Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month: Origins

A guest post by commenter Jefe:

Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month was enacted into law by Congress on October 23, 1992 and signed into law by President Bush. It replaced Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week, which was first proclaimed by President Carter in 1979. It joins National Hispanic Heritage Month as one of the few designated cultural heritage or history months enacted into law by Congress. By contrast, Black History Month and Women’s History Month have never been enacted by law, but continue merely by annual Presidential proclamation.

The quest for this law began in 1976 when President Ford proclaimed February as Black History Month during the U.S. Bicentennial to recognize the contribution of African-Americans to the nation’s history and culture. Jeanie Fong-Lee Jew, a Chinese-American banker in her 30s, noticed that Asian Americans were completely left out of the Bicentennial celebrations and seemed destined to be written out of the country’s historical and cultural narrative altogether. Inspired by family stories of her grandfather, who himself worked on the Transcontinental Railroad and was killed while standing up to a white mob in Oregon in the 1890s, Ms. Jew began a crusade to establish a month to commemorate Asian/Pacific Americans’ (APA) contributions to U.S. history.

May was chosen because it marks the month when Japanese immigration  to the US began (May 7, 1843) and when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed by Chinese workers (May 10, 1869).

Ms. Jew approached many people in her quest, among them:

• Jack Herrity, the chairman of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Board of Supervisors in suburban DC. Elected to his office in 1976, Mr. Herrity, recognizing the explosive growth of APA in his county, was the first senior executive official in the US to proclaim an APA Heritage Week. It would become the model for Congress.
• Congressman Frank Horton (R-NY), whose administrative assistant was her childhood schoolmate, Ruby Moy.

In the House of Representatives, Congressman Horton, who served beside the highly decorated all-Japanese-American 442nd regiment in WWII, pounced on the idea, but suggested that they had a better chance of success to propose a week, instead of a month. By that time, numerous Asian-American groups across the country,  like the Japanese-American Citizens League (JACL) and the Organization for Chinese Americans (OCA), had formed a coalition in San Francisco. Joining the bandwagon were Congressmen Norman Mineta (D-CA) and Robert Matsui (D-CA). The resolution passed the House with 218 votes.

In the Senate, Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Spark Matsunaga (D-HI) and S.I. Hayakawa (R-CA) rallied for the bill, which made its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass.

President Carter proclaimed on March 28, 1979 the first Asian Pacific American Heritage Week beginning on May 4, 1979.

In 1990, President Bush extended it to a full month, but it still required a Congressional resolution every year. To honor the retiring Congressman Horton in 1992, President Bush signed House Resolution 5572, cementing APA Heritage Month into perpetuity.

Ms. Jew, who later became the National President of the Organization of Chinese American Women (OCAW), finally achieved her quest to make it the law of the land.

See also:

• Full text of the Public Law: http://www.loc.gov/law/help/commemorative-observations/pdf/106%20stat%202251.pdf
• Pub. L. 102-450 (Historical resolutions): http://www.loc.gov/law/help/commemorative-observations/asian.php
• Asian American cibil rights (future post)
• Welcome to Asian American History Month
• Nominations for Asian American History Month
• Asian Americans
• What I was not taught about American history
• Welcome to White History Month!
• White History Month
• Black History Month

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How to not be a racist – in 7 easy steps!

Disclaimer: This is a parody of White American racist thinking.

Are you racist? Take the test!

1. Do you use the N-word?
2. Do you hate people of other races?
3. Do you have false beliefs about other races?
4. Do you belong to the Klan or other racist organization (the Republican Party does not count)?

Scoring: 1 point for each “yes” answer.

Results:

• 0 points: You do not have a racist bone in your body! Congratulations!
• 1 to 4 points: Every bone in your body is racist.

But wait, if you are racist, there is hope!

