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+====ROB: Endorse the debater who provides the best liberation strategy for Asian Americans to resist white supremacy in the context of race relations ==== |
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+Punongbayan 15 (10/02/2015 "What Asian Americans Owe African Americans" Christopher Punongbayan is Advisor and former Executive Director of the oldest Asian American legal civil rights organization in the country, Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus. JC) |
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+The untold story is that Asian America is what it is today because of the African American-led civil rights movement. The first step that we can do to bridge the distance among communities of color is understand our interconnected roots. The 1960s is perhaps best known for laws like the Civil Rights Act. But 50 years ago today, on October 3, 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act was also passed in the midst of the social upheaval of that period. This immigration law has been absolutely transformational for American society because of the drastic demographic shifts that were brought about in its wake. From 1820 to 1965, only 1.5 million Asians immigrated to the US. After 1965’s immigration act, more than 10 million Asians have immigrated to our shores. Were it not for the centuries-long struggle led by African Americans on behalf of all excluded communities, we as a nation would not only have a lot fewer civil rights, we would not have nearly the racial diversity we do today. The Asian American community, nineteen million of us strong, could be the tipping point that shifts the balance of power against white supremacy. But what’s more, we Asian Americans must challenge the anti-black racism that exists in our own community. In 2015, when police brutality is a daily news headline and African Americans are senselessly murdered by law enforcement, Asian Americans must stand as allies to the Black Lives Matter movement. Black lives matter unconditionally. We Asian Americans owe it to African Americans to hold ourselves accountable to this undeniable truth. |
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-==Part 1: History == |
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-We start our journey on March 28th 1979 Dauphin County, Pennsylvania : A reactor partially melts down and releases radioactive material into the surrounding areas in what is now known as the Three Mile Island Accident. 30 years after the atrocity, it is still called the worst meltdown in U.S history with effects felt to date. Cancer, violence, death. BUT no one knows that – the incident has gone down in infamy as one of the biggest streams of government lies to hide the horrid effects of a government sponsored initiative – nuclear power |
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-Wasserman, No Date (Harvey Wasserman has been writing about atomic energy and the green alternatives since 1973. His 1982 assertion to Bryant Gumbel on NBC's TODAY Show that people were killed at TMI sparked a national mailing from the reactor industry demanding a retraction. NBC was later bought by General Electric, still a major force pushing atomic power. , "People Died at Three Mile Island," No Publication, http://www.nukefree.org/news/peoplediedatthreemileisland No date) AP |
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-As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.That quickly proved to be false.The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core. Both those assertions were false. The public was told the releases were "insignificant."But stack monitors were saturated and unusable, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later told Congress it did not know—-and STILL does not know—-how much radiation was released at Three Mile Island, or where it went. Using unsubstantiated estimates of how much radiation was released, the government issued average doses allegedly received by people in the region, which it assured the public were safe. But the estimates were utterly meaningless, among other things ignoring the likelihood that high doses of concentrated fallout could come down heavily on specific areas. Official estimates said a uniform dose to all persons in the region was equivalent to a single chest x-ray. But pregnant women are no longer x-rayed because it has long been known a single dose can do catastrophic damage to an embryo or fetus in utero. The public was told there was no melting of fuel inside the core.But robotic cameras later showed a very substantial portion of the fuel did melt.The public was told there was no danger of an explosion. But there was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl Unit Four did explode.The public was told there was no need to evacuate anyone from the area. But Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and small children. Unfortunately, many were sent to nearby Hershey, which was showered with fallout.In fact, the entire region should have been immediately evacuated. It is standard wisdom in the health physics community that—-due in part to the extreme vulnerability of human embryos, fetuses and small children, as well as the weaknesses of old age—-there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever be found. The public was assured the government would follow up with meticulous studies of the health impacts of the accident.In fact, the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers from the public record, abolition of the state's tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more.The federal government did nothing to track the health histories of the region's residents. |
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-Three mile resulted in an increase of infant mortality, cancer rates, psychological and physical effects that lasted long after the initial explosion. |
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-Epstein 11 , Eric Epstei, Mr. Epstein is the Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert,, "Health Studies," Three Mile Island Alert, http://www.tmia.com/taxonomy/term/12, 10-27-2011)AP |
