Recently, The Sun inadvertently offered a fine illustration of the problem of "conceptual invisibility" discussed in my own March 10 Mind Matters lecture, "Breaking the Silence: Destigmatizing Mental Health in the Asian and Asian American community." In the very issue that our community's paper of record published a thoughtful article covering the event, it also ran Stephen Davis's "The Adventures of Antman" comic in which "over-achieving, curve-busting" Asian and Asian American students are objectified and vilified, along with Ithaca's infamous weather, the hilly campus and sky-rocketing tuition, as "terrible things" at Cornell. Laura Harder, author of the piece on the lecture, even makes note of the resentment and problems caused by stereotypes of Asian and Asian American students as self-reliant, problem-free math and science geniuses -- the "CyberAsians" of "Antman." Although one might be tempted to attribute this juxtaposition of the feature article and the cartoon to racism or to dismiss it as merely lack of editorial vigilance, we would rather look on it as part of a larger, more pervasive problem that has been at the center of our work as Cornell's Asian and Asian American Campus Climate Taskforce (3ATF) -- a problem that makes Davis's cartoon (and the Sun's decision to publish it) no laughing matter.

The most dramatic -- and most dire -- element of 3ATF's findings was that students of Asian descent committed a disproportionate number of completed suicides at Cornell. But this is only the most striking aspect of a broader trend that shows Asian and Asian American students being most likely to report significant problems in a number of important areas on health surveys, such as stress, abusive relationships and feelings of hopelessness, while at the same time least likely to seek advice from faculty or staff, least likely to use counseling services on campus and least likely to feel that their ideas are taken seriously by their peers. We found this unique and troubling profile to be directly related to, among other factors, the "conceptual invisibility" of Asian and Asian Americans on campus -- an invisibility fueled by the "model minority" myth so clumsily rendered in Davis's cartoon. While comprising the single largest community of color on campus (and in that sense, "literally" visible), Asian and Asian American students are rendered "conceptually invisible" when they are seen primarily through the distorting lens of this myth -- that is, when they are seen merely as well-oiled, smooth-running academic machines, devoid of emotions or needs and, consequently, not at risk in the way that their "human" counterparts are. Unwittingly -- and we use this word advisedly -- Davis's cartoon exemplifies the corrosive racist stereotypes that perpetuate such misleading assumptions. The Sun's decision to run the comic strip, even as it covered my lecture on the damaging social and psychological effects of such representations, compounds the problem while epitomizing the conceptual invisibility of students of Asian descent. What concerns us most is that, within such an atmosphere, mental health needs are more easily ignored, bias incidents more easily forgotten, and complaints more easily dismissed.

The most alarming aspect then of the Sun's recent editorial choices is the way in which those choices enabled precisely this easy dismissal of Asian and Asian American student needs and complaints. Although perhaps not consciously undercutting Harder's fine article, the editorial staff, by choosing to run Davis's cartoon, effectively marginalized the very important concerns articulated in her piece. Even more disturbing has been the response elicited by the one (thus far) published letter to the editor complaining about the Sun's decisions. Unpublished, emailed responses to a severely critical letter by Gregory Ngai Hom '05 have generally rejected Hom's criticisms as "an overreaction," "over sensitive" and lacking a sense of humor. To be sure, Hom's impassioned letter did not disguise his outrage. But we should distinguish the manner in which the outrage was expressed from the validity of, and the grounds for, the outrage itself. Just as the appearance of Davis' cartoon redirected attention from, and undermined, the substance the lecture covered in the front page article, reaction to Hom's letter seems determined to shift the focus from the problems facing Asian and Asian American students to the reaction of the person articulating the problem. The issue here is not an angry student's mode of rhetoric but, instead, Davis's portrayal of Asian and Asian American students as unfeeling, curve-busting automatons who are somehow alien to the University. This sort of evasion can never lead to positive change.

Perhaps a simple place to begin to work toward positive change is for the Sun and the broader Cornell community to realize that students of Asian descent are fellow Cornellians who suffer through the same miserable weather, the same topographical inclines and the same financial burdens as everyone else.

This article was written in collaboration and on behalf of the Cornell Asian and Asian American Campus Climate Task Force, the Asian American Studies Program and the Directors of Residential Program Houses.