Follow these seven easy steps:

1. Stop having false beliefs about other races. Only believe things that you believe are true! If you are not sure if something is true, use Google to find a statistic or scientific study that supports what you want to believe. Confirmation bias – it works!
   • Tip: If most White people believe something, then it has to be true. They have never been wrong about anything.
   • Remember: White is right!
2. Make excuses for using the N-word. Black people use it all the time, especially rap guys and Black comedians. It sounds completely the same coming from White people.
3. Watch Fox News. They are masters of being racist without seeming racist. CNN is almost as good – well, maybe better because fewer people think they are racist. If you are into US history or biography, read about Richard Nixon and George Wallace: Wallace, who lacked subtlety, did it wrong; Nixon did it right – and became president! Nixon’s media adviser later founded Fox News.
   • Remember: What counts is not whether you are racist, but whether you seem racist. Just ask Don Sterling.

   

4. Drink Diet Haterade. Instead of hating other races, pity them or look down on them. That is what upper-middle-class White people do. Practise talking down to them. You still get to feel superior to other races but without seeming to be racist.
5. Practise moral relativism. Compare yourself to someone more racist. There is always someone. Like your grandmother. Or the Klan. Or White people in the South. Or White people in the 1950s. Racism is not a matter of degree – it is all or nothing. So if you are not as bad as a known racist, you cannot be racist.
   • Tip: If most White people say or do or say something, it cannot be racist.
   • Remember: Only the most extreme racists are racist.
6. Start all racist statements with “I’m not racist, but…” That makes it not racist! It is, like, a rule. 
7. Befriend someone of another race. One is enough. It is like a magic cure for racism. Marrying someone of another race is even better: it will make it impossible for you to ever be racist!

If people of other races still think you are racist, then they are oversensitive or have a chip on their shoulder. What else could it be? Make it all about your feelings while dismissing theirs. How dare they think you are a racist jerk!

– Abagond, 2014.

See also:

• The non-parody version:
  • How to tell if a White person is racist
  • My advice to White people
  • How Whites become unracist
• Applicable tropes:
  • confirmation bias
  • N-word
  • “Some of my best friends are black”
  • “White is right”
  • “White people are basically good”
  • dichotomous thinking
  • white feelings
  • Racist Uncles
• Don Sterling
• Fox News
• What the racism of most living White Americans is like:
  • The four frames
  • The five walls

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The term “Asian”

dark red = where > 67% of Asian Americans come from;
red = where < 33% Asian Americans comes from;
pink = not counted as Asian by the US census.

“Asian” (late 1300s) means “a native of Asia or a person of Asian descent.” It seems like a clear-cut, straightforward, geographically objective word. But things are not that simple.

In Britain it mainly means South Asian: people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The government counts “Chinese” separately from “Asian”. Non-Chinese people from South East Asia tend to mark down “Other Ethnic Group”, not “Other Asian”.

In the US, meanwhile, “Asian” mainly means East Asian: China and neighbouring countries, like Japan, Vietnam and Korea.

Immigration seems to be the main reason for the difference: most Asians in Britain are from South Asia, while most Asians in the US are from East Asia.

In the US, two-thirds of Asians come from the east coast, namely:

• Japan
• Korea
• South China
• Taiwan
• Vietnam
• Laos
• Cambodia
• Philippines

On the map these are marked in dark red.

Empire: These are all places where the US fought wars, ruled or had military allies. Some Asians, in fact, fled to the US because of those very wars. Some are Amerasians: the sons and daughters left behind by American soldiers.

Likewise, the main Asian piece of the British Empire was India.

Racial euphemism: In both the US and Britain, “Asian” takes the place older, more racist-sounding words:

• Asiatic
• Oriental
• Mongoloid

or worse.

There are people alive in the US who used to say “Oriental” all the time but now just say “Asian” instead. So “Asian” is racialized. And it is not just some old codgers left over from Jim Crow times either:

Statistical Policy Directive #15: In 1977 the US government, to enforce its civil rights laws, began gathering numbers uniformly based on five “races”: Black, White, Hispanic, Native and Asian American. US scholars, even geneticist Neil Risch, followed suit.

