Dear former and current and prospective Asian students at WM

hxhsux
Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:40:24 +0000

I’m Asian and I graduated about ten years ago from W&M. I grew up in lily-white Utah, though, so compared to where I was coming from, the College presented a fairly diverse environment, and any self-consciousness I felt over being Asian at W&M paled in comparison to that of being non-Mormon and non-white in Utah.

I found the student body to be pretty much what you’d expect from any good East coast university: for the most part smart, culturally sophisticated, and racially harmonious. Despite the ubiquitous ethnicity-specific clubs (Asian Student Union, Black Student Union, etc., in which I didn’t participate), I remember the campus as more or less post-racial.

However, I’m sorry to say, there is racism everywhere and W&M is no exception. I think it’s safe to say that if you are a minority at the College, you are almost certainly going to experience at least one moment that will set your racism spidey sense atingle, even if it doesn’t happen to you directly.

The question, though, is whether or not you will experience the kind of offensive behavior as described by that Wake Forest student. I think you have to acknowledge that it only takes a single jerk to ruin things, but based on my experience, I would say the chances of that happening are pretty low. I don’t recall experiencing anything like that. Nobody ever called me a name to my face, or wrote some crude remark on my door, etc. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen to you, but the campus environment wasn’t one that encouraged or accepted that behavior.

Off campus, it’s hard to say. It’s the real world, after all, and the real world contains racists. However, I’d say the odds of you encountering racism are about the same as in Massachusetts (I lived in Boston for two years after college). And given the sometimes tense town-gown relations, you’re probably more likely to be mistreated for being a student at the College than you are for being Asian.