Plain concern or bigotry? You decide
Not long before the Chinese Lunar New Year, Megan Neely, the head of Graduate Studies in Biostatistics at Duke University, stepped down amid a controversy ignited by an email she sent to students urging them to speak English. In the email, Neely said that two other members of the faculty had asked her to identify some Chinese students who had talked to one another in Chinese “loudly” in the student lounge because they felt it should be factored in if they applied for future internships and other opportunities. Neely pleaded with the students to “keep these unintended consequences in mind” and use “English 100 percent of the time” in professional settings.
The incident drew widespread attention in the US and China, and the repercussions are still echoing as The Chronicle, the university’s campus newspaper, is still publishing students’ Op-Ed articles as of this week, debating Neely’s decision to step down.
I have to admit that when I read through the text of Neely’s email, I saw more of a concerned guidance counselor trying to warn her students of a problem they faced rather than a xenophobic redneck bad-mouthing Chinese and other foreigners.
But historically, the choice of a spoken language is no small matter, especially for Chinese immigrants. There is a whole generation of Chinese immigrants who grew up in the US many years ago who don’t speak a word of Chinese because, in the aftermath of the Chinese Exclusion Act, their parents deliberately steered them away from the language. That has contributed to lifelong identity confusion among some of them.
Being white doesn’t help Neely. In a country where racial sensitivities and insensitivities can all be set off by a hairthin fuse, many times right and wrong doesn’t depend on what has been said but on who said it. A white neighbor telling a black teenager not to wear a hoodie for his own good is completely different from a black parent offering the same advice to their child.
This has been the case for some time. But the complexity of the racial issue has certainly deepened ever since Donald Trump became US president in 2017. In the Trump era, verbal attacks against people who speak foreign languages in public appear to have happened more often. Indeed, a friend who works at a real estate company was interrogated by a grumpy client recently and asked how come she was able to get the job when Americans were unemployed. My friend has a green card, speaks fluent English with just a slight Chinese accent, and the company is located in New York.
This, on the one hand, vindicates Neely’s concern for her students, but on the other, also explains the backlash it caused. The resistance is getting stronger as the oppression grows. In this situation, good intentions no longer matter much. Tom Brokaw, renowned journalist and former anchor of NBC, had to apologize recently for his remark that Hispanic people “should work harder at assimilation” when he was discussing the border wall issue on TV. Brokaw is known for his liberal and pro-immigrant stance.
But political climate aside, the trend for Chinese students in the US to stick together, speak their own language, eat at Chinese restaurants and live in their own enclaves has been visibly rising in recent years. Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and one of the most enthusiastic promoters of student exchanges between the two countries, sounded the alarm when he was interviewed by Chinese language media in 2014.
“I think the biggest risk is that when there are more Chinese people, they would interact more often with themselves rather than intermingling with Americans,” warned Orlins. “Before, there weren’t so many Chinese students and they had to speak English. Now you go to these colleges, other than in classes, you can just speak Chinese. This is not very good because you’ll lose some opportunities to learn about the US.”
Regular immigrants who come to this country to settle down for a better life deserve to be accepted even without speaking a word of English because of their contribution to this country. But students are a unique category of immigrants. They come to learn in this country, including learning the language and the culture.
It may be their right to speak their native language on campus, but whether they can keep an open mind to fulfill the mission that led them to come to this country in the first place has nothing to do with the right. It is a choice.