I don't think this is very professional of me...

I had to do a workshop during a conference for UT staff members in student affairs, and it was a disaster cause the first 30 mins. were spent trying to fix the computer and I had to rush an hour's workshop in half the time (and I still didn't finish! Yes, I went home and crawled into bed for a few hours after this).

My workshop is about racist APIDA images in the media and how they create and perpetuate stereotypes that eventually become institutionalized. I didn't realize that the staff members attending there wanted to:
"Know how to communicate with Asians and know ya'lls customs"
"know what the stereotypes of Asians are so I can see if I have them" (if you have to ask yourself that, you probably do, and diversity training is not about crossing things off of your list of politically incorrect things to say)
"know how to deal with International students"

Had I known this, I would've presented a different workshop. I feel awful for both sides. I appreciate the honest feedback about their expectations, but I can't lie, I'm embarassed that professionals who are hired to deal with students don't already have training about these issues.

One woman came to me afterwards and disagreed with my little schindig about perpetual foreigner myth (how I feel that we should stop saying Asians and add in the American part when we refer to APIDA students). She doesn't feel that many of the students she works with are Americans (I think she works with international student housing). "They are just Asians, from Asia and I don't want to call them American cause they are not, they are international students".

I say that, although I personally refer to APIDs living and paying taxes in America as APIDAmericans, but it is always a good idea to ask someone how they personally identify and use that. We are a very diverse group :)

What I really wanted to say but couldn't articulate was:
adding that last part, that "-American" part is so much more than what degree of assimilation immigrants are comfortable with and what box should technically be checked off. It emphasizes that we are at least worthy of becoming citizens through this impossible process you have set up, that we deserve the same rights, and to think of us as human. For so long, we have been detained, imprisoned, bombed on, raped, and beaten down without much justice because it is easier to do all this to someone who looks like the enemy, who is the other, who is far removed from all things you consider American - just so that you don't have to feel bad about it.

Does my documentation status make me American or does my sense of entitlement to American rights make me American? Does an international student, who has to pay higher taxes, higher tuition fees, are not allowed to be self suffficient , and are given a short time to stay before they are kicked out of the country any less American when they have struggled more than most to simply exist in these geographic borders? My mother was one of those international students in 1992. When did she transform from Asian to Asian American? Why do you get to decide?