Yellow Power, Yellow Pride--APA History Month

I have been a bit remiss about noting this, but May is Asian Pacific American history month. Now, as I said when I wrote a post about African American history month, I have some mixed-feelings about celebrating or designating a particular month to learning about certain racial/ethnic/cultural/gender groups in the U.S. My reservation/hesitations are with some folks thinking that every February you roll out the lesson plan about Martin Luther King Jr. and George Washington Carver and Sojourner Truth. And the other 11 months, black contributions to American life are either forgotten or invisible. Same thing with Asian American history--except in some ways, Asian American contributions to American life are even more marginalized/invisible than African Americans.

So, in honor of Asian Pacific American history (and really, I promise to dedicate a future blog post to the differences between Asian American/Asian Pacific American/Asian Pacific Islander American tags) I'm going to devote posts this entire week to various Asian Pacific American factoids and historical events, ones that may not be as commonly known (which means I won't be talking about how Chinese built the railroad or the Japanese American internment--although those are certainly two worthy historical events in APA history).

Let me now just leave you with a video that the Asia Society did for APA history month on why "Asians rock":