11/16/2022
Madeline Leung Coleman, 2020 (March 25) [WaPo]
— Asian Americans have sometimes struggled to understand our place within the wider landscape of race, bamboozled by the “model minority” myth pushed by white politicians. As the historian Ellen D. Wu has written, the idea that Chinese Americans in particular were high-achieving and compliant was exploited first to bolster an alliance with China during World War II, then spun to discredit the Black civil rights movement. (A movement from which, ironically, all Asian Americans greatly benefited.) The model-minority term is one of American white supremacy’s most successful campaigns, simultaneously driving a wedge between Asian Americans and other people of color and alienating us from our own right to dissent. What did we have to complain about, anyway?
Then there’s the term Asian American itself, a civil-rights-inspired creation of the 1960s that has never managed to contain all the identities it was supposed to hold. A fourth-generation Chinese American shares little family history with a first-generation Cambodian immigrant — and the knowledge that many non-Asians don’t know or care about the difference can feel like an insult.
Madeline Hsu, 2019 (May 6)
— In 1869, Thomas Nast, the German immigrant cartoonist, envisioned Uncle Sam hosting a diverse array of guests at his Thanksgiving table, including Germans, French, Spaniards, Native Americans, Irish, and a range of other Europeans amicably sharing food and conversation with each other. Columbia, who for Nast symbolized U.S. democratic ideals, sits opposite to Uncle Sam chatting amiably with a Chinese and African American man at either side. In the window after the Civil War ended slavery, and before the United States began systematically restricting immigration in the late nineteenth century, Nast festooned this pleasant, multiracial family gathering with the idealistic slogans “universal suffrage,” “come one come all,” and “free and equal.”
That same year, the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass also celebrated the absorptive, inclusive capacities of the American nation and economy. In the speech, “Our Composite Nationality,” he criticized an 1862 law targeting Chinese for immigration restriction by asserting the “eternal, universal and indestructible” human rights “of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike.” Douglass reassured his listeners that a great nation such as the United States could provide a home and brighter futures to all manner of men, and that there was no need to try to exclude any persons.
Within a few years, however, this vision of a harmonious, multiracial, multicultural America had receded under the onslaught of economic recession, divisive racial politics, the centralization of wealth with industrialization, and labor unrest. Incendiary nativist campaigns called on the federal government to limit immigration as a solution to the nation’s problems, and began by targeting Chinese as racially inassimilable, along with the poor, criminals, and the insane as drains on public resources. These dark conditions produced the United States’ earliest experiments in immigration restriction, which involved the identifying of particular groups considered so undesirable that they merited exclusion. Once Congress started passing laws restricting immigration to some people, but not others, the U.S. government also quickly realized that enforcing immigration laws required it to develop bureaucracies and strategies for ways to distinguish between legal and illegal entries, document and keep records of identities and entries, and police crossings across the U.S.’s extensive land and maritime borders.
The first systematically enforced immigration laws were passed in 1882 and since then, Congress has identified an expanding array of targets, including the most restrictive laws in 1924 that imposed absolute numeric caps on annual immigration. The executive branch has claimed tremendous powers to enforce these laws, with a consequent diminishing of the legal rights and protections for unauthorized immigrants, all of which has been deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, the United States remains riven and seemingly irreconcilable about what role immigrants and immigration play in our national interests, and what kinds of priorities and ideals we should pursue in restricting immigration.
Experiences and Civics Education
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)
— United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) is significant because the Supreme Court ruling determined that the 14th Amendment granted birthright citizenship to all persons born in the United States, regardless of race or nationality. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco, but his parents were immigrants from China and not eligible to become United States citizens under the Naturalization Act of 1790. After visiting his parents in China, Wong was denied reentry into the U.S. in 1895 under claims that he was not a citizen. With support from the Chinese Six Companies, Wong fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ultimately decided that besides limited exceptions, a child born in the United States to parents of foreign descent is a citizen of the United States. American Experience’s clip on United States v. Wong Kim Ark explains the historical context behind the case and discusses its important legacy.
The Supreme Court decision to affirm Wong Kim Ark’s birthright citizenship as granted by the 14th Amendment became relevant during Japanese internment. The United States War Department made efforts to try to force Nisei (“second generation”) to choose their U.S. citizenship and renounce allegiance to a foreign government, or be incarcerated or deported. United States v. Wong Kim Ark determined that the United States could not deny Nisei their citizenship, so the Renunciation Act of 1944 allowed Japanese American internees to renounce American citizenship to be deported to Japan. What did loyalty mean to Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during WWII? EDSITEment’s lesson plan, Japanese American Internment Camps during WWII, explores this question, along with the legacy of internment. Library of Congress’ illustrated StoryMap Behind Barbed Wire: Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers chronicles the stories and experiences of the interned Japanese American community through an engaging examination of the newspapers they produced.
