Challenges With the Asian-American Identity
History
Sadly, many Asian-Americans are not taught their own history in public education. The classroom omits historic Asian American injustices — a white supremacist tactic to silence our voices and divide minorities to promote an anti-black agenda. The history of modern Asian America can best be centered with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. It abolished the National Origins Formula which limited immigration populations to only 2% of the American population starting in 1921.
Pre-1965
Over 15,000 Chinese immigrants migrated in the 19th century to work on American railroads short on labor for less than half the wages of their white peers. Labeled the “Yellow Peril”, Asians were subject to rampant racism alongside Black Americans. They were called “lazy”, “unintelligent”, and “hooked on opium”. During the Chinese Massacre of 1871, Chinese-Americans were surrounded and attacked by a mob of 500 white men. They were shot, mutilated, and hanged. After the riot, only eight men were convicted of manslaughter, but every man was acquitted due to technicalities.
In the late nineteenth century, the U.S. forcibly colonized the sovereign state of Hawaii. The state was heavily monitored and controlled by white colonizers, and they were looking for more labor. This opened the gates for mass immigration from the Philippines, Japan, China, Somalia, and more. Eventually, the state had become overwhelmingly Asian, Polynesian, and Pacific Island-an which drove away the white folks, or “Haole”. In the 1900s, many immigrants came to California from their home countries or Hawaii.
As Asian-Americans began to adjust to their new lives and move away from agricultural jobs, they realized that their only path to be accepted by their white neighbors was to assimilate. “We came to America to be American.”
Despite their best efforts, tensions were surfacing as Asian-Americans entered schools and the industrial workforce. White people were wary. Determined to prove their patriotism, many Asian-American men enlisted for the army when World War I struck, and they were rewarded with the ability to become naturalized citizens — a dream, for many. Though a majority did not enter combat, things began to turn around once they returned. Asian-Americans, now citizens, were almost accepted into society. Then, World War II.
“You bombed Pearl Harbor,” they shouted. “Go back to your country!”
White-Americans were scornful of all Asians, indiscriminately. Federal investigations were conducted within Asian neighborhoods, and Japanese-Americans were targeted as spies and war criminals. They were separated and put into concentration camps. They were kept in unsanitary, overcrowded, militarized spaces with armed guards and barbed wires. The men were separated from the women and children, eventually being enlisted into the army. These men were putting their lives on the line for their country — a country that locked up and stole their families’ lives. And when they returned, Japanese-Americans were given $25 and bus fare to the their last place of residence, only to find a majority of homes already sold to white families.
Shortly after, America engaged in Cold War which included the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Views on Asian populations grew increasingly contemptuous, especially in the military. In both Korea and Vietnam, U.S. soldiers committed hundreds of massacres via air bombings and gunfire. Vietnamese men, women, and children were killed for sport in the My Lai Massacre and countless others events. Despite this, Asians were seeking refuge in America.
Back home, Asian-Americans were taking big steps towards being heard. In the 1950s, Hawaii fought for state rights and officially became the 50th state in 1959 (though problematic that it didn’t have the option to return to sovereignty after colonization). And with a majority AAPI population, Hawaii had a large sway in shaping Asian-Americans in politics. We had our first Asian-American congressman, Dalip Singh Saund. We won our first olympic gold medals in swimming and diving. We had our first female lawyer, and later senator, Mee Moua. We saw the rise of the great Asian activist, Grace Lee Boggs. Asian-Americans were bringing honor and fame to their community.
Suddenly, Asian-Americans had a voice. They were protesting and calling and campaigning and speaking up for what they deserved. They fought for Asian-American rights. They fought for Women’s Rights. Most importantly, they fought for immigration reform. It was their biggest battle. They were fighting for the refugees escaping terrors in Korea and Vietnam. They were fighting for their families they were separated from whom were denied entry. They were fighting for more representation in America. There was just one problem: we weren’t enough.
Amidst church bombings, militantly peaceful strikes, hate crimes, and more, the black community carved time and effort to support Asian Americans with their fight. Black leaders called for supportive action on immigration reform and attended Asian American meetings across the nation. Their voice was feared by white people and growing in size. It was that voice that amplified our grievances. Without the help of Civil Rights groups, without black leaders like Jesse Jackson or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., without the combined efforts of black people and the Civil Rights movement, Asian-Americans would never have been able to reform immigration.