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-Penn State Professor Winston Richards reported, "Infant mortality for Dauphin County, while average in 1978, becomes significantly above average in 1980." 8. 1984: The first Voluntary Community Health Study was undertaken by a group of local residents trained by Marjorie Aamodt. That study found a 600 percent cancer death rate increase for three locations on the west shore of TMI directly in the plumes' pathway. The data were independently verified by experts from the TMI Public Health Fund. 1985: Jane Lee surveyed 409 families living in a housing development five miles from TMI. Lee documented 23 cancer deaths, 45 cancer incidences, 53 benign tumors, 31 miscarriages, stillbirths and deformities, and 204 cases of respiratory problems.By 1985, TMI's owners and builders had paid more than $14 million for out-of-court settlements of personal injury lawsuits including $12.250 million paid to 280 plaintiffs and Orphans Court Cases. August, 1985: Marc Sheaffer, a psychologist at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, released a study linking TMI-related stress with immunity impairments. August, 1987: Prof. James Rooney and Prof. Sandy Prince of Embury of Penn State University-Harrisburg reported that "chronically elevated levels of psychological stress" have existed among Middletown residents since the Accident.April, 1988: Andrew Baum, professor of medical psychology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda discussed the results of his research on TMI residents in Psychology Today. "When we compared groups of people living near Three Mile Island with a similar group elsewhere, we found that the Three Mile Island group reported more physical complaints, such as headaches and back pain, as well as more anxiety and depression. We also uncovered long- term changes in levels of hormones...These hormones affect various bodily functions, including muscle tension, cardiovascular activity, overall metabolic and immune-system function..." |
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-James Fenwick, a researcher at Millersville University, found statistically significant increases of kidney, renal, pelvis and ovarian cancer in women. (April, 1998) June, 1991: Columbia University's Health Study (Susser-Hatch) published results of their findings in the American Journal of Public Health. The study actually shows a more than doubling of all observed cancers after the accident at TMI-2, including: lymphoma, leukemia, colon and the hormonal category of breast, endometrium, ovary, prostate and testis. For leukemia and lung cancers in the six to 12 km distance, the number observed was almost four times greater. In the 0-six km range, colon cancer was four times greater. The study found "a statistically significant relationship between incidence rates after the accident and residential proximity to the plant." |
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+====The role of the judge is to act as a critical educator combating oppression—while obviously signing the ballot won’t make neoliberalism disappear, voting for strategies to combat oppression in this round makes us better activists in the future. ==== |
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+Giroux 13 (Henry, American scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, "Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University," 29 October 2013, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university)//ghs-VA |
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+Increasingly, as universities are shaped by an audit culture, the call to be objective and impartial, whatever one's intentions, can easily echo what George Orwell called the official truth or the establishment point of view. Lacking a self-consciously democratic political focus, teachers are often reduced, or reduce themselves, to the role of a technician or functionary engaged in formalistic rituals, unconcerned with the disturbing and urgent problems that confront the larger society or the consequences of one's pedagogical practices and research undertakings. Hiding behind appeals to balance and objectivity, too many scholars refuse to recognize that being committed to something does not cancel out what C. Wright Mills once called hard thinking. Teaching needs to be rigorous, self-reflective, and committed not to the dead zone of instrumental rationality but to the practice of freedom, to a critical sensibility capable of advancing the parameters of knowledge, addressing crucial social issues, and connecting private troubles and public issues. In opposition to the instrumental model of teaching, with its conceit of political neutrality and its fetishization of measurement, I argue that academics should combine the mutually interdependent roles of critical educator and active citizen. This requires finding ways to connect the practice of classroom teaching with important social problems and the operation of power in the larger society while providing the conditions for students to view themselves as critical agents capable of making those who exercise authority and power answerable for their actions. Higher education cannot be decoupled from what Jacques Derrida calls a democracy to come, that is, a democracy that must always "be open to the possibility of being contested, of contesting itself, of criticizing and indefinitely improving itself."33 Within this project of possibility and impossibility, critical pedagogy must be understood as a deliberately informed and purposeful political and moral practice, as opposed to one that is either doctrinaire, instrumentalized or both. Moreover, a critical pedagogy should also gain part of its momentum in higher education among students who will go back to the schools, churches, synagogues and workplaces to produce new ideas, concepts and critical ways of understanding the world in which young people and adults live. This is a notion of intellectual practice and responsibility that refuses the professional neutrality and privileged isolation