The legacy of Vincent Chin and what it means to be Asian American

This past Saturday, June 23, 2012, marked the 30th anniversary of Vincent Chin's death.  For those of you who aren't familiar with who Vincent Chin is, let me direct you to this article, which also has a link to a fantastic Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Frank Wu.

30 years is both a blink of an eye (in terms of the age of the earth/how long humans have been in existence) and a long stretch of time (1982 means an era before the internet, before cell phones, before the phrase "google" or "blog" and when "twitter" was something that birds did).  30 years ago Asian Americans weren't Asian Americans so much as they were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Filipino...you get my drift.  They were also Oriental in many places, including how they self-identified.  Asian American studies was something happening on the West coast, specifically SF and LA, but not so much in the East or the Midwest (and forget about the South). 

And then Vincent Chin's murder galvanized Asian-ethnic groups across the nation, across ethnic and class and religious divides.  There was a realization about what it meant to have an Asian face in this country and what it meant to be racialized as Asian American, namely that violence and oppression happened because of one's race rather than one's ethnicity--Chin was targeted not because he was Chinese American but because the two Detroit autoworkers in the bar who attacked him were angry at Japan's auto industry and took out their frustration in a racist way--meaning, they scapegoated Chin as someone they thought "looked" like or could stand in for the Japanese.

There were many 30th anniversary events happening on June 23.  Unfortunately I couldn't make any of them because I was high on vicodin and swelled up like a chipmunk due to oral surgery the day before.  However, if anyone is interested in the video footage from APA for Progress, I will embed it at the bottom of this post.

[Aside: The reason I didn't write this post on June 23 was also because I was high on vicodin and rocking the chipmunk look/not feeling well--I find it's best not to write things in a public forum when you're under the influence...although perhaps it would have been amusing to read my rambling thoughts about race while drugged up]

I've been thinking a lot about how far we've come as a community and how far we have to go in light of the 30th anniversary of Chin's death, since this is the moment that many scholars and activist note is a turning point in pan-ethnic Asian American coalition building.  And I should add that it wasn't just Asian Americans who were outraged--black allies especially came out and decried this injustice.  And there were allies of all racial makeups who marched and protested and rallied alongside Asian Americans of all ethnic persuasions.

If we are to believe the recent Pew report that came out, "The Rise of Asian Americans," then we would think that we have, indeed, not only come a long way from 1982 but overcome hurdles that continue to plague other people of color and have achieved even beyond the standard of white Americans.  We are the most educated, happiest, and well adjusted of racial groups in this nation.  We have high median household incomes.  We also tend to vote democrat, and most of us don't actually identify with the label "Asian American," preferring our ethnic ancestries over a politically racial label.

What you may be hearing are echoes of the Model Minority Myth (MMM)--that tricky stereotype that says Asian Americans are high achieving and are outpacing all other minority groups in the US.  There are 3 dark underbellies to the MMM:

(1) It obscures the actual history of racialization and oppression that Asians in the US have been subject to, making it seem as if there is some kind of essentialized trait that makes them succeed instead of looking at the institutional and historic factors that have caused their subjugation--in other words, it's all happy news instead of looking at the more nuanced and complex history of Asians in the United States.

(2) Not all Asian Americans groups are succeeding.  To be fair, the Pew Report does mention Southeast Asian groups as among the lowest achieving in terms of education and household income--this SF Gate article was actually much more circumspect about the report and/or more nuanced in terms of understanding the diversity of Asian-ethnicities that comprise Asian Americans.  The MMM flattens ethnic differences and makes it seem as if ALL Asian Americans are succeeding at equal rates--it obscures the different histories and circumstances of immigration (see #1).

(3) It pits Asian Americans against other racial minorities.  The MMM basically says to Latino, American Indians, and African Americans, "Hey, why can't YOU be like these hard working/over-achieving/GOOD Asians."  It sets up a hierarchy of racial groups that continues to villify certain races by pointing to the success and achievement of others, again without thinking about the different sets of historic circumstances and racializations that have happened as a result of the greater social and cultural values that privilege whiteness.

Many Asian American scholars and activists have come out with statements against the Pew Report, such as the Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy and Research Consortium (click here for their letter) and the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice (click here for their response).  I won't repeat what they've written, but I do want to add one final thought (to which I'll elaborate later in a future blog post) and that is that increasingly I think we need a new definition for what it means to be Asian American--for what it means to self-consciously decide that you identify as an ASIAN AMERICAN.

