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Multicultural-ed student

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Allow me to be a devil's advocate and speak for students who come form the "other"-ed cultural background, who were, and perhaps still are embracing multicultural imperialism in area studies, or in "inter-cultural communication" in this case. My point is, so long as the site of knowledge, and knowledge creation is West-centered, students from non-western backgrounds will face the difficult choice between co-optation and exclusion.
As an international student, you are expected to "bring something different to the table", and the "table" can be a frustrating place: at best it will be in the form where the non-western culture that you represent is "seen as a rich storehouse of timeless wisdom from which the present had degenerated", at worst it will be a cultural freak show. I was shocked and deeply disturbed one time when a Chinese scholar invited to give a lecture on "culture" spent 15 minutes talking about "Chinese" table manners. (I will let you imagine what was talked about.) I was disturbed not by the content--I've seen such presentations so often that I should have been bored of it--it was the deliberate selection of materials that highlights the difference, with clear indication of West as a reference point, the presentation of the deviance rather than the commonplace, the eager to entertain and not discomfort the audience... In short, the sort of things that I do on daily basis as a student from the peripheral of knowledge in the center of knowledge creation.
The more skillful of us, perhaps, will develop a language that is more subtle in terms of the cultural inferiority complex. We talk about social progress (what is progress?), identity and socialization (in what form are identity and society observed and analyzed?), sensibility and experience (who are we?). Just as we are talking about "us" we are putting ourselves in the position to be observed, studied, examined and questioned. The fact is, that is the only way that seems to make sense to our situation, as someone who is almost destined to be co-opted: just as we strive to critically examine the Colonialist vestige in our intellectual heritage, we are trying to locate ourselves in the West, and locate ourselves (in a different manner) in the home country as someone who is situated in the west. What do I talk about (and why in the West) about the non-western culture?
The Left often choose to stay at home(country), trying to shout the voice across. I don't know which one is more difficult, to be heard as a left in the West or non-west. When I was in China, my profession warned me against being "too radical to the point you lose credibility as a sensible person". In another way to put it, this is a hard-earned chance to have the potential to have a voice, don't make yourself look like a freak. It is a luxury to be a radical, because you have to be close to the center of knowledge to be a radical--Finkelstein can be a radical as a Jew. As one of his friends in a documentary commented, "I doubt if he will have the same credibility had he not been a Jew".

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