of the academy. It also affirms a broader vision of learning that links knowledge to the power of self-definition and to the capacities of students to expand the scope of democratic freedoms, particularly those that address the crisis of education, politics, and the social as part and parcel of the crisis of democracy itself. In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue and thought to have real effects, they must advocate that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live. This is a commitment we heard articulated by the brave students who fought tuition hikes and the destruction of civil liberties and social provisions in Quebec and to a lesser degree in the Occupy Wall Street movement. If educators are to function as public intellectuals, they need to listen to young people who are producing a new language in order to talk about inequality and power relations, attempting to create alternative democratic public spaces, rethinking the very nature of politics, and asking serious questions about what democracy is and why it no longer exists in many neoliberal societies. These young people who are protesting the 1 recognize that they have been written out of the discourses of justice, equality and democracy and are not only resisting how neoliberalism has made them expendable, they are arguing for a collective future very different from the one that is on display in the current political and economic systems in which they feel trapped. These brave youth are insisting that the relationship between knowledge and power can be emancipatory, that their histories and experiences matter, and that what they say and do counts in their struggle to unlearn dominating privileges, productively reconstruct their relations with others, and transform, when necessary, the world around them. |
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+====Best for activism— Talking about methodologies to combat oppressive structures makes us better advocates in the future—this is a key pre-requisite to education and fairness claims, even if we learn from debate, that education is useless without the ability to put it to use.==== |
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-====The effects lasted long into the public memory with the government learned from the Three Mile Incident, not building new reactors since the 80's until they could find the place that would have the least amount effects on its "citizens." – They learned WHERE to place these horrible reactors and who to exploit for their own gain==== |
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-Cousins et. Al no date (Elicia Cousins, Claire Karban, Fay Li, and Marianna Zapanta Carleton College, Environmental Studies Comprehensive Project Northfield, MN, USA, "Nuclear Power and Environmental Justice: A Mixed-Methods Study of Risk, Vulnerability, and the Victim Experience, No date, "https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/ents/assets/Cousins_Karban_Li_Zapanta.pdf, Carleton Environmental Studies,)AP |
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-We begin with an analysis of the spatial distribution of nuclear power plants in the |
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-AND |
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-for this particular facility to examine the surrounding population using the same methodology. |
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+===Part two is the police=== |
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+====Reforming qualified immunity is the best starting point—a lack of police accountability is what the aff fixes ==== |
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+Wright 15, Sam. "Want to Fight Police Misconduct? Reform Qualified Immunity."Above the Law. N.p., 3 Nov. 2015. Web. 02 Oct. 2016. http://abovethelaw.com/2015/11/want-to-fight-police-misconduct-reform-qualified-immunity/. SM |
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+Recently, police have been killing and otherwise abusing people of color with what seems like increasing frequency. The Black Lives Matter movement is asking them to stop — and pushing for policy changes to help bring about that end. Back in August, the movement launched Campaign, which lays out a thoughtful platform for change at the federal, state, and local levels. One of the legs of this policy platform is "accountability." This makes sense — real accountability can be a powerful lever to change behavior. But I don’t think the Campaign Zero accountability goes far enough — I think that, in order to bring about real police accountability, we need to reform qualified immunity. Before getting into what Campaign Zero is proposing and why their proposal ought to include qualified immunity reform, let’s take a step back for some context. Overall, responses to Black Lives Matter and the Campaign Zero reform platform have varied. Megan McArdle wrote of Campaign Zero that its "suggestions range from ‘worthy of consideration’ to ‘immediate moral imperative.’" But others worry that the very notion of publicly questioning police powers — let alone real police accountability — has already led to gentler policing and, possibly, a corresponding increase in violent crimes. There’s even a name for the notion that paying attention to police misbehavior breeds inactive police and more active criminals — the "Ferguson effect," even though (in St. Louis, at least) whatever increase there’s been in violent crimes began before Michael Brown was killed by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. As Ta-Nahesi Coates writes, "If the "Ferguson Effect" is real, how can it be that it started before the Ferguson protests?" Despite the fact that it doesn’t appear to be supported by evidence, FBI Director James Comey gave some credence to the notion of a "Ferguson effect" in a speech last week at the University of Chicago Law School. He described "a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year" and suggested this "chill wind" was "some part of the explanation" for a putative rise in violent crimes. The disagreed with Comey. And Ta-Nahesi Coates had