Because for me, to be Asian American means understanding that this is a political category--that all racial categories are political categories, ones that were created to uphold certain ideologies (in the U.S. this has meant the belief in whiteness as supreme--aka "white supremacy," which shouldn't be confused with the guys in white sheets, although they are a manifestation of this ideology).  Being Asian American means that I understand the history of racial oppression that Asians in the U.S. have been subject to.  It means I understand the intersectional identities of Asian Americans--that they are also oppressed and privileged depending on their sexual, gendered, religious, able-bodied, regional, educational, and class status.  And finally, it means that to be Asian American I believe that all people are equal--that I support issues that, for lack of a better word, are social justice issues.  I support marriage equality.  I support overturning racist laws that primarily target Latino people in Arizona.  I support access to physical spaces for people of various abilities.

Being Asian American, to me, means that I want to end oppression and be an ally--wouldn't it be wonderful if more people wanted to be Asian American?

 [30th Anniversary event of APA for Progress]

Black History Month & the 70th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066 -- why both matter, together

It is Black History month, a time when we (as a nation) remember the significant contributions to American history, culture, and society of people of African heritage to the United States. At Southern University there has been additional programming highlighting various aspects of African American history, culture, and people/communities. While there are some who criticize the idea of "heritage months" because there is no "white history" month (to which I say, isn't everyday white history month?) and there are those who say why single out single month when we should be acknowledging African American contributions to U.S. society everyday (to which I say, well of course, but a month of programming and remembering is still a good and worthy thing), February is none-the-less the month in which those of us who care about issues of race, racism, white privilege, white surpremacy, and most important anti-racist practices, recognize the importance of honoring and celebrating African Americans.

And 70 years ago today, February 19, 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which nullified the constitutional rights of every single person living on the West Coast of the United States. It allowed for the military to interpret and restrict who could remain on the West Coast--and the military, under the auspices of EO9066, targeted one and only one ethnic group: people of Japanese ancestry. There was no mention of race in EO9066--which is significant because it gave great power to the military to interpret who was a threat and who needed to be evacuated from the West Coast due to "military necessity."

By now, many people have debunked the idea of "military necessity" surrounding the Japanese American internment/incarceration, and I have written about this issue many times before, especially in this post. So I won't rehearse all of the standard reasons why it is important to remember the 70th anniversary of this infamous date (although I would encourage people to go to this link to an article in Colorlines Magazine).

But I do want to note a connection between EO9066 and Black History Month. Because I think there are more things that unite Asian Americans and African Americans than divide them, despite ridiculous recent comments by Floyd Mayweather and Jenny Hyun. The Afro-Asian connections and points of solidarity are ones that Dr. Sarah Jackson has tweeted about (click here). Asian American activism (of which the Japanese American Internment redress movement was part of) owes a debt to the modern civil rights movement for African American enfranchisement. Asian Americans and African Americans can and should join together to confront issues of white supremacy and white privilege -- and should join with all others who want to be anti-racist allies.

Social justice issues should give us all an opportunity to recognize the intersections of oppression and the possibilities for solidarity across racial lines. We should celebrate Black history month and recognize the injustice of Executive Order 9066 and the unconstitutional incarceration of Japanaese Americans during WWII--and we should continue to see why we are stronger thinking of both together rather than separately.

Spotlight on Yuri Kochiyama--Asian American activist

In continuation of the series I'm doing in honor of APA history, I'm turning the spotlight on Asian American activism in the form of one particular activist:

Yuri Kochiyama


[this is a picture of Kochiyama with two black activists in the late 1960s]

Yuri Kochiyama was born in 1961. She and her family were interned in Jerome, AK for the duration of WWII in an American concentration camp, and after the war, she and her husband, Bill, moved to Harlem, where they became active with a variety of social justice movements. Kochiyama is most famously known in activist circles for her friendship with Malcolm X and her work with his organization and other Civil Rights organizations of the 1960s and 1970s. There is a very famous photo of Kochiyama cradling Malcolm X's head right after he was shot--it can be seen in Renee Tajima-Pena's excellent documentary Honk if you Love Buddha or My America.

Kochiyama had a passion for social justice. In addition to working on Civil Rights with African American activists, she was active in anti-Viet Nam war protests, she worked with Puerto Rican activists agitating for Puerto Rican independence, she labored on behalf of Japanese American reparations for the injustice of the internment, and for general Asian American causes. And even today, when Kochiyama is in her 80s, she continues to be involved in educating younger generations about Civil Rights and social justice and to be active in protesting for causes she believes in, as the tee-shirt she wears below clearly indicates her support for social justice issues.


[for more on Kochiyama's life and activism, click on this link]

Yuri Kochiyama is an amazing woman--she is an inspiration because of her activism and the way she has always worked as an ally in various communities, ones beyond her own identity as a Japanese American/Asian American woman. And truly, that is what mixed-race America is all about--going beyond your own interests and understanding the way that we are all mixed here together--someone else's injustice is OUR injustice.

Thank you Yuri Kochiyama, thank you.