in the eye, he mumbles his name, his desire to sit in on my class this semester. I firmly tell him "no"-that he´s taking the seat of a paying student. As Che slowly saunters down the hall, I practice breathing in and out, in and out. . .

With two other junior faculty members, I attempt to start an Asian American Studies reading group. I pick two articles--one by Colleen Lye on postmodernism, "Yellow Capital and Labor," and one by Evelyn Hu-de Hart on the future of Ethnic Studies. At our scheduled meeting time, only one other faculty member arrives. He has not read the articles but is there to inform us that we "can´t just start a theory reading group," we "must consult with members of the department who were present during the student strikes to hear their ideas about Asian American Studies." It is implied that the theory we desire to interrogate is "inauthentic," that "real" Asian American Studies theory can only arise from "the community," from those moments in 1968-1969 . . .

Attempting to bridge the gap between Ethnic Studies and the English Department, I, with the support of the chair of the English Department, start a multicultural reading group. There is a flurry of interest from English faculty; however only one faculty member from Asian American Studies comes to the monthly meetings . . . The reading group falters, unable to situate Asian American within its specific cultural context, its literary history. No one would think of reading Shakespeare, Faulkner, or even Morrison without knowing about the time period in which each wrote! I am frustrated: why does this never change?

Asian American Studies does not have the luxury of being a traditional department to have [sic] built-in professional prestige or disciplinary recognition, nor does it enjoy enormous national academic support as the cases with feminist studies or African American studies. Being a new [sic] academic discipline of intellectual inquiry, Asian American Studies needs its faculty to commit their professionalism to advance its disciplinary mission. If ladder-rank faculty members in Asian American Studies do not have the professional and intellectual commitment to their employment discipline, it is fair to neither the department nor the individual. As department chair, I will not compromise this aspect of disciplinary integrity. I am concerned about this matter since Assistant Professor de Jesus has spoken to me about her preference to be a feminist literary critic and [sic] that Asian American Studies is a constraint . . .

Lessons Learned (The Hard Way)

While my year in Vermont was characterized by loneliness and isolation, compounded by anxiety concerning the job market and the undefined nature of my presence in UVM´s English department, I learned that not all white people are my enemies, that well meaning people of all races often step on and over one another, that one can find good colleagues everywhere. What lives on in my mind and heart is the image of the truly cross-cultural, multiethnic solidarity of the ALANA students and the Committee for Racial Justice; they are my model for engaged, coalitional activism.

In contrast, I learned that having more faculty members of color on a campus is no guarantee of harmony or coalition. In addition to ignoring the innovations that cultural, women´s and queer studies bring Asian American Studies, SFSU´s Asian American Studies department has splintered itself into discrete entities-Chinese-, Vietnamese-, Filipino- and Japanese American Studies -which merely reinforces the idea that one´s allegiance and identification is acceptable only along one sole trajectory- ethnicity-coded as "male," that theories of the construction identities and subjectivies (i.e. race, gender, class, sexuality) are anathema. Indeed, the ideal of a Pan-Asian culture, so necessary to the formation of Asian American Studies itself in 1969, has vanished along with any recognition of commonalities with other people of color.

Additionally, SFSU´s College of Ethnic Studies, the only College of its kind in the United States and the first-ever program in Ethnic Studies, is itself splintered, fractious. Its embarrassment of resources (over thirty faculty lines!) seems to have bred arrogance and distrust rather than cooperation and coalition. Moreover the ghettoization of faculty of color into one college (by choice or by the administration?) has created an atmosphere of competition for funding and resources, engendering bitterness and tension while the university´s status quo is maintained.

Most of all I´ve learned that the woman of color in academia is expected to be visible yet silent, seen but not heard. I defy that expectation. Moreover, I refuse to choose between loyalty to my "race" and loyalty to my gender; I refuse to disavow my intellectual interests, just as I am learning how I might best contribute to the Asian American community, a community I have never known until now.