some things to say about Comey’s remarks, too, saying they reflected an attitude of non-evidence-based policing — a sort of "creationism, crime-fighting on a hunch." He linked this attitude to longstanding racist police practices, and he ended with these words: "A theory of government which tells citizens to invest agents of the state with the power to mete out lethal violence, but discourages them from holding those officers accountable is not democracy. It is fascism." Coates hits the proverbial nail squarely on its head: again it comes down to accountability. So now let’s take a look at what Campaign Zero is asking for on police accountability. This part of the Campaign Zero platform breaks down into four umbrella requests: Community Oversight — Campaign Zero proposes to increase community oversight of the police by establishing more effective structures for civilian oversight and removing barriers to reporting police misconduct. Independent Investigation and Prosecution — Campaign Zero wants to make police oversight more independent by lowering the standard of proof for federal civil rights investigations of police, using federal funds to increase investigations of killings by police officers, establishing a permanent Special Prosecutor position in each state, and requiring independent investigations of all deaths and serious injuries caused by police. Body Cameras and Filming the Police — Campaign Zero supports reforms to make it easier for civilians to obtain video evidence of encounters with police both by requiring police body cameras and by ensuring civilians can record police encounters. Fair Union and Police Contracts — Campaign Zero wants to remove special procedural protections for police officers accused of misconduct, to make police disciplinary records public, and to bar police officers who have killed or severely injured civilians from going on paid leave. I think Megan McArdle is probably right that these proposals (and the others in Campaign Zero’s broader platform) range from "worthy of consideration" to "immediate moral imperative." But I also think the list is missing something. As usual, I’ve not buried the lede: that something is qualified immunity reform. In order to truly hold police accountable for bad acts, civilians must be able to bring, and win, civil rights suits themselves — not rely on the Department of Justice, or special prosecutors, or civilian review boards to hold officers accountable. And in order to both bring and win civil rights suits, civilians need a level playing field in court. Right now, ~~which~~ they don’t have one. Instead, police officers have recourse to the broad protections of the judicially established doctrine of qualified immunity. Under this doctrine, state actors ~~they~~ are protected from suit even if they’ve violated the law by, say, using excessive force, or performing an unwarranted body cavity search — as long as their violation was not one of "clearly established law of which a reasonable officer would be aware." In other words, if there’s not already a case where a court has held that an officer’s identical or near-identical conduct rose to the level of a constitutional violation, there’s a good chance that even an obviously malfeasant officer will avoid liability — will avoid ~~and~~ accountability. To bring about true accountability and change police behavior, this needs to change. And change ~~it~~ should begin with an act of Congress rolling back qualified immunity. Removing the "clearly established" element of qualified immunity would be a good start — after all, shouldn’t it be enough to deviate from a basic standard of care, to engage in conduct that a reasonable officer would know is illegal, without having to show that that conduct’s illegality has already been clearly established in the courts? That’s just a start. There are plenty of other reforms that could open up civil rights lawsuits and help ensure police accountability for bad conduct. Two posts (one, two) at Balkinization by City University of New York professor Lynda Dodd provide a good overview. Campaign Zero should consider adding civil rights litigation reform to its platform, our policymakers should consider making civil rights litigation more robust, and, if we want to see justice done, we should push to make it happen. |
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-==Part 2: Wasteland== |
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-Our journey takes us to September 2016 |
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- Burke County, Georgia – site of the Vogtle nuclear plant |
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+====The model minority myth allows police officers to commit acts of structural violence against Asian American populations. Only a total restructure of the political laws and how they construe Asian Americans can any change occur.==== |
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+Zhang 13 (Policy Memo Anti Asian American Discrimination https://asianamericansandpolicemisconduct.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/policy-memo-anti-asian-american-discrimination/~~#comments JC) |
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+There seems to be ~~is~~ a~~n~~ pervasive assumption attached to the Asian American community that enables institutions, such as law enforcement, to violate rights accorded under the Constitution. Asian Americans are increasingly becoming victims of unlawful detentions, imprisonment, violation of due process and police brutality. The Federal Criminal Enforcement, Federal Civil Enforcement (Police Misconduct Provision), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and OJP Program prohibit any form of discrimination or police misconduct against any person, citizen or noncitizen, living in the US. Yet despite its proscription of police misconduct, there are clear incidents that show otherwise that these policies need to be reexamined to address the ever increasing violence against Asian Americans by police. Consequently, the "Model Minority" myth renders the notion that excessive force can and will be used against