Reading(s) Macleans

Since Bill Readings so helpfully brings up Macleans' annual university rankings issue, I am going to use this as a point of departure to bring up what I am most curious about this month: The on-going debate over Macleans' recent "Too Asian?" article. (For those of you who have not yet had the distinct (dis)pleasure of reading it, you can find it here: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/11/10/too-asian/

The timing of the Readings reading is quite apropos because the Macleans' piece presents another way of looking at how excellence is constructed in universities.

I will start off by saying that the article is undeniably racist. I don't really have anything to add to Jeet Heer's excellent critique found here http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2010/11/24/too-brazen/ (thanks to Shama for pointing it out)

What I would like to particularly emphasize from Heet's piece is how the discourse of whiteness circulates throughout the framing of the article: a campus can be called an "Asian campus" when white students begin to feel threatened. Terms like "white campus" are reserved for apartheid-era South African schools.

I was going to talk about how ideas of excellence circulate through the Macleans article, but instead, I think there is a need for a more urgent discussion. The one point made that I will concede to the authors is their observation that race is not a topic that is openly discussed in Canada. But let us be clear -- it is a topic not discussed by white people in Canada. Why is this? Do white Canadians suffer from white guilt to the extent that any discussions about race paralyze us intellectually? Or are we so blinded by the (failure of) multiculturalism that we ignore the power dynamics that constitute the very fabric of "Canadian" identity?

More importantly, how do we, as academics and ostensibly student role models, not only respond to articles such as this one, but proactively engage with the underlying xenophobia that enabled it in the first place?

The risks of this article are not just about universities. We have seen this historical moment before: an economy in the midst of seismic restructuring, massive job less, and a rise in immigrants stealing "white men's jobs" and with "loose morals" that would hurt society. The so-called "Yellow Peril" of the early 20th century with with us again but this time, an "Asian" (and what work is being done when that term is deployed in contexts such as these?) influx is hurting over-privileged white people with a"hard work ethic" rather than loose morals. So what are we going to do about it?