After President Franklin Roosevelt issued an Executive Order to forcibly remove peoples of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to domestic security, Japanese American Fred Korematsu refused to leave his home in San Leandro, California. Korematsu v. United States (1944) became another landmark case in which the Supreme Court held that the compulsory exclusion of citizens during times of war is justified for national security. In 1983, federal courts overturned Korematsu’s original convictions, but the Supreme Court has not had the opportunity to overturn the 1944 decision in an official way. The Bill of Rights Institute lesson plan, The Presidency: Constitutional Controversies, asks students to use case background and primary source documents concerning the Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. United States to assess the Supreme Court’s decision.
Yuri Kochiyama was a prominent Japanese American activist whose work in the 1980s to redress and give reparations for Japanese Americans influenced the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. The United States House of Representatives’ History, Art & Archives website provides an informative, historical essay on the “Long Road to Redress” that looks at the legislative discussion and workings behind the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
The events leading to Japanese internment revealed an important, underlying question: What does it mean to be American? In the 1920s, two cases demonstrated a legal and popular understanding of American citizenship as being associated with “whiteness.” In 1915, Japan-born Takao Ozawa filed for United States citizenship after living in the United States for 20 years. However, in Ozawa v. United States (1922), the Supreme Court upheld the rejection of his application for citizenship on the basis of his race. At the time, only “free white persons” and “persons of African nativity or persons of African descent” could naturalize. After the Ozawa v. United States case, Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man, identified himself as A***n when requesting naturalized citizenship in the United States. However, his request was denied, and in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), the Supreme Court upheld the denial, arguing that Indians did not meet a “common sense” definition of white. This court decision would lead to the denaturalization of about fifty Indian Americans. Thind’s story is also mentioned in the NEH-funded PBS documentary Asian Americans.
It was not until the Luce-Celler Act of 1946 in which Congress allowed Indian and Filipino nationals to acquire U.S. citizenship through naturalization. Other AAPI groups eventually received that right as well, and in the past decade naturalization rates have been comparatively high in AAPI communities.
Asian Americans have also fought for civil rights in education. Before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling of 1954, students of color had to attend separate schools from white students. Despite the U.S. legal doctrine of “separate but equal,” schools for students of color were chronically underfunded and of lesser quality. In 1924, a nine-year-old Chinese-American named Martha Lum was prohibited from attending a school in Mississippi for white children because she was of Chinese descent. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Mississippi’s Supreme Court ruling that Martha Lum was not allowed to go to the school for white students, expecting her to find a school for students of color outside of the district. Although the Lum v. Rice (1927) case further upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine, it showed how Asian Americans engaged in the American public sphere for their rights
Since 1990, the U.S. government has designated the month of May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, celebrating the achievements and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in the United States. The month of May was chosen to mark the arrival of the first Japanese immigrant to the United States on May 7, 1843, as well as the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. This Teacher’s Guide offers a collection of lessons and resources for K-12 social studies, literature, and arts classrooms that center around the experiences, achievements, and perspectives of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across U.S. history.
Lunar New Year
— Lunar New Year is one of the most popular holidays celebrated across Asia and other places with Asian populations. While called Chinese New Year or Spring Festival in China, Lunar New Year is called Seollal in Korea, Tet in Vietnam, and Losar in Tibet. Not all Asian communities officially observe a singular New Year holiday, and some Lunar New Year celebrations do not have a set date since they follow the lunar calendar. East Asian celebrations (excluding Japan) usually take place in late January up until mid-February. These celebrations include traditional activities such as exchanging red envelopes or silk pouches containing money, setting off fireworks, cleaning the house, eating traditional foods, and holding parades with colorful costumes.
Model Minority Myth
— The umbrella term “Asian American” has been an important political identity for peoples of Asian descent to fight for their civil rights. However, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are often more likely to identify with their national origins or ethnicity, than by race. This is because they have been viewed as a homogeneous group with generalized experiences, as exemplified by the “model minority myth.” In the wake of the Watts Riots and emergent Black Power Movement in the 1960s, Asian Americans were deemed the “model minority,” solidifying a picture of Asians as an industrious and law-abiding group that accordingly achieved a higher level of success than the general population.
Despite attributing positive stereotypes to Asians, the model minority myth is harmful because it discounts the racial discrimination minorities have faced. For example, William Pettersen’s influential 1966 New York Times story, titled “Success Story, Japanese-American Style,” put African Americans and Japanese Americans at odds. Under the assumption that both groups’ experiences with injustice were the same, African Americans were expected to conform to the “pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps” immigrant narrative Asian Americans seemingly epitomized. This expectation discredited the lasting legacies of slavery, discrimination, and systemic racism. In effect, the model minority myth has created a rift between Asian American and African American communities, as demonstrated by the L.A. riots in 1992.