Asian Americans without law enforcement fearing any repercussion or accountability for their actions. For example, The New York Times reported that "a 16-year-old boy who the police say was brandishing a pellet gun was shot and killed by a police officer yesterday morning in the driveway of a home in Sheepshead Bay." (Hevesi, 1995) The parents of the young Asian American did not understand why police killed their son. In 1997 Kuan Chung Kao was shot in the head by the Rohnert Park Police Department. As a result of the death of Mr. Kao, "the Asian American community in the Bay Area had expressed concern over the possible violation of civil rights in the shooting and the implication of racial bias in the comments made by law enforcement and public officials following the incident." (Chapter 1) These incidents would not have been scrutinized or investigated had it not been for Asian American social justice groups. Yet, excessive violence against Asian American by police is not a new phenomenon nor does it pertain to a single race as most tend to believe. As a consequence, police misconduct against the Asian American community has created a distrust that of law enforcement will violate their civil rights based on current and past events. Law enforcement officers have demonstrated historically to abuse authority and discriminate minorities, the issue, however, arises when the misconception that Asian Americans due to their "Model Minority" status are exempt from police brutality. This issue becomes especially important for Asian Americans because this false belief, more often than not, leads to more police injustice without any accountability and lacks the attention needed to properly prosecute those who violate their civil liberties. In order to address police brutality we must look at how the policies mentioned above can extend to protect the Asian Americans more efficiently. |
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+===Part three is the resistance=== |
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-====Black bodies live in a world of nuclear waste, constantly tormenting their every day lives – lives full of cancer, death, pitiful living conditions – nothing has changed – nothing positive was learned from the 3-mile incident- black bodies are still represented as fungible- their demands for change- unheard- their lives invisible to the eyes of the government ==== |
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- Dixon 12 Environmental racism: Is nuclear plant causing cancer for poor black residents of Shell Bluff, Ga.?http://thegrio.com/2012/01/25/nuclear-plants-and-cancer-epidemics-in-a-poor-black-georgia-town-environmental-racism-in-the-21st-ce/ |
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-Environmental racism occurs when hazardous industries and facilities are placed in and near poor, |
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-air or water or anything else for the radiation we know is there. |
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+====The anti-black framing causes invisibility to the Asian American culture. The ideals of the model minority make it impossible to carve out identities in the system of oppression. Only by acknowledging the violence against the Asian American can we pursue a better understanding of how to break down this system of oppression.==== |
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+Yin 16 ("In A Black-and-White America, Asians Struggle to Fit In" Steph Yin is a freelance journalist and educator based in New York. Her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Popular Science, and Vice. http://www.complex.com/life/2016/03/asian-america-race JC) |
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+In the aftermath of Liang’s conviction, Asian-Americans must decide where we fit in America’s racial landscape. We must acknowledge how our community is both privileged and oppressed, relate our experiences to those of other communities of color, and recognize that the "Asian-American" identity itself is fluid and ever-changing. "We really need to need to develop a better awareness of ourselves," said Jenn Fang, who writes about Asian-American activism, identity, and feminism on her blog Reappropriate. "~~We need~~ better access to our own history and our own knowledge, all of which is out there." But it's difficult to determine where Asian-Americans fit in, when our understanding of race is built around blackness and whiteness. "We’re not black, and we’re not white, but we have no language for articulating where we are," Fang said. "There’s anti-blackness, there’s white supremacy, and there’s no room for anything else." This black-white binary frames how American society understands Asian-Americans. In an article entitled, "Beyond the Model Minority Myth," writer Jennifer Pan describes how middle- and upper-class Asian-Americans might be defined by our non-blackness and non-whiteness. On one hand, our non-blackness and status as "model minorities" keeps us from being seen as targets of police violence or incarceration. On the other hand, our non-whiteness prevents us from accessing the same salaries and employment opportunities as our white counterparts. Given how the black-white binary constrains us, it might be tempting for Asian-Americans to carve out a space outside of it—but that’s not possible, according to Scot Nakagawa, senior partner at Changelab, an Oakland-based think tank that explores racial justice with a focus on Asian-American identity. The United States is built on the exploitation and criminalization of black people relative to white people, he said, and "there’s no way to get around that." This binary is the reality of how Americans think about race, Fang said, but as Asian-Americans, we can add nuance to the conversation by defining our own experiences and relating them to existing power structures. In terms of race, this means acknowledging the ways we experience oppression—because we’re not white—but also privilege, because we’re not black. Asian-Americans can also do this for experiences beyond race, Fang added, including