This is going to be a column about BME and intersectional issues. You would think that after freshers’ week, I would have mastered the art of interesting introductions – if the start of this column is anything to go by, however, I have not learned my lesson. What freshers’ week did teach me was to not be so uptight about social issues important and integral to my identity – internalizing this mindset in Michaelmas and not becoming involved in student activism early on is something I truly regret. It wasn’t until Lent that I found my voice through involvement in FLY (the BME women’s network), that I began to engage in these issues through writing, with this column being a continuation of that process. Bell Hooks argues that marginality is a site of “radical possibility”, of “resistance”, so here’s to the hope that, given recent attention drawn to the importance of intersectionality, what I write in this column will open up possibilities for real action.

As an East Asian woman living in Hong Kong and studying here at Cambridge, I recognise my privilege as someone who is in the majority at home, and who is traditionally read as non-threatening and a member of the ‘model minority’. I am indebted to FLY for continuing to teach me about the lives of other women and non-binary people of colour, and I can’t think of a better way to start this column than with my response to another recent Varsity article on similar themes – ‘Race Activism in Cambridge gets it so wrong’.   

To preface this discussion, I fully respect the point of view of the author and their experience as a BME person at this university. Moreover they do raise valid points – racism is, for example, perpetuated by individuals regardless of their race, and student politics needs to do a better job of addressing this fact. However, their critique seems to hinge on the all-too-played-out idea that ‘hypersensitivity’ is the scourge of activism, an argument equal parts predictable and worrisome. 

Many people have written about the absurdity of the notion of hypersensitivity before – that it is simplistic and silencing to conflate hypersensitivity with an awareness of the historicity of oppression. Nevertheless, the implication of the article is that organisations and forums such as the CUSU BME Campaign and FLY are engaging in “misplaced activism” by taking up issues such as #RhodesMustFall, decolonisation, and culturally appropriative May Ball themes on the basis of “hypersensitive” students’ views. To me, this reveals a worrying unwillingness to engage with the multifaceted nature of violence and oppression.

To dismiss the aforementioned issues on the basis that they are “subjectively” offensive and racist is to misunderstand the complexity of oppression and the primacy of lived experience. We need to dissect the logic of this. That a person feels that the appropriation of Japanese culture for a June Event is violent in its commodified exploitation and perpetuation of Oriental fantasies is valid; that a person feels uncomfortable walking by a statue widely glorified but actually representative of a history of violent imperialism is valid. These emotions are valid because lived experience is the only way we can identify the effects of violence caused by ideologically entrenched domination and oppression; power is invisible and everywhere, and it is our job to locate it and reduce its harmful effects. As critically-minded students at Cambridge, we shouldn’t just accept historical definitions of oppression. We should reconceptualise them, broaden them, and thereby locate solutions in cultural and ideological shifts.

Arguments against student activism nowadays expound on the virtues of interaction and free conversation. Don’t get me wrong, there is value in discussion – I myself am so grateful to the generous activists who have shared their experiences to the end of initiating discussions about the intersecting axes of gender, race, sexuality, class and more (a highlight this week, for example, was the Personal Histories Project’s “A Personal History of Colour in Cambridge”).

However, in the types of discussions advocated by these “pioneers” of liberalism (people of colour and white people alike), I am tired of having to be palatable, and having to acquiesce to those who are unwilling to recognise the historical roots of intersectional oppression. I am tired of pretending as if the  oppressive ideologies that inflect our societal discourse today do not exist.

Discussions about race can be uncomfortable, but we must take responsibility for the origin of that discomfort. If the feeling stems from guilt, Audre Lorde has the key: “guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own action or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful.” On the other hand, if the feeling stems from indignation (“Me? Racist? Never!”) – we then need a different response. We need a reexamination of the basis of one’s authority on issues of race. There needs to be a sense of humility, and a willingness to step back and understand things from another person’s point of view. That, if anything, is the true spirit of dialogue. 

I am tired of people trying to tell me that my efforts to make myself aware of the complex and various forms of oppression are “hypersensitive”. It is an old card; it is now time to move on.