Keeping Faith

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

Thich Nhat Hanh

While revolution must begin with the self, the inner must be united with a broader social vision. Many people are deeply engaged in complicity with the very structures of domination they critique. Without critical vigilance there is not way to correct this mistake. . . . Militant resistance cannot be effective if we do not first enter silence and contemplation to discover-to have a vision of right action. The point is not to give up rage, rather that we use it to deepen the contemplation to illuminate compassion and struggle. . . .

A fundamental shift in consciousness is the only way to transform a culture of domination and oppression into one of love. Contemplation is the key to this shift. There is no change without contemplation. The image of Buddha under the Bodhi tree illustrates this-here is an action taking place that may not appear to be a meaningful one. Yet it transforms.

Bell Hooks

Women scholars of color privilege models of scholarship and activism which emphasize multiple affiliations and coalitions, common struggles because we are working towards an ever-widening picture of social justice, rather than just myopic cultural nationalism. Our work needs to be understood within this holistic, synchretic context. Futhermore, if we want more women of color to enter academia and to survive once inside, we need to make sure that there is adequate support and mentorship. And support must extend beyond diversity fellowship programs and job offers: we need to ensure intellectual and spiritual sustenance within an often debilitating, isolating system. Academia is an exhilarating but often solitary: we write, grade, teach, prep, and research alone. We need to create networks of support which will sustain us as we train the next generations.

Thus I continue to struggle along this path, alone, without a map, without visible means of support (Look Mom-no net!). I´m tired. But this is not my story alone. I´ve seen too many good friends, excellent teachers and scholars, walk away from the academy in disgust, near to breakdowns, tired of fighting-and for what? Success in the academy means nothing if we have to sacrifice our integrity, our self esteem, our psychological well being.

Oftentimes I need to remind myself why I´m here: to study literature, to immerse myself in the complexity and beauty of language itself; my desire to teach and read works by authors who look like me, something I did not have as an undergraduate; my desire to nurture the minds and souls of students of color, as well as my own. What sustains me: great class discussion about Asian American aesthetics, reading a truly wonderful student essay, falling in love again with a novel I´ve taught four times before, the deluge of ideas when I begin to write a new essay.. .

As women of color in an era of increasing hostility towards the already disenfranchised, we know that we cannot find strength in "kake walking" for anyone but in our ability to create and maintain multiple affiliations in our pursuit of social justice. Into the next century our work will be to resist any one ideology or movement which would demand our pledge of allegiance while we continue, as always, to voice our truths, to nurture ourselves and our communities, and to build coalitions with others engaged in liberation struggles-all in the name of creating a just and compassionate world.

Coda: October 1999

I am now Assistant Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies at Arizona State University and would like to elaborate upon the events leading to my resignation from SFSU. Sympathetic SFSU students had informed me that my "colleagues" had been searching for a Filipina to write a letter against me; in September 1998, the following letter, demanding reconsideration of my hire, was sent to my department chair, dean, the President and Provost of SFSU, the Academic Senate, and the Equal Opportunity Program. The author was never a student of mine and I have never been introduced to her; nevertheless, her missive precipitated my request for a professional leave in Spring 1999, and the rhetoric it represented fueled my search for a more amenable academic position. I have included the entire letter below as I believe it speaks volumes about the culture and values of SFSU´s Asian American Studies and the atmosphere of intimidation and ill will which characterized my five semesters there:

September 8, 1998

Dear [Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies and Chair of Asian American Studies]: I would like to bring to your attention that there is a professor in your department who does not emulate the standards towards positive learning [sic] by fostering students in learning basic facts needed particularly in order to progress in taking classes in Asian American Studies. The professor I am referring to is no [sic] other than Melinda De Jesus. [sic]