Post-1965
After a combined effort, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 was passed. This led to new groups of Asian-Americans immigrating and seeking refuge from the aftermath of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. This new generation of Asian immigrants had no knowledge of the Civil Rights movement, and they didn’t come from countries with a concept of intra-national racial relations. And with this new influx of Asian-American talent, in the face of the Civil Rights movement, it was time for white propoganda.
The “Model Minority” Myth was created. Asians were branded, in newsletters and television ads, as hard-working and intelligent. Asian-Americans were given desirable qualities to allow for more opportunities in education and the work place. And because of these orchestrated opportunities, white politicians had a new arsenal. They could say, “there’s no excuse for minorities. Black people are simply lazy. If there are Asian politicians, lawyers, and doctors, then it’s Black people’s fault that they’re unsuccessful.” The divide began.
The Oil Crisis of 1973 pressured all communities with astronomical gas prices. Unfortunately for American automobile manufacturers, there was an increasing desire for fuel-efficient vehicles. Enter: Japanese manufacturers. Toyota and Honda were touting far better fuel economy at a lower price, and Americans flocked to these cars. By the late 1970s, nobody was buying American cars any longer which meant millions of layoffs across America. Some, if not many, laid-off autoworkers harbored serious contempt for Japanese people. In 1982, Vincent Chin was murdered.
Vincent Chin was a Chinese-American male who lived in Detroit. Mistaken for Japanese Descent, he was confronted by two white assailants affected by the mass layoffs. They went to their cars, reached for their baseball bats, and beat and murdered him. The two men were charged with probation and fined $3,000. Chin’s mother, along with Asian and Black activist groups, led the protest and campaigns to bring justice to her family. Asian-Americans once again marched the streets to put these two murderers in jail. Eventually, the two men were charged with second-degree murder but were later acquitted.
After 100 years, lynching an Asian-American still only meant a small fine.
Still, the racial solidarity between Asian Americans and Black Americans was going strong despite the colorist biases of Asian culture. This mainly applied to Asian-Americans that immigrated before 1965 because they were raised aware of the oppression of Black Americans. For new immigrants, they arrived with no concept of the Civil Rights Movement. They came from extremely prejudiced backgrounds that were already colorist amongst each other. Local newspapers, written in native languages, highlighted recent murders and robberies of immigrant storeowners. Racism was festering beneath ignorance, but it was peaceful. That is, until 1991.
On March 19th, Soon Ja Du, a Korean storeowner, accused Latasha Harlins, a black teenager, of stealing. Harlins swung at Ja Du and headed towards the door, when Ja Du shot Harlins in the back of the head. Black communities were outraged over the unjust murder of a young woman, and they began protesting and fighting the Korean community. And if tensions weren’t bad enough, it was only the beginning in this long journey.
April 29th, 1992. The Los Angeles Riots have begun. Protests became violent, buildings were burned, and looters began to target Korean stores. The racial tensions have boiled over into mass destruction. The Los Angeles Police Department, whom were so quick to break up protests downtown, were absent in Koreatown. And as a result, Korean storeowners had to defend themselves. Except, in South Korea, all men are required to train and serve two years in the military. Koreatown became a war ground.
Korean storeowners stood atop their buildings with rifles, guarding their neighborhood, while rioters rampaged stores and gas stations. Koreatown burned. Streets were lined with soot. And not a single police officer came.
“They left us to burn.”
After the riots subsided, Koreatown was in shambles. Over 2,000 stores were destroyed. Blame attributed to both sides. But both sides were tired of fighting and dying. On May 2nd, the last day of the riots, Koreatown was greeted with a crowd of 30,000 people. People of all races stood in a peace rally filled with South Korean flags and fists of solidarity. The real enemy, both sides knew, was the system of racism embedded in our communities.
This was also the time of the big technology boom. Asian-Americans, those that had established families and could afford an education, took advantage of the digital opportunities and comprised 40% of entrepreneurs at the time. If the wealth gap between Asian-Americans that immigrated before and after 1965 was not large enough, it grew immensely. Southeast Asians took entry-level positions building electronic parts, but their workers’ rights were being exploited and were paid by the part. Many did not even make minimum wage.
