Speaking to an audience of approximately 100 people last night in Von Canon Hall, internationally recognized political activist Yuri Kochiyama gave the keynote address of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, entitled "Expanding Our Horizons: Decolonizing Our Minds." Kochiyama offered her vision for a human race unified by dignity, rather than separated by race, to the mostly student audience.
Kochiyama pinpointed racism as a major contributor to the polarization that currently plagues American society. "Americans do not really look at one another as equals," she said.
Students have the task of correcting the wrongs produced by society's narrow-mindedness, Kochiyama said.
"Your generation can begin by expanding the horizon, decolonizing ourEminds, so that tomorrow it will be easier for the next generation to seek truth and come together in coalition, so that stronger bridges will be built, not walls like today," she said.
The inequality present in modern American society may be a result, in part, of the nation's polarized and divided beginnings, Kochiyama said. "American history has been one continuous, veritable event that has divided us by race, color, class, gender, religion, politics, culture, region, even accent," she said.
Kochiyama asserted that America is still "a colonized nation" in which certain minority groups are dominated by others in power. The more powerful groups, in the position of "colonists," may oppress other groups and try to justify this oppression, Kochiyama said. "But colonists rarely can take away [minorities'] identity, pride, and self-confidence," she said.
These minorities, she said, should continue to press for their freedom and fight for their civil rights.
Part of the struggle to ensure minorities' civil rights rests with learning about the history of minorities in this country, Kochiyama said. Traditionally, however, whites have controlled the chronicling of American history, she said. "Ethnic studies are a way to learn history from the perspective of minority groups," she said.
Kochiyama said that Americans, because of their equality, should give each other mutual respect. "We must expand our horizons in every way for decolonizing our minds," she said.
Still, Kochiyama said that minority groups' are also partially at fault. She said that she believes their superficial self-categorizations and propensity to play the role of the victim have contributed to their limited place in society.
Minorities should join forces politically, socially, and economically to become more cogent and respected, instead of keeping their distance from each other, Kochiyama said. "We can help one another," she said. "We can learn from one another. Unity is strength."
Many members of the audience said that they were enthusiastic about Kochiyama's speech. Trinity senior Theera Vachranukunkiet, president of the Asian Students Association, which co-sponsored the address, said that she thought Kochiyama's speech coincided well with the theme for this year's Heritage Month. "I think that as far as Asian American Heritage Month goes, it was really refreshing to hear a woman who is active not only in the Asian American community but in other communities as well," Vachranukunkiet said.
Trinity freshman Reginald Williams said he was pleased that many students who were not Asian American attended. "It was awesome," Williams said. "She had a lot to say. I was informed a whole lot."
Engineering freshman James Kao said he agreed with Williams. "I thought that she was very motivating," he said. "A lot of people tend to distance themselves from each other. What she said about people of different races unifying together was very inspiring." Kochiyama, who was incarcerated in California with other Japanese-Americans during World War II, has been a civil rights activist since the 1950s. In 1960, she and her family moved to Harlem, where she continues to fight for residents of that community.
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