Although I understand that S.F. State University is aimed to provide excellent education like the UC [University of California] system, by hiring and bringing in instructors with PhD´s; however, I believe that though the intention is well, [sic] the results are detrimental. This is because S.F. State University is a feeder university to the surrounding bay area community. This means the professors at SFSU (most of them at least) are in touch with the issues within the community. The problem that comes ups [sic] when SFSU hires PhD graduates who are from a different locality or even graduated in a non-SFSU type of environment is that these professors tend to teach in a different style that tend [sic] to become a mismatch condescending teaching format to our students enrolled in Asian American Studies. In addition, because of this teaching format, the students tend to become withdrawn, rather than motivated towards the class material itself. Melinda De Jesus is one of three Filipino-Americans who teach Filipino-American classes . . . I am one of those students who currently serves my community outside of S.F. State University as a TV reporter for a local Filipino-American daily newscast and also in the capacity as a Commissioner for the S.F. Immigrant Rights Commission. Last year, I also served on the Academic Senate as the graduate representative for the entire school body. And the year prior, [sic] was [Associated Students] Vice-President for S.F. State University. I have vested interest to assure students who come up to me on a daily basis that this mistake will be corrected, and will be changed to ensure that . . . [my copy of letter is cut off here].

As mentor to younger classmen, particularly those who take Asian American classes, I have noticed a drop of interest in these classes because of these new professors that [sic] really have no clue whatsoever in teaching S.F. State students. May I reiterate that I am not implying that S.F. State students are different from your average students at other universities, but I do know that most are on financial aid, have either immigrated here to the U.S. at an early age or most recently [sic], and are just finding out what it is to be part of America, as an Asian American student. With all this said, it is crucial that our students receive the best education possible because through these classes will they be able to become an asset to their communities . . .

Another aspect is that [Melinda De Jesus] teaches in the Filipino-American realm of Ethnic Studies, but is she really connected with the community? Quite honestly, it seems that she was hired under the false pretense that because she has a PhD from a UC, that she´s capable of serving that part which lacks in the Filipino-American segment. [next sentences blackened out in my copy of letter]. I think if S.F. State´s answer to the necessity of bringing in a Filipino-American professor is Melinda De Jesus, then we are truly making a big mistake. What we (the Filipino-American students [)] need is a professor who is in-touch with the students in terms of community advocacy as well as academic theory [sic] which solely translates really to the reality of the question, "Upon completion of this course, What and how will this student apply knowledge learned within this class to outside these classrooms?" I say if the student cannot apply knowledge outside the classroom the course has failed. In this case, Melinda De Jesus as failed to teach her students what the reality of Philippine Literature really is.

I am requesting that each one of you look closely into this situation. It is not fair for the students to get mediocre education, most especially in areas pertaining to ethnic studies. I would be delighted to speak with you in person to offer more insight on the issue. . .

[Signed,]

Maria-Lorraine F. Mallare

Works Cited

Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: Twayne, 1991.

Espiritu, Yen Le. Asian American Panethnicity. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1992.

Fox-Keller, Evelyn. "Making Gender Visible in Pursuit of Nature´s Secrets. " American Feminist Thought at Century´s End: A Reader. Ed. Linda S. Kauffman. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994. 189-190.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. "Life Is A Miracle." The Engaged Buddhist Reader. Ed. Arnold Kotler. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1996. 21-26.

Hirabayashi, Lane and Alquizola, Marilyn. "Asian American Studies: Reevaluating for the 1990´s." The State of Asian America. Ed. Karen Aguilar-San Juan. Boston: South End Press, 1994. 351-364.

Hooks, Bell. "Contemplation and Transformation." Buddhist Women on the Edge: Contemporary Perspectives from the Western Frontier. Ed. Marianne Dresser Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1996. 287-292.

Huntington, Tom. "UVM students protest firing of UVM official," Vermont Collegian,6:1 (September 18, 1995) 6-7.

Loewen, James. "Black Image in White Vermont: The Origin, Meaning, and Abolition of Kake Walk," in The University of Vermont: The First Two Hundred Years. Ed. Robert Daniels. Hanover, NH: The University Press of New England, 1991. 349-369.

Sze, Hoyt. "Sexism in Asian American Studies." Multiamerica: A Reader. Ed. Ishmael Reed. New York: Viking, 1996. 319-324.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore. Boston: Little & Brown, 1989. Wei, William. The Asian American Movement. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993. Yamada, Mitsuye. "Asian Pacific American Women and Feminism." This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Ed. Cherr’e Moraga and Gloria Anzaldœa. New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983. 71-75.

End

My personal thanks to Melinda for sending me this paper to include on the website. Judy

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