This month is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. Originally a week-long national celebration founded in 1978, the extension was officially signed into law in 1992. This year, the Dartmouth Asian community celebrated with speakers, dinner discussions and other cultural activities and programming. Perhaps most noticeable is the commemorative display on the first floor of Baker-Berry Library. Asian pride is a very strong force at Dartmouth, more visible now than ever. However, though these commemorative months serve to strengthen these communities and boost presence and awareness, do they strengthen Dartmouth as a whole?
Heritage months are the targets of some rare but powerful criticism. Some people see them as a belittling of culture, assigning something so vast a mere month of celebration. Moreover, the specific celebration of one culture may inadvertently isolate that community, dividing and harming society at large. Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month was originally created to celebrate the contribution of Asian-Pacific Americans in all of nation's various industries. It was also founded to celebrate the integration of these cultures into American society, while taking pride in rich cultural backgrounds. However, this is a difficult balance to strike. It is easy to focus solely on integration, to lose our rich and invaluable histories, our identities. Conversely, it is also easy to engage in self-emphatic, self-obsessive behavior that blinds us from understanding others. Heritage months seem to emphasize both extremes of this dilemma.
Moreover, this month may be interpreted as a month of activism. The display in Baker-Berry prominently includes a poster of demographics, framed snippets of Asian history at the College, snapshot profiles of Asian students and quotes from famous Asian-Americans. Admittedly, I felt a considerable amount of pride. But the last few entries of a historical timeline caught my further attention. The poster claimed that the Asian studies at Dartmouth as a whole was weakening, and called an active effort to strengthen the program. Though the rest of the displays celebrated the growth of the Asian community, amidst the cultural pride was a strong, sober note of misgivings and perhaps even oppression.
Activism is a tricky thing. The causes may be legitimate and morally just, but the means of activism are sometimes less favorable. Embedded in a celebration of communal growth and kinship, I found a piece of political propaganda. In a way, the display as a whole could have insinuated that if I was truly Asian, I would immediately become an activist, and any less than that would be to forsake my heritage. I felt a tinge of disappointment upon realizing that my pride was manipulated in this way. For a moment, I was tempted to ascribe the whole month's events as self-obsessive, before remembering that this small piece of a large display was by no means representative of most of my Asian peers, who themselves are more moderate, yet still passionately prideful of their heritage.
There are a number of reasons why some people are discouraged from supporting heritage months such as these. Though in their purest form they serve as a time of happy celebration and cultural introspection, they are all too enticing battlegrounds for stereotyping, exclusion, cultural narcissism and activist recruiting. Fortunately, instead, Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month on campus and the Dartmouth Asian community at large openly advocate an all-inclusive sense of cultural pride. Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month has provided accessibility to Asian culture for any and all interested, regardless of heritage. The sense of Asian pride at Dartmouth is not at all invasive or aggressive, but rather, is passionately propagated in consideration of an even larger community, the Dartmouth community as a whole.
The Asian community has demonstrated this good balance not just this month, but year round. The success of these cultural communities is contingent on both their cultural unification and their attachment to Dartmouth. The union of Dartmouth and all its varying groups is dependent on both a strong degree of self-identity and kinship, and one will not do without the other. What this commemorative month has further emphasized is our ability to achieve that balance.
