The Center for Asian Pacific Islander Student Empowerment (CAPISE) invited students to learn and discuss ways colorism affects the Asian Pacific Islander (API) community on Thursday afternoon in the Student Union Meeting Rooms.
CAPISE provides community-building and empowerment opportunities for Asian and Pacific Islander students according to an SJSU webpage.
Presenters Lute Finau and Archit Mahale focused on breaking down colorism, understanding how Asian Pacific Islander communities have perpetrated it and how people can unlearn colorism.
Public health sophomore and CAPISE community organizer Finau said there’s a large part of the API diaspora and culture that colorism has affected.
“The way we think, the way we view ourselves physically it kind of planted that seed of, ‘Am I pretty enough? Am I desirable? Am I deemed as perfect?’ ” she said.
Finau discussed topics like how cosmetics, skin-bleaching, the media and the beauty industry profit from ideas like colorism.
She said she wanted to talk more about the topic because the subject often goes unnoticed.
“I'm talking as a Pacific Islander,” Finau said. “It's not as prevailing as the API diaspora, but more within the Asian community.”
She said when she first came to SJSU, she didn’t really see representation of Pacific Islanders on campus.
“Being a Pacific Islander is very important to me and a part of who I am,” Finau said. “Even before I came in to work for CAPISE, I didn't see myself. I wanted to be the representation for, you know, that next person to come in, so that's why I applied.”
Finau also said she wanted to create events to start conversations and connect with people. At CAPISE, she said there’s drop-in hours with CAPS, study abroad and academic help.
CAPS or Counseling And Psychological Services, give counseling services through SJSU’s Wellness Center, according to SJSU’s website.
“I'm in the center all the time. It's such a great community and it literally feels like a family,” she said.
Finau said hosting events is a big part of inclusivity at SJSU.
“It makes students realize they're not alone in this journey,” Finau said. “We're all college students, and we're all part of the same community. Basically just being there for each other. And one of the topics that we all went through was colorism. So that's why I decided to put this event on.
Computer engineering freshman Shravya Vinjamuri said she heard about the event through her mentor at CAPISE.
Vinjamuri said her mentor guides her through school every two weeks by checking in on her academic status and giving her tips on how to study.
She said to be a part of a club on campus, she needed to attend an event and decided to come to Colorism is Shady.
Vinjamuri said she learned about the different aspects of colorism.
“I was like, ‘Wow, it's really prevalent’ and it should be something that people should work on,” she said.
She also said she has experienced colorism through media.
“In the media, they always say having white skin is good and darker skin is like you're not taking care of your skin,” Vinjamuri said. “White skin is like, you look more ‘youthful’ or ‘young’ and all that stuff,” she said.
History senior Archit Mahale, double minoring in African-American studies and American studies, is a community organizer for CAPISE and said the center has the resources to put on workshops and start conversations the organization is passionate about.
“What colorism means to them with their Tongan background is different than what it means to me with my Indian background,” Mahale said. “It manifests itself in different ways, and it looks different ways across different cultures. We knew that there’s a lot of information to talk about.”
Mahale said what first motivated him to become a community organizer with the center was working at the MOSAIC Cross Cultural Center last year.
MOSAIC is a center that provides safe spaces and celebrates diversity, advocating for historically underrepresented groups, cultural empowerment and leadership opportunities according to an SJSU webpage.
He said he learned a lot about diversity and people as a whole while working at MOSAIC.
“I really racialized myself, and I thought, ‘What can I be doing with my community?’,” Mahale said.
He said he wanted to apply to CAPISE because just like other organizations at SJSU, Asian Pacific Islander students have a lot of issues in their communities too.
“All it takes is someone who's passionate enough to want to talk about it,” Mahale said. “To make that topic accessible and to make an entry point for other folks.”
Mahale also said he appreciated hearing from two other South Asian women who also attended the event asthey offered familiar perspectives on how colorism can affect people.
“I believe a lot of the information that I grew up with was also what they grew up with,” Mahale said. “So that was a very validating thing for me.”
He also said that as a man he would view a certain set of things in different ways than those of other genders.
“So that was something I definitely checked myself on,” Mahale said. “That it may not always be different experiences, it may just be different ways of the same thing.”
Mahale and Finau also explained how colorism connected to out-of-date ideas of status or caste.
Mahale said he feels like a lot of biases can be changed with education, workshops and programs.
He also said validation is powerful and that it can be helpful to listen to someone discuss broadly shared issues.
“I think working here at CAPISE has definitely allowed us as Asian Pacific Islanders identifying staff to totally have these critical conversations,” he said. “Because these are issues on campus. These are issues off campus. These are issues we grew up with, and because it's an API issue, it's just as valid.”
