DURING THE WORST Asian American Heritage Month ever, May 2020, I wondered how I would start my tenure as President of Queens College. I had been named to the position just as the COVID-19 pandemic was underway, invisible and silent, distributed by “super spreaders” who had brought it from both Asia and Europe, albeit without symptoms. But I would not commence in office until another epidemic was revealed, the racial discrimination and racial disparities which had long been known to some, but denied by many and doubted by others, even as it was perpetuated through crimes and complicities. As the first Asian American to be selected for my role, I already was aware that I would be symbolic. Asian Americans, ethnic Chinese especially—but “we all look alike,” so neither citizenship nor ethnicity matters in details and exactitude—were being condemned for disease and espionage. Then, however reluctant, everyone had to confront their own prejudices as well as privilege as Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry for even White middle-class Americans. None of this will be easy.

Asian American as Oxymoron
The truth is that I am an Asian American. Mocked as an oxymoron, the Asian American movement proposes integration and even patriotism, vulnerable to the charge of being quaint. The term, borne in the cultural change of 1968, has two aspects: pan-Asian and American.

I embrace the bridge-building duties of the identity. There may well be no Asians in Asia. They more naturally identify by ethnicity, region, province, dialect, clan, village, faith, class, and other finer distinctions. “Asian” is associated with military imperialism and hopeless idealism. Japan boasted of its “East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” as it expanded. It was a euphemism for subjugation of neighboring nations as colonies to be depleted of resources and exploited for labor. Okakura Kakuzo’s The Book of Tea celebrated the ceremony of the drink (and was penned in English), and Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, offer peaceful meditations on a theme of “Asia as one.” They were curiosities. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, as elsewhere, they fought total wars against one another as recently as two generations ago. As the Rohingya become a stateless people, the conditions are tantamount to genocide now.

Descent is not Destiny
The concept also implies I wish to participate in our experiment in self-governance. The United States is a diverse democracy aspiring to live up to its ideals. Descent is not destiny, anymore than demographics are. One can will one’s self into American-ness, bending its meaning beyond what those revered as “Founding Fathers” could have envisioned even while appropriating their inspiring language. Ethnic nationalism is a threat not only here in my homeland—a declaration that should not entail the explicit explanation that America is where my family has staked its future—but also overseas, as an ascendant Asia, in particular a Middle Kingdom that would claim again its centrality within civilizations. There are Asians who belong to the Daughters of the American Revolution. Their ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. That is not absurd, nor accidental. They are Anglo-Asians, the product of the “miscegenation” common since our species came into existence, except they are no longer shunned as an anomaly.

The problem is that Asian Americans are being blamed. They are being held accountable through guilt by association, whether they are adoptees or third-generation New Yorkers, culpable for contagion. The fear is not merely that a person with yellow skin, almond eyes, and black hair might play host to a virus; it is, instead, the belief that even if they are healthy and innocent, they nonetheless are responsible on a group basis for an illness that has brought down the economy the world over. The irony is Asian Americans are overrepresented among first-responders, as doctors and nurses treating those who have been stricken ill. Reports are common of patients refusing services from them.

Beyond Genealogy
What appears homogenous is heterogenous to those who discern. The Asian communities in America, even the Chinese in America, include those who are Afro-Asian, for example, and those who are sojourners and visitors who would not be eager to become either “Asian” or “American.” They are coming into contact: Chinese Jamaicans pursue their roots as half-Hakka in Hong Kong, introducing themselves to relatives who had regarded those cousins as obscure in and lost from the genealogical charts. Jazz great Charles Mingus released his Mingus Dynasty recording in 1960, following his debut the year before in homage to predecessors and opposition to Jim Crow. His royal regalia on the album cover should be granted him, for his grandfather was Chinese; the preceding hit vinyl LP, Mingus Ah Um, had featured a slipcase designed by a Japanese American commercial artist. Mingus was reputed to be angry. He had written pieces such as “Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters” to decry the World War II internment. Asian Americans back then were scripted to enter and exit as the detective Charlie Chan did, always portrayed by a Caucasian done up in yellowface, displaying enough manners to remember his place, an “Oriental” aphorism at the ready.

Asian American Choices
To be honest, however, I struggle with what it means to be Asian American. “Asian Americans” are in an awkward place. Their choices are constrained by circumstances. They cannot be neutral, that much is apparent. But whether they will be accepted as allies to #BLM or even qualify for civil rights protections, or if they aspire to assimilate into Whiteness—honorary or otherwise, is doubtful. Asian Americans are easily used. The abundance of Asian Americans students on campus is invoked as if to excuse the absence of African Americans. Although that should be called out as a logical non sequitur, it is deployed as a successful political strategy, ratcheting up resentment all around so those who feel attacked are compelled to defend themselves in a vicious cycle.

