Virginia Tech recently printed up a promotional flyer urging international students to complete an upcoming survey to help make the campus better for international students. The flyer, posted around campus, featured a photo of smiling Asian students at Virginia Tech. You know, international students. Cool, right?
There's just one problem: none of the students in the photo are international students.
If you're wondering what the problem is, it looks like these students just got inadvertently smacked in the face with the perpetual foreigner stereotype -- the idea that no matter how long or how much or how far Asian Americans make our way in this country, we'll always be perceived as foreign -- never quite enough American.
In this case, whoever put together this flyer saw a photo of a bunch of Asians kids at Virginia Tech and erroneously assumed they must be international students. Not the kind from "here."