These young, excited, spirited Asian-American entrepreneurs brought the tech industry to Asia. They’re responsible for introducing a global economy on the scale that we know it today. But they’re also responsible for the exploitative labor markets in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and India.
The Asian-American, now equipped with generational wealth and access to higher education, has become white-adjacent, and in turn, is now taking advantage of poorer Asian Americans and other minorities. At least… that’s the story for some.
One Size Fits All
Asian-Americans have the largest wealth gap among all ethnicities. The wealthiest Asian-Americans obtain more wealth than their White counterparts, yet the poorest earn less than their White counterparts. However, the median wealth and salary differ greatly between races. Indian and Chinese Americans earn the most, while Cambodian and Hmong Americans earn the least. Southeast Asians tend to make significantly less than their East Asian counterparts due to a longer history in America, significantly wealthier home countries, and differences in education systems. If there’s such drastic differences between races, why do we share one voice?
There are 48 Asian countries one could call home, and countless more ethnicities. China and Vietnam, both, have over 50 ethnicities, each. Pacific Islanders have distinct subcultures within their numerous ethnicities. I haven’t even begun to discuss South Asians, whom tend to be put in their own category having not been conquered by Chinese imperialism. One of the biggest problems with the Asian-American identity is that there are too many voices and ideas to lump into a single identity.
For Asian-Americans that have assimilated into American society, they largely have no problem living in the general Asian-American identity. Many third or fourth generation Asian-Americans don’t speak their grandparents’ language, and they have no problem moving past old traditions. But for first and second generation Asian-Americans, where the culture is viscerally engrained in their lives, it would be dismissive and diminishing to lump them with other ethnicities. Asking a Korean immigrant to ignore the atrocities of Japanese warfare, or expecting Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants to put aside differences, is ignoring centuries of crucial history and identity. Our foods are different. Our religions are different. Our fashion, music, entertainment are all different. And Americans still expect us to be generalized?
Not only does our identity tell us who we are, but when we are. Often, your Asian-American identity depends on your relation to immigration. Did you parents immigrate? Did your great-grand parents immigrate? Did your parents come from fresh-off-the-war Korea or rebuilt-and-prosperous Korea? These are all crucial questions that inform the most basic parts of our identity: socio-economic status, outlook on American society, exposure to systemic racism, and food and culture. This part of our identity is not up to us, yet it dictates and constructs the very being of our ethnicity.
The Model Minority, The Forgotten Minority
The “Model Minority” myth can evoke mixed feelings, especially now, as online communities recently been shedding more light on the myth. Certain camps, based on the environment they were raised in, will feel differently about the myth and the privilege that accompanies it.
There are those that feel guilt for inherently taking advantage of the system by simply being. Despite our best intentions, we can only advocate for equal opportunity after already gaining the positions we applied for. The guilt of being used for, and benefitting from, anti-black propaganda is something that should inform every decision we make. We should be advocating at our schools because we benefitted from an anti-black education system. We should be advocating at our workplaces because we benefit from an anti-black hiring process. And if we didn’t have those opportunities, we should still be advocating within our communities because we are allowed to live within an anti-black police state.
There are those that are actively attempting to be white-adjacent — enjoying the privileges of white people, wearing their clothes, working the same corporate jobs, and becoming increasingly complacent in the face of injustice. If you’ve heard the term “white-washed”, this is what it means. They’ve chosen to assimilate as much as possible because it’s comfortable, desired, or expected. They may attribute their positioning in society solely to their hard work and passions, not understanding the weight of the decades-long myth. Though it doesn’t diminish their sense of identity, the subconscious desire to become white-adjacent allows the white narrative to further drive a wedge between Asian Americans and other persons of color.