Even within a family at home, the disputes are ample, rife with the disillusionment and embitterment that the American Dream is, like all myths, an illusion as alluring as contradictory. They are generations speaking literally different languages, the elders who expect deference lamenting their progeny have become Americanized, both sides having sacrificed and faced bullying, whether at the workplace or on the playground, unable to communicate even to one another much less co-workers and neighbors. The embarrassment is mutual. The new arrivals do not “fit in” and their heirs would forsake their legacy. The quarrel among parents and children is vexing, even to attempt to mediate. None who is credible is neutral. There is that awkward role reversal of youngsters who must be interpreters and translators on a daily basis at the bank and the market, those who begot them having been reduced to newcomers unfamiliar with the local customs. They are welcomed by those who would condescend, surrounded by the possibilities of hostility, perhaps nostalgic about a land that has been lost, and always conscious of the dictate to conform.

I respect, too, those who would find no attraction in Asian American. They are diaspora, expatriates, “astronauts” and “sea turtles” for whom migration is constant and residence temporary. Although I am “conflicted” when I encounter others, who might be mistaken for me regardless of our differences, who are bold, prideful, unashamed in their assertion of Asian, Chinese, or Han supremacy, I am sensitive to avoiding assumptions and emphasizing engagement. When they talk about the unfairness they endure, they might not be advocating that they are equals but instead insisting they deserve deference as superiors. Their framing refers to a century of humiliation and the weakness of the Qing dynasty. They would warn those around them, as if Yellow Peril were true, intent on dominating the universe like a pulp fiction arch-villain, except they were confident they would be victorious in doing so. Their tone on social media suggests as much anyway. So Asian Americans risk recruitment to an overseas cause. The antediluvian certitude is that affinities are controlled by blood.

Neither Black Nor White
Yet Asian Americans, who are neither Black nor White, excluded from a Black-White paradigm, include those who should receive consideration, whose suffering is dismissed as not comparable to that of Blacks, but who lack the material status of Whites. Despite the counsel about priorities, Asian Americans experience frustration above all. They ought not be sent away as the “Johnny-come-lately,” cutting in line. They are accustomed to the casual disparagement of those who speak with accents, by those who are self-congratulatory for being monolingual. Latinx and First Peoples, likewise, are omitted, as if they did not exist, as the contentiousness is flattened, and thereby exacerbated, by forcing problems into boxes labeled Black and White. The literal becomes figurative, lacking the complexities of gray.

Races, Citizens, Aliens
The challenge is to reach out even within what would be perceived of by outsiders as that indistinguishable horde, a mass that would overwhelm. Chinese laborers were integral to fulfilling “Manifest Destiny,” a Christian, European ambition of uniting the land. They built the western half of the transcontinental railroad. But when the Golden Spike was driven in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, they were not invited to the festivities. Their faces are conspicuously absent from the historic photographs. Asians and Pacific Islanders had even earlier fought in the Civil War (1861 to 1865). Their names are shown in multitudes, not dozens but hundreds, on the rosters of the Union and Confederate armies.

Even as a consensus, which scarcely maintains itself as the norm, deems it wrong to sort friend from foe based on race, the virtual unanimity acquiesces, that it is necessary to separate out citizen from alien. The sovereignty of nation-states demands no less. The line that is drawn, however, is among races, among citizens and aliens. The anger is about the undocumented, the “illegal” identified by status so offensively that New York City has determined it is inappropriate to use the very term. Initially, it was the Chinese, not all foreigners; then all “Asiatics,” who were aliens ineligible to citizenship; the Europeans who were Catholics and Jews, “swarthy,” being begrudged their acceptance within limited quotas.

Now, it is a Latinx influx that is the specter, described as the vanguard of peaceful invasion. More than a few Asians, including those whose forebears bore papers that were dubious, will shun those who come later. Their grounds are that they are deserving for having complied with processes.

At a Crossroads
Holding a role that is public, with responsibilities to lead, I have sought to be principled and practical. Only authoritarian figures triumph without other people behind them by definition. As we shelter in place with kith and kin, or venture in public with face masks signifying cultural politics, our circles of sympathy inexorably contract and interactions become guarded. It is not yet settled whether relationships that are formed virtually can transcend the transactional.

I would be naive to suppose that Asian Americans can appeal to Blacks and Whites alike, because racial dynamics play out asymmetrically. The peoples of the United States stand at a crossroads. Within that context, Asian Americans face a moral dilemma, acute not blunt: people of color, part of the majority, perpetual foreigners, or, improbably, agents of our own destinies? Here is how I opened. I had seen much that had been published, anodyne or hypocritical, or both. I know the trait I must cultivate for an institution and for myself as an individual is adaptation. To hold together what demagogues would urge us to rip apart, forgetting our shared self-interest is not our raw self-interest, the rage and resentment to which any might succumb but by which all would suffer—I offer what I can.

The following is my first message on July 1, 2020, as personal as official. We need hope and the confidence our hope can be achieved.

