Last week, we brought you the touching story of Maggie Lam, a University of California-Berkeley student who landed a column at the school’s newspaper, The Daily Californian, in which she was invited to discuss race issues — but has instead spent her time ranting against the “white devil” and calling white men “f–kboys.”
Since her latest column appeared last Thursday, the Daily Californian claims to have received more than 600 responses. Some were supportive, but most were critical, focusing, according to a Letter to the Editor, on Ms. Lam’s narrative about having sexual contact with a white classmate against his will, ostensibly to teach him a lesson about his white, male privilege and associated prejudices.
The Californian posted two critiques of the column and the subsequent discussion, and one in favor of Ms. Lam’s actions — defending her use of sex as a weapon against her “oppressor,” because it posed a challenge to a set of stereotypes held by “white America.”
According to the letter writer defending the columnist, Ms. Lam’s column perfectly illustrates an effective response to what he or she terms “yellow fever” — a fetish for relationships with Asian women. Critics’ concern for Ms. Lam’s use of her own sexuality to insult and possibly assault a classmate is simply, according to the author, a further reflection of how Ms. Lam doesn’t fit stereotypes about Asian women.
Another letter, published with apparently, an eye to equal time for both sides of the discussion, takes Ms. Lam to task for making sweeping generalizations about a race, even as she criticizes her college hook-up for making the same, sweeping generalizations. The author, another female student of Asian descent, notes that if we are to make progress in racial harmony, all of our prejudices must be addressed and, subsequently, dismissed.
Both columns were far more professional than the Facebook comments, which tended toward some interesting generalizations — and illustrations! — of their own.
Not all agreed with Ms. Lam.
Ms. Lam’s column has appeared on Thursday for the past several weeks, but no column appeared this week (though the Letters to the Editor could be the replacement). The editorial staff of the Daily Californian did not respond to Heat Street‘s request for comment.