And then there are “fresh off the boat” Asian Americans that are starting a new life. Their main goal is to survive. Constantly facing the scrutiny of white onlookers, they feel insecure about their language capabilities and worried that things could go south at any moment. After all, this isn’t their home. They’re an alien. They feel alone (excluding California). Their idea of a “good U.S. citizen” is laying low and not stirring up trouble. For them, success comes from keeping your head down and working hard. They may see other minorities as victims of their own choices because they arrived with no concept of the racial injustices engrained in America. As children of first-generation Asian-Americans, it’s up to us to educate our parents to prevent further divide between minority communities. In case you’ve forgotten, the destruction of Koreatown in 1992 was a direct result of ignorance.
For these reasons — benefitting from privilege, assimilating into white culture, and feigning peace with silence — Asian Americans have lost the voice in our country that we once had. It fits well into the white narrative. “If Asian-Americans don’t speak up about the racial divide, no one will.”
There’s one final aspect in the silencing of our identity: lack of representation. Sure, Asian-Americans can be seen on Olympic teams or corporate office jobs. But when was the last time you watched an Asian-American centric movie? I’ll save you the trouble. There have only been two hit movies: The Joy Luck Club (1992) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). There have only been four shows: All-American Girl (1994), Master of None (2015), Fresh Off The Boat (2015), and Kim’s Convenience (2016). There are only 17 Asian American politicians in the House and Senate. We can luckily claim Bruno Mars and a number of stand-up comedians. But you see the trend: it’s always only a handful.
People of all shapes and sizes have talked about the harmful effects of misrepresentation on the media. For Asian-Americans, there was an idea enforced that we felt for most of our lives: we’re alien. Asian men are feminized. They’re geeky, strange, unsuccessful with women. They’re jumping out of trunks naked in the Hangover. They’re not good looking. Asian women are fetishized. They’re exotic, innocently cute, meant to serve their white men. Or they’re immigrants — ostracized for their accents and cultural traditions.
“I don’t belong.”
Alien To All
Not only do we feel like outsiders in America, we cannot relate to citizens of our home countries. There’s a language barrier. There’s a cultural barrier. They think of us as Americans, and Americans think of us as foreigners.
We don’t know the history of our home countries. Unlike my cousins in Vietnam, I can’t name the dynasties of Vietnam or recount the Sino-Vietnamese War. I don’t know about the traditional art and entertainment that they watch in their free time. I don’t get their jokes. I’m not one of them.
We don’t look like White Americans. The influence of our home countries are growing in power — growing in wealth. So they tell us to “go home”. They mystify our traditions and beliefs. They steal our media and hand out roles and stories to White actors. They steal and construct their own version of our food and label it Chinese takeout. I don’t relate to them. I’m not one of them.
So we turn to art for solace. We turn to hip-hop, but many accuse us of appropriating a “blaccent”. We turn to classical music, but our hard work gets dismissed. We turn to Asian media, such as anime or k-pop, and we find a community. That is, until we see that mainstream America ridicules Asian media. When Parasite, a Korean film, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, white audiences were complaining that they had to read subtitles.
But if we found a community, then we found our people! People that we can truly relate to! Until we find out the harsh truth that so many of us are so different. We have different backgrounds and upbringings. We begin to see that some of us have had more privilege than other. We begin to see the sectionality of the Asian-American identity. So we sequester ourselves within groups: Korean-Americans, Taiwanese-Americans, Cambodian-Americans, etc. In this small sliver of the population, we find that we’re not alone, yet more alone than we thought.
Epilogue
The Asian-American identity.
A conglomeration of ideas, beliefs, feelings, and people.
A cacophony of loudly bickering, yet unheard voices.
An instrument of war for anti-black and anti-brown discrimination.
We have experienced privilege as much as we’ve experienced micro-aggressions. We’ve been lynched, and we’ve been murdered. We’ve been forgotten by the police and left to burn. We were loud, and now we’re silent. And because of that silence, we’ve been used as a weapon — a weapon to divide minorities and perpetuate racism a white-centric status quo.
For us to find our voice again, we have to educate ourselves and our immigrant parents on our positioning within racial inequity. We have to speak and act on creating equal opportunities for other minorities. We have to mobilize and build our own places in movies, television, music, and politics.
Once we’ve learned, spoken, and mobilized, and only then, will we rebuild our identity in OUR country. But until then, we will continue serving a white narrative, being used for anti-BIPOC propaganda, and being silenced.