The model minority myth assumes Asians to be universally successful. However, aggregated data for AAPIs overshadows the great diversity in experiences among different ethnic groups, including migration history, socioeconomic status, and political status. As the Washington Center for Equitable Growth shows, ethnicities in the AAPI population represent both ends of the achievement spectrum with respect to educational attainment, household income, and employment rate. For example, as a group, AAPIs have the highest share of college graduates, surpassing every other racial group by wide margins. Yet this high level of educational attainment is attributed to only a select group of Asian Americans, such as Taiwanese, Asian Indians, and Malaysians. About 13 of these U.S. ethnic and racial sub-groups have lower educational attainment rates than the U.S. average, including peoples of unspecified Micronesian, Bhutanese, Hawaiian, Vietnamese, and Burmese origin. Therefore, it is important to dismantle the model minority myth to acknowledge the diversity of AAPI experiences and cultures.
Asian Immigration
— The first Asian immigrants to come to the United States in significant numbers were the Chinese in the mid-nineteenth century. For most of U.S. history, Asian immigrants were portrayed as undesirable and a threat to Western civilization. Accordingly, Asian immigrants were ineligible for citizenship based on race and subject to the most severe immigration restrictions. One defining moment in U.S. immigration policy history was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Examine the origins, history, and impact of the 1882 law in this American Experience documentary film, The Chinese Exclusion Act. An accompanying Teacher’s Guide is also included. You can also learn more about the history behind the Chinese Exclusion Act and its legacies in sections below.
Asian immigration remained at a trickle until the passage of the landmark Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Since then, Asian immigration has been on the rise, outpacing Hispanic immigration since 2010.
“Asian Americans” Documentary Resource
— Asian Americans is an NEH-funded documentary series that examines the significant role of Asian Americans in shaping U.S. history and identity from the first wave of Asian immigrants in the 1850s to the present day.
“Asian American” & Civil Rights
— The term “Asian American” was coined in 1968 by student activists Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka, as a unifying political identity for different groups of people of Asian descent. With the Black Power Movement, the American Indian Movement, and anti-war movements expanding, Gee and Ichioka strategically named their student organization the “Asian American Political Alliance” to increase the visibility of activists of Asian descent and consolidate their efforts. The term “Asian American” also pushed back against the usage of the Euro-centric term “Oriental” to refer to Asians in the United States, which holds racist and colonialist connotations. This episode from the PBS history show “Origin of Everything” further explains why the word “Oriental” is no longer used. Asian Americans claiming the words to describe themselves went hand-in-hand with being empowered to continue supporting civil rights efforts.
During the 1960s, as African Americans continued to challenge institutional racism, Asian Americans came to reflect on their experiences, identifying how they also faced discrimination. Sharing the struggles to achieve ideals of freedom and equality for all, Asian American activists joined the Civil Rights Movement. Asian Americans also became inspired to speak out on matters specific to their communities, such as issues facing business owners and residents of Chinatowns across the country and the Vietnam War. Speaking out as an Asian American community was unheard of before, as reflected by the lack of an iconic representative. Furthermore, 1960s Asian American civil rights activism was significant because it signaled a shift from Asian Americans fighting for the right to be Americans, to fighting for their rights as Americans. One prominent example is Yuri Kochiyama, who was influenced by Malcolm X’s ideologies of self-determination and liberation, and who supported quality education for inner-city children, anti-Vietnam War protests, the development of Ethnic Studies programs. In an interview on May 19, 1972 for the radio station KPFK in Los Angeles, Kochiyama stated that Malcolm stressed needing to know one’s heritage and history to know which direction to go in; words the Asian American community heeded.
Asian American students in California challenged curricula in institutions of higher education because, as was argued, research and teaching had for too long propagated stereotypes about AAPI education history and culture. They joined the Third World Liberation Front’s student strikes (TWLF) in 1968 at San Francisco State University and in 1969 at the University of California, Berkeley. A coalition including the Black Students Union and other student groups, TWLF demanded that the university establish new departments devoted to ethnic studies, hire more faculty of color, and enroll more students of color. At this time, the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) formed on the University of California, Berkeley campus, and AAPA branches soon sprung up on college campuses nationwide. Although the AAPA was disbanded in 1969, it played an important role in encouraging Asian Americans to take political action together. An Asian American identity was thus claimed.
