Bay Area JACL Members Condemn Statements by SFUSD Vice President Alison Collins
From an Article in SFGate on March 21, 2021 for context:
"Nearly two dozen elected officials, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, are urging the vice president of the San Francisco Board of Education to step down after a series of offensive tweets targeting Asian Americans resurfaced.
Alison Collins once wrote a long Twitter thread accusing Asian Americans of using "white supremacist thinking to assimilate and 'get ahead,'" and comparing them to a "house n****r" (she added the asterisks and did not spell out the word).
Alison Collins's tweets — still not deleted as of Sunday afternoon — were written in December 2016. They're coming to light now as a group pushes to recall the entire school board over prolonged school closures, and also during a time when anti-Asian American rhetoric has come under closer scrutiny following a sharp rise in hate crimes.
From Patty Wada, Regional Director for the JACL NCWNP District Office:
“The Northern California Office of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), located in San Francisco's Japantown, calls on you to resign your position on the SF Board of Education immediately.
Your comments (tweets) display a troubling ignorance of and disdain for the Asian American community -- our community.
Nothing is lost in translation here. Your tweets reveal the racist and stereotypic lens through which you view Asian Americans. That you would employ the racist descriptor "house n****r" when referring to Asian Americans is completely deplorable. Your comments served to divide communities rather than foster understanding between communities and build bridges to address the racism that touches us all.
Your comments ARE your mindset and you do not deserve the privilege of representing a district where Asian students comprise 33% of the City's student population. Any trust and faith we may have had in your leadership are gone. We call on you to step down. Our students deserve a representative who truly respects and embraces the wonderful diversity that is San Francisco.”
From the San Francisco JACL Board:
