I’m sure that University of Wisconsin memes were cool long before I found them, and that people with more “internet savvy” or “computer literacy” or “time to spend on Internet junk” than I have were posting meme after meme before they were even cool in the first place. Anyhow, I recently spent a solid half-hour poring over at least 100 of these memes, and it was a grand old time. For those of you who live under rocks or are older than 40 years old, a meme in this sense is simply a picture with words, and in general the purpose of a meme is to entertain. If you haven’t seen these memes, I strongly recommend a quick perusal; it will be worth your while. Particular gems are the “lazy college senior” and “college freshman” categories.
In general I thought the memes were funny, and I appreciated the way they extracted humor from many of the daily triumphs, minor inconveniences and typical catastrophes all UW students experience at some point in their academic career. However, there were also memes that missed the mark completely because they discriminated against foreign students and faculty.
The first one I saw was a series of screen shots from the movie “Inception.” A caption under Leonardo DiCaprio’s face says, “That one Asian kid ruined the curve on our Econ final.” A caption under Cillian Murphy’s face responds, “What does he look like”? The final screenshot is Leo squinting back at him, a look that the creator of this meme obviously took to be a parody of Asian facial features.
It’s irritating to see a group of fellow students being ostracized in this way. This meme finds fault with an Asian student for being academically successful, and with twisted and backward logic it uses this as a jumping-off point for discrimination. It is overtly racist in that it identifies a student as “that one Asian kid.” In general, I feel that identifying somebody by his or her ethnicity shows a lack of understanding that they are indeed an individual.
Memes about Asian students used Leo’s squinting face as a description of Asian appearance, stooping to the lowest of racist lows and commenting on the way an ethnic group looks. This may be the worst form of overt racism – the purest ignorance – the inability to look beyond the superficial differences in human appearance and see the more important fact that we are all people.
Other memes contained complaints about foreign TAs. One meme was a picture of a chalkboard with the caption “The first day of math class: Because if your TA knows enough English to go over the syllabus, you’re in the wrong room.” Another was a picture of the Dos Equis white-haired beer connoisseur “Most Interesting Man in the World” and read “I don’t always understand my TAs, but when I do, their first language is usually English.”
Without TAs, academic life at the UW would come to a standstill, and TAs put serious time and effort into teaching labs and discussion sections for not a whole lot of money. It is frustrating to see them disrespected in this way. It’s hard to see why people complain about being unable to understand their TAs – maybe these people have never heard an accent before, or maybe it is just plain closed-mindedness. In my experience, foreign TAs can make themselves understood perfectly well in English, although (gasp) it may not be the same Midwestern American English common to these parts. They are generally knowledgeable and competent in their subject areas.
UW benefits greatly from foreign TAs for many reasons, but I’ll name two. Not only at UW, but in American higher education as a whole, science, engineering and mathematics programs would be understaffed and overworked without international faculty and graduate students. These foreign TAs that certain meme-makers are disrespecting are not only hard-working and helpful, they are an integral part of higher education in the United States. Another reason that UW benefits greatly from foreign TAs is that they bring with them a wide variety of cultural backgrounds into the classroom. In a flattening and shrinking world where distance is becoming irrelevant, geographic barriers are becoming insignificant and the global marketplace is becoming ever more interconnected, cultural IQ is invaluable.
I can give many reasons why it is a good thing that there are many international students and TAs at UW. But in the end it all boils down to the fact that discrimination against other people, especially fellow students and teachers, for their language, ethnicity or appearance is flat-out wrong. This is an institution that prides itself on being forward-thinking, and a community known for its open-mindedness. Racism directed at Asian students and complaints about foreign TAs have no place here.
Charles Godfrey ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in math and physics.