class, gender, sexuality, ability, and more: "It’s really about seeing oneself as multifaceted." This process helps Asian-Americans recognize the diversity of experiences within the pan-Asian community, Fang said. One downfall of a monolithic national identity is that it erases the experiences of those who don’t fall into Asian-American stereotypes (e.g. Southeast Asian refugees, who experience some of the country’s highest poverty rates). If Asian-Americans start to break down these divisions of privilege and oppression, we can better unite on common causes, and support each other despite differences. Acknowledging all the ways we’re privileged and oppressed also allows Asian-Americans to build alliances with other communities of color through shared issues. One example is the alliance between APIs4BlackLives, a national group of Asian and Pacific Islander activists, and Black Lives Matter. By connecting the experiences of racial profiling and police brutality within black communities to those within Southeast Asian communities, APIs4BlackLives ~~this~~ challenges anti-blackness among Asian-Americans, and attracts them to the Black Lives Matter movement. "They have been able to present their racial politics and experiences in a way that doesn’t shift the conversation, so the focus is still on black lives," Fang said. Defining ourselves also means owning our history. After the Liang protests, for instance, multiple media outlets attributed them to Asian-Americans as a group, rather than explaining that the protests caused sharp divides within our community. This erased Asian-Americans’ history of resistance and the ongoing work of activist groups such as CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities and ~~#Asians4BlackLives, according to Ellen Wu, an Indiana University Bloomington professor and author of The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. In fact, the Asian-American identity was largely constructed out of the Civil Rights Movement by Asians who wanted to critique anti-black racism, and stand in solidarity with other communities of color, Wu said. At the heart of Asian-America today is a deep frustration with invisibility. Often, our invisibility is attributed to a black-versus-white framework that makes no space for us. We can demand for more inclusivity and to broaden the conversation, but this binary is America’s reality—and we can’t ignore that. This doesn’t mean we should let it paralyze us, though. By developing a deeper, more nuanced awareness of who we are as Asian-Americans, and using that awareness to build solidarity with other marginalized groups, we can grapple with the binary on our own terms. Doing so makes a difference not only for us, but for all people of color. "We're living in a time when white dominance can only be maintained by dividing and conquering non-whites," Nakagawa said. "This is a time for us to stand firm on the side of the color line that leans toward justice." |
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+====The model minority myth was a construct created by white society to make the people of color complacent. This racial engineering pitted the Asian American community against the African American which ignores the systematic violence against the Asian community.==== |
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+Linshi 14 ("Why Ferguson Should Matter to Asian-Americans "http://time.com/3606900/ferguson-asian-americans/ JC) |
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+Michael Brown’s death has several parallels in Asian-American history. The first to come to mind may be the story of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American killed in 1982 by a Chrysler plant superintendent and his stepson, both white, both uncharged in a racially-motivated murder; like Brown, Chin unified his community to demand protection under the law. However, most direct parallels have often had one distinct dissimilarity to Ferguson: they have not spurred widespread resistance, nor have they engraved a visible legacy. There is the story of Kuanchang Kao, an intoxicated Chinese-American fatally shot in 1997 by police threatened by his "martial arts" moves. There is Cau Bich Tran, a Vietnamese-American killed in 2003 after holding a vegetable peeler, which police thought was a cleaver. There is Fong Lee, a Hmong-American shot to death in 2006 by police who believed he was carrying a gun. None of the three cases resulted in criminal charges against the police or in public campaigns that turned the victim’s memory into a commitment to seek justice. One op-ed even declared how little America learned from Tran’s slaying. While Ferguson captures the world’s attention, why do these Asian-American stories remain comparatively unknown? One possible answer could be found in the model minority myth. The myth, a decades-old stereotype, casts Asian-Americans as universally successful, and discourages others — even Asian-Americans themselves — from believing in the validity of their struggles. But as protests over Ferguson continue, it’s increasingly important to remember the purpose of the model minority narrative’s construction. The doctored portrayal, which dates to 1966, was intended to shame African-American activists whose demands for equal civil rights threatened a centuries-old white society. (The original story in the New York Times thrust forward an image of Japanese-Americans quietly rising to economic successes despite the racial prejudice responsible for their unjust internment during World War II.) Racial engineering of Asian-Americans and African-Americans to protect a white-run society was nothing new, but the puppeteering of one minority to slap the other’s wrist was a marked change. The apparent boost of Asian-Americans suggested that racism was no longer a problem for all people of color — it was a problem for people of a specific color. "The model minority discourse has elevated Asian-Americans as a group that’s worked hard, using education to get ahead," said Daryl Maeda, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "But the reality is that it’s a discourse that intends to pit us against other people of color. And that’s a divide and conquer strategy we shouldn’t be complicit with." Through the years, that idea erased from the public consciousness the fact that the Asian-American experience was once a story of racially motivated legal exclusion, disenfranchisement and horrific violence — commonalities with the African-American experience that became rallying points in demanding racial equality. That division between racial minorities also erased a history of Afro-Asian solidarity born by the shared experience of sociopolitical marginalization. As with Ferguson, it’s easy to say the Civil Rights movement was entirely black and white, when in reality there were many moments of interplay between African-American and Asian-American activism. |