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You have welcomed me. I am grateful. There is so much for us to do. I am confident we are up to it.

I have been preparing for this moment, not since my appointment by the CUNY Board of Trustees, but throughout my life. I am humbled to join you. I know I am coming to a community that faces challenge. We are always living through history, but are rarely aware of it. There are “flashbulb” events: everyone remembers where they were when something happened that would alter the world forever.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement are ongoing around the globe, not confined to a single occurrence. We have no doubt that we will need to tell our children and grandchildren about this unprecedented experience. They will demand to know, “What was it like? What did you do? How did you contribute?”

Everything is fraught, as if a reckoning is upon us. In that context, hyperbole is understatement.

Those who interviewed me know I was not a college president, and I did not desire to become one simply for the sake of professional advancement. I wished to be the Queens College president and I am honored to have become just that. There is a reason for the distinction. Like many of you, I was born in America to immigrant parents. I was motivated by Queens College and its more than eight decades of alumni, and I wanted to become part of its story. The school boasts an inspiring legacy: generations of people embodying the motto, “Discimus ut serviamus” (“We learn so that we may serve”).

Higher education is the engine of the American Dream. Most institutions promote access and inclusion without realizing their promises. If you look at who is at these schools, what tuition is charged and what is discussed when the celebrations are over, you are likely to conclude these slogans are merely symbolic, like the website and viewbook pictures that offer the decoration of diversity.

Yet Queens College is different. As I have met our stakeholders, especially students, I have been given hope. At Queens College, as throughout the borough of Queens, the sense that all of us come from someplace else is palpable, as well as the ideal that each of us have an interest in our experiment of self-governance. To a person, we are “strivers.” I have been encouraged by the example of our CUNY Chancellor, Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, a champion of “Dreamers.” We should not hesitate to take our students’ side. That requires more than rhetoric.

Like you, I have been recently and suddenly receiving messages from so many sources lamenting racism and pledging reform; these missives use words that I do not recall the writers having used before, about bigotry and bias, both egregious and subtle. Although I appreciate the sentiments, which are necessary but not sufficient, I wonder about easy platitudes.

Until recent events made it impossible, so many people, including friends I know well, preferred to ignore what others could not escape. I would rather acknowledge that each of us either encounters or perpetuates prejudice. Many of us enjoy privilege without noticing it.

While abstractions render everyone equal, the reality is anything but. As an ally to the struggle for Black equality, I have paused, because I have not wanted to appropriate the anguish of others, and waiting was respectful. Now, at the crossroads, I am resolute about the path to take. As we ought to know well by observing accurately, some consistently experience concrete disparities because of the color of their skin. They are exposed to greater health risks in jobs that can’t be performed from home, or they’re accosted while bird-watching–the beginning of a range of threats culminating in fatal attacks on people who are jogging or sleeping in their own bed. These issues can manifest themselves on any campus.

There may be those who would divide us even as they move among us. Demagogues would urge our distinct cultures toward conflict. Some may espouse hatred openly, without shame, taking advantage of the protection of free speech. Members of our community who have the ability to respond persuasively have a duty to do so. No one will be allowed to violate the safety of our students, faculty, and staff. Crimes and wrongdoing motivated by race, gender, national origin, ethnicity, sexual identity, perceived ability, religious faith, or similar factors are attacks on individuals and those whom they represent. This conduct, which reaches the level of violence, inflicts trauma directly and indirectly.

We expect our racists to be visibly ugly. We must be mindful that they can smile and declare they make an exception for you and me. Implicit bias is not limited to bigots. Like everyone exposed to popular culture and social media, I have images rattling around in my head about strangers on the street; who is safe, who is supposed to be shunned. We can make good on our principles only by acknowledging our problems. Education enables progress.

You may know a bit of my background. I look forward to learning yours. I am a kid from Detroit who became a lawyer and then a professor. My life was altered profoundly by my decade at historically black Howard University, where I was the first Asian-American to serve as a law professor. I learned as much as I taught, and most of it could not be gleaned from books. I had a similar experience at Gallaudet University, the unique school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, where I was disabled, in need of interpreters, while everyone else on campus was fluent in American Sign Language. I could not have imagined, when my career began, being selected for the title of “president.” When people talk about the need for role models, I “get it.”

I am a civil rights activist, dedicated to bridge-building. I am convinced our course cannot be based on coalitions. My responsibility is to be your advocate, for the proposition that Queens College, like CUNY as a system and you as individuals, deserves the support integral to our common cause. Our diverse college advances our diverse democracy. Higher education at its best is a common good. We can win over everyone, to care about their neighbor’s child – self-interest compels altruism, benevolence, and charity.

In everything we do, adaptation and cooperation will be needed and vital. I will make every effort to communicate candidly and clearly. I intend to follow good process by listening before I speak.

Working together, we stand on the verge of possibility.