AAA Poster Offends

Recently the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association (AAA) advertised for a meeting of its newly-formed political action committee. The posters, printed on yellow paper, read "YELLOW POWER" in large letters, with the meeting place and time in smaller print below.

As a Pakistani-American, I consider myself Asian-American, but I do not consider myself "yellow" (I am brown more than anything else). As such, I felt slighted by the posters, distributed by an organization which purports to represent all Asian Americans.

As a member of AAA, and as a former steering committee member, I am further distressed by AAA's reluctance to write a letter of apology for the poster. Perhaps the current steering committee of AAA does not realize the full extent of the poster's insult.

"Yellow" is a commonly used label (and often an epithet) for East Asians. While the Asian-American community at Harvard is largely East-Asian, it is not exclusively so; Southeast Asian and South Asian American are present in sizable numbers as well.

If South Asian Americans saw the AAA poster, as many did, no doubt they would think that they were not welcome at the AAA meeting, or at least that AAA did not represent their needs.

This perception runs contrary to AAA's stated intention to represent all Asian-Americans. Indeed, insofar as the administration recognizes AAA as the major Asian organization on campus and gives it special privileges (such as a permanent seat on the Harvard Foundation Student Advisory Committee), AAA has an obligation to represent all Asian-Americans. In light of the "Yellow Power" poster, I question AAA's ability to do so.

Officers from AAA apologized to the co-presidents of the South Asian Association (SAA) for any offense that the poster might have caused, but they are not owed the apology. Now is SAA as a whole owed an explanation.

Rather, AAA should distribute a letter of apology which has the same circulation as the original poster so that any individual who might have seen the "Yellow Power" advertisement and been offended by it might also see an apology for it; a letter to a campus publication would suffice.

In the meantime, I can only wonder about the sincerity of AAA's intention to represent all Asian Americans. Muneer Ahmad '93