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-====Due to fungibility the voices of the black body are never heard – this space is key ==== |
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-Dixon 12 Environmental racism: Is nuclear plant causing cancer for poor black residents of Shell Bluff, Ga.?http://thegrio.com/2012/01/25/nuclear-plants-and-cancer-epidemics-in-a-poor-black-georgia-town-environmental-racism-in-the-21st-ce/ |
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-"We've had meetings and protests and lots of promises and more meetings," Stephens |
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-not benefit Georgia residents, because it will be sold to Florida.' |
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+====The anti-whiteness movements have holes in its history that create dichotomies between races that not only fails to realize the continued struggle against oppression, but also excludes the voices of Asian Americans.==== |
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+Linshi 14 ("Why Ferguson Should Matter to Asian-Americans "http://time.com/3606900/ferguson-asian-americans/ JC) |
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+The concept of non-whiteness is one way to begin the retelling of most hyphenated American histories. In Asian-American history, non-whiteness indelibly characterized the first waves of Asians arriving in the mid-1800s in America. Cases like People v. Hall (1854) placed them alongside unfree blacks, in that case by ruling that a law barring blacks from testifying against whites was intended to block non-white witnesses, while popular images documented Asian-American bodies as dark, faceless and indistinguishable — a racialization strengthened against the white supremacy of Manifest Destiny and naturalization law. Non-whiteness facilitated racism, but it in time also facilitated cross-racial opposition. With issues like post-9/11 racial profiling, anti-racism efforts continue to uphold this tradition of a shared non-white struggle. "This stuff is what I call~~ed~~ M.I.H. — missing in history," said Helen Zia, an Asian-American historian and activist. "Unfortunately, we have generations growing up thinking there’s no connection ~~between African-Americans and Asian-Americans~~. These things are there, all the linkages of struggles that have been fought together." The disassociation of Asian-Americans from Ferguson — not just as absent allies, but forgotten legacies — is another chapter in that missing history. In final moments of the Vine depicting an Asian-American shopkeeper’s looted store, the cameraman offers a last thought in their conversation that had halted to a brief pause. "It’s just a mess," the cameraman says. The observation, however simplistic, has a truth. That, as an Asian-American who’s become collateral damage in a climate often black-and-white, he, like all of Ferguson, must first clean up — and then reassess the unfolding reality outside. |
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-====The impact to that fungibility is irreversible. Nuclear plants are responsible for devastating effects of displacement, contamination and distraction. Nuclear spaces become war zones in and of themselves, enacting violence through illness, war, poverty, death, and more, creating and unpredictable risk.==== |
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-**Taylor 2010** (Bryan Taylor, "Radioactive History Rhetoric, Memory, and Place in the Post–Cold War nuclear Museum" in Places of Public Memory) |
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-To understand the rhetorical nature of these spaces, we must remember that nuclear weapons |
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-inhabitants and visitors, the latter also creates unpredictable risk for their bodies. |
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+====We are missing in history, but it is only by changing the narrative can we reshape history and actually provide a space to live.==== |
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+Nguyen 15 ("Missing in History" and Why It Matters by Phuong Nguyen" The Ithaca Pan Asian American Film Festival is dedicated to supporting Asian American film, video and media makers both nationwide and throughout the upstate New York area while promoting films created by, starring, and/or about Asian Americans. https://panasianamericanfilm.org/2015/03/19/missing-in-history-and-why-it-matters-by-phuong-nguyen/) JC |