“Asian American” came from the Yellow Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s – but it was the government that wound up defining it.

People from India, for example, were counted as “White/Caucasian”, as they were on the 1970 census. But, apparently because Indian Americans objected, they were soon counted as Asian Americans instead. Other Caucasian Asians, though, did not object:

• West Asians (Middle East)
• Central Asians (Afghanistan, Tajikistan, etc)
• North Asians (Siberia)

On the map their region is marked in pink. The US government does not count them as Asian Americans – even though they are from Asia!

Pacific Islanders were counted together with Asian Americans from 1977 to 2000.

Genetically speaking, the five-race model should be applied to Asia and the Pacific something like this:

• Native American: Japanese, Korean, Native Siberian;
• Asian: Chinese, South East Asian, Pacific Islander;
• Caucasian: India, Middle East, White Siberian.

“Asian American” was defined by a government committee. It makes no genetic, cultural or even geographic sense. It is a social construct, nakedly so.

But then.

But then the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 made “Asian American” more than just words in a government report. It was a wake-up call that made Asian Americans see that they were all in the same boat.

As with “Black” and “Indian” (the Native American sort), “Asian” is made real by White racism.

See also:

• Asian Americans
  • Vietnamese Amerasians
• Vincent Chin
• Is race biologically real – for more on Neil Risch
• Bhagat Singh Thind – Indian Americans as maybe Caucasian but not “white”
• Morepseudogeography:
  • “Middle East”
  • “America”
  • “Indian”
  • “Europe”
  • “sub-Saharan Africa”

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Welcome to Asian American History Month!

Tatsuo Miyake by Ansel Adams. Adams was not allowed to photograph the barbed wire.

Welcome to Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! I will not write only about Asian American subjects, but it is the theme for May.

Thanks to everyone who suggested a topic. Below are the ones that were suggested the most:

• Black-Asian race relations
• Asian stereotypes
• Seattle Riot of 1886
• Kingdom of Hawaii
• Transpacific slave (aka “coolie”) trade
• Richard Aoki
• coolies
• Asian American civil rights
• Chinese Exclusion Act
• Asian men, Black women
• yellowface
• US v Wong Kim Ark (1898) – see Chinese Exclusion Act
• university quotas against Asian Americans
• Suey Park (#CancelColbert)
• Rock Springs Massacre
• “ching chong”
• Asian brain drain
• Amy Chua (“Tiger Mom”)
• American Samoa
• Vincent Chin
• Japanese American internment

I will not necessarily do only these or all of these, but this is my burn list. I will fill in the links as I do them. The last two are already filled in because they were requested but were already done.

Here are the non-suggested posts that appeared during the month:

• The term “Asian”
• Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month: Origins
• Manila galleons
• Yvonne Elliman: I Don’t Know How To Love Him
• Three ways Americans write about Asians
• Asians in the Library
• Amerie: 1 Thing
• Settlement of Asians in the Deep South (1763 – 1882)
• Taiwanese Americans
• Chinese Americans in the Deep South after 1882
• Chinese Americans in Mississippi under Jim Crow

For this month I will also be reading, at least in part:

Iris Chang, “The Chinese in America” (2003) – Chinese American history is a hole in my education. Chang is best known for “The Rape of Nanking” (1997). Unfortunately, she is no longer with us. Fortunately, she has left us some books to read.

Ronald Takaki, “A Different Mirror” (1993) – the US history of different ethnic groups. It is good on Irish, Mexican, Japanese and Chinese Americans, as far as I can tell, but not so good on Black or Native Americans.

Frank Wu: “Yellow” (2003) – racism against Asian Americans. I have already read parts of it. Excellent!

If there is a book you recommend on Asian Americans, please let me know!

 

See also:

• Nominations for Asian American History Month
• Asian Americans – go there for an overview and long, but outdated, list of Asian American topics that I have done.

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