Vincent Chin
— The year 1982 marked a turning point for the pan-Asian identity and community. The decline of the industrial sector in United States starting in the 1970s, coupled with the early 1980s economic recession, created a bleak situation for jobs centered around goods producing industries. The unemployment rate for auto workers rose from 3.8% in 1978 to 24% by the end of 1982. Contrasting America’s economic slowdown was the rise of Japan, with its rising position in international trade and finance making it the world’s second largest economy. Behind this rise was the increasing competitiveness of Japan’s manufacturing industry, which was making major inroads into U.S. markets. Consequently, the fear of America’s “decline” fed into anti-Japanese sentiment during the 1980s as U.S. autoworkers blamed Japanese car manufacturers for the industry’s decline. In this climate of hostility, one man lost his life and a community was forever changed. On June 19, 1982, 27-year-old Vincent Chin was celebrating with friends at his bachelor party in Detroit, Michigan. Two white autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, mistook Chinese-American Vincent Chin for a Japanese, escalating a fight and eventually fatally beating him.
Vincent Chin’s murder initially did not make national news. However, the lenient sentences handed down to the murderers, which included a $3,000 fine and three years’ probation with no jail time, outraged Asian American communities in Detroit, San Francisco, and across the country. They realized that if Chin’s murder could result in essentially scot-free outcomes, then it could happen to anyone of Asian descent. Asian Americans of all backgrounds supported the rallying cry “Remember Vincent Chin,” and Chin became an icon and represented a narrative that Asian Americans could identify with. The rise of protests and formation of new organizations, such as the American Citizens for Justice, convinced the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the case as a civil rights violation. Vincent Chin became the first Asian American victim prosecuted under the federal hate crime law. The Asian American civil rights movement thus led to the historic broadening of federal civil rights protection to include all people in America, regardless of immigrant status or ethnicity. The 1984 federal civil rights case convicted Ebens of violating Chin’s civil rights and did not find Nitz guilty, but Ebens was eventually acquitted. (See the United States Court of Appeals decision for the United States v. Ebens case in 1986 for more details on 1984 case and acquittal.)
The Vincent Chin case helped transform a biracial discussion on race relations to be a multiracial one. It was a wakeup call to address anti-Asian bias and racially-instigated hate crimes. The award-winning 40-minute documentary Vincent Who? features interviews with key activists at the time, as well as a new generation of activists inspired to continue fighting for justice.
Pacific Islander
— By the 1980s, the U.S. Census Bureau grouped persons of Asian ancestry and created the category “Asian and Pacific Islander” (API). In 2000, the API category was separated into “Asian Americans” and “Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders” (NHOPI). The Federal Government defines “Asian American” to include persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent. “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander” includes persons having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.
The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s Our Stories: Digital Storytelling Initiative supports the dissemination and perpetuation of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Island cultures through the media arts. Through film, podcasts, mixed reality (VR/AR), and emerging media content platforms, the public can learn about Pacific stories and what it means to be Pacific Islander American.
Present Day
— Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the two fastest-growing racial populations in the United States, projected to become the largest immigrant group in the country by 2055. Unlike other racial groups, most AAPIs are foreign born. Immigration is therefore a significant and relevant issue for AAPIs across the country. In addition, as the U.S. naturalization rates among the largest 20 immigrant groups has increased between 2005 and 2015, more attention has been paid to the AAPI voter base. The Pew Research Center discusses the latest demographic trends for Asian Americans. AAPIData also presents voting data for the AAPI community, and discusses voting trends in its Data Bits blog.
As of 2019, the largest United States Asian populations are of Chinese, Indian, and Filipino origin. However, the AAPI population represent over 30 countries and ethnic groups that speak over 100 different languages. There is considerable internal group variation regarding issues such as poverty, health care, educational attainment, and English proficiency. Consequently, there have been calls to disaggregate data to better address the needs of the diverse AAPI community.
The Korean War (1950–1953)
— In Europe, East and West eyed each other anxiously across the Iron Curtain. In Asia, the Cold War grew hot. In 1950, North Korean forces, armed mainly with Soviet weapons, invaded South Korea in an effort to reunite the peninsula under communist rule.
Within the next couple of days the Truman administration and the United Nations had decided to aid in the defense of South Korea, and soon a multinational army had arrived under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. But while MacArthur was able to prevent the North Koreans from overrunning the South, an unexpected intervention by China soon turned the “police action” (as Truman called it) into a bloody stalemate. Differences between Truman and MacArthur led to the latter’s firing in early 1951, and as the war ground on it grew more and more unpopular in the United States.
Ultimately it would contribute to Dwight Eisenhower’s election as president in 1952, and it would be the Eisenhower administration that brought an end to the conflict through a compromise peace.
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