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+Lack of Asians in the U.S. history books can easily lead us to assume Asians have not lived in the United States that long. That’s a lie as Asians have lived in North America as early as 1763. Lack of Asians in U.S. history books can easily lead us to assume that Asian immigrants historically didn’t want to become American. That’s a lie as Asians were barred by law from entering the country, testifying in court against whites, marrying whom they wanted, and becoming U.S. citizens. The powers that be came up with every excuse in the book: Asians are sojourners who don’t want to settle here; the founding fathers never intended Asians to become U.S. citizens; we can’t admit more Asians to our university because we want more students who are well-rounded; we can’t promote Asians to leadership roles because we need ~~someone~~ leaders who everyone can relate to. Lack of Asians in U.S. history books can easily lead us to assume that Asians lacked any artistic, political, scientific, or business ambitions until recently. That’s a lie, too, as we’ve had generations and generations of talented Asian Americans whose names we can barely remember because those who write our history books don’t want to spend precious book space telling us how Asian Americans, like other people of color, succeeded despite discriminatory barriers that kept many talented people unrewarded and unrecognized, leaving us only with a model minority myth that claims that past and present wrongs are irrelevant because Asians are only good at math and science anyway. Ignorance is not bliss. The voices in Missing in History know that knowledge is more than just power; it’s a the key to survival, a way to counter the lies we were told throughout our lives all to justify a Eurocentric curriculum. Knowledge is their ticket to belonging and knowing their true place in American society and history. On Monday, April 20, we will invite the three filmmakers, Kristy Zhen, Kristiana Reyes, and Kailin Hibbs, to join us for a screening of Missing in History. And we, the beneficiaries of all the hard work this film marvelously captured, get to thank them in person. |
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-==Part 3: Memory Space == |
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-====Three Mile and Burke County Georgia reflect the long and contested history of nuclear power production in this country. We must use these sites as memory places in order to understand the effects on populations of environmental degradation, and to challenge the militarized power that displaces and subjects black and brown communities to health crises. The nuclear power plant is symbolic of militarized control over certain bodies and embracing these sites as a memory space unmasks and unmakes those system of power.==== |
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-Blair, Dickson, and Ott 2010 (Introduction Rhetoric/Memory/Place; Places of Public Memory) |
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-Finally, memory places themselves have histories. That is, they do not just |
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-play whenever one visits a historic site—the visitor's own era."129 |
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-====Thus I advocate the turn of Three Mile and Burke County Georgia into "Memory Spaces" as a means for countries to prohibit the production of nuclear power.==== |
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-The memory place does not just represent the pasts, it accretes it and draws connections from past to present. It shapes our way of being, unmasking and unmaking systems of power that subjects particular citizens to environmental degradation, and health crises.==== |
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-Blair, Dickson, and Ott 2010 (Introduction Rhetoric/Memory/Place; Places of Public Memory) |
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-Places also mobilize power because they are implacably material. They act directly on the |
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-====The debate space is uniquely key –our rhetoric impacts those in the room with us and create a memory space for this specific round-IN a world where there is never a memory of the harms against the black body- Memory Spaces are uniquely key to contesting nuclear power AND REFRAME ALL STATE POLICIES ARE VIEWED. THUS THE ROLE OF THE BALLOT IS TO VOTE FOR THE DEBATER THAT BEST CREATES A MEMORY SPACE that resists a power structures==== |
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-====Museums and public memory force an immediate confrontation with the visitor to where they must deal with not just the past but the present effects of nuclear power. The phenomena of the nuclear place restores a sense of connection between audiences both socially and internationally. ==== |
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-**Taylor 2010** (Bryan Taylor, "Radioactive History Rhetoric, Memory, and Place in the Post–Cold War nuclear Museum" in Places of Public Memory) |
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-The marginalized interests of these groups evoke alternate rhetorical frames that reorient museum visitors to |
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-to local and regional sites that may be uncomfortably familiar to those audiences. |
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+====We offer this round as an act of conscientization – a process of constant clarification that allows us to name the world and perceive how we exist in it – through this dynamic process we have come to realizations like the myth of the model minority and have already begun and will continue to create real change==== |
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+**Osajima ‘7** 2007, Keith Osajima is a professor and Director of the Race and Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Redlands. REPLENISHING THE RANKS: Raising Critical Consciousness Among Asian Americans; JOURNAL OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES (JAAS), February, Volume 10, No. 1; p. 64 JC/SM 3 |
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+Conscientization for these respondents meant being able to "name their world." That is, a meaningful education had helped them to recognize and understand the impact that societal conditions and forces of oppression have on their lives and the lives of others. As Freire writes, the process of conscientization, or education for critical consciousness, "involves a constant clarification of what remains hidden within us while we move about in the world," and it provokes "recognition of the world, not as a ‘given’ world, but as a world dynamically ‘in the making."24 Such recognition often inspires people to work against that oppression, thus beginning their active efforts to transform the world.25 Naming the world was an important step toward actively changing it. |