Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian Studies at U.C. Berkeley and a political activist, addressed an audience of approximately 55 people this past Saturday night on issues regarding gender and race as they pertain to the academy. At times, much of what she said was contradictory, so it is important to sort out exactly what views were being put forth.
At one point, Professor Kim spoke of a "dangerous tendency" to view issues through the lenses of gender and color, but then proceeded to do exactly that which she warned against during her lecture.
At another point in her lecture, Kim ridiculed the belief that the United States had a founding identity or wholeness to it as "a myth." Later on, however, when speaking of the possibilities for women of color in the university, she said that "more is possible than ever before," in part, because our country is "built on the ideals of freedom and equal opportunity." Only one of these two contradictory statements can be true.
In describing her belief concerning what is taught at colleges and what should be part of a curriculum, Kim explained that what is taught at universities and the study of what are considered literature classics are basically political issues, reflecting nothing more than a cultural hegemony.
This is not quite true. As John Alvis writes in his essay in the Spring 1993 issue of Intercollegiate Review, "an education 'properly political' would produce good citizens rather than partisans of culture. It would liberate young people from partisan opinion by opening their minds to the dictates of nature." Professors Alvis and Kim both agree that a curriculum should be political, but not in the same sense of the word.
Alvis goes on to write that the problem of a politicized curriculum rather than a curriculum properly political is that students are not taught to read literature except "through ideological lenses that reduce the philosophical argumentation to advocacy rhetoric for some class or race .... the tools of argumentation will not be made available, since rational appeals presuppose some standard beyond race or culture by which arguments are made binding upon all."
Much of what Kim had to say in her lecture focused on what she termed "class and gender hierarchies," speaking of a need for a "congealed racial identity as protection against erasure." This world-view is inimical to truly open debate and discussion because it renounces the ideal of pursuing a common good and produces "partisans of culture."
In fact, while renouncing many stereotypes of Asian-American women, Kim herself was guilty of perpetuating false stereotypes herself, saying that the normal view of Asian-Americans held by whites in the United States was that of "rowdy brown and yellow immigrants" intent on breaking down American society. Really? Is that a normal opinion that the majority of whites hold of Asian-Americans or was Kim falsely characterizing it as such, in order to promote some sort of antagonism based on surface differences?
One of the goals that the Student Assembly had in bringing Elaine Kim to speak as part of the year-long symposium they are sponsoring was "to enhance the community by promoting discourse and debate on a number of salient issues." The end result of promoting diversity should be that people are recognized as individuals rather than just another black, white or yellow person. The way to do this is to sponsor speakers who would respect the common humanity of each individual rather than those who would make spurious generalizations based on surface and secondary differences.
