Asian American Studies

The struggle for civil rights and freedoms has been an ever present battle between those who have the rights and those who continuously wish to obtain it. The struggles of Asian Americans to attain equal voices and opportunities, as well as an education of their heritage, are a seldom recognized part of the American legacy of Ethnic Social Movements. During the late 1960s, Asian American activism started without warning throughout the United States. This spur to action was led in part by the Black Panthers and other civil rights movements at the time. Many campus activists on the East and West Coasts of the United States protested a lack of college and university curriculums regarding the history of Asians in America. Others thought that the absence of a strong Asian American community was resulting in a wearing away of the Asian identities of those individuals and their children. This call for action resulted in a three decade long process that would find in its outcome, changes in the college and university educational system; as well as, a recognition in American society that Asian Americans had a voice that needed to be heard.

Initially, many Asian Americans identified with the liberal White Americans regarding the Black Panthers and civil rights movements at the time. Ultimately, the bitter truth of American society led Asian Americans to empathize with the African Americans and their plight to achieve racial equality. Asian Americans became conscious to the prejudices they also suffered and that as a group, they too were victims of a collective racism and were generally excluded from mainstream American society. They became increasingly aware that they had much more in common with the African Americans than with the European Americans. The land of equality became the land of inequality. Where the United States was envisioned as a place where any person could succeed through hard work and effort, it became a reality where racial discrimination and the degradation of cultures outside the mainstream Eurocentric model became common practices.

Groups of Asian Americans started to demonstrate alongside other civil rights activists. During the rallies to free Huey P. Newton of The Black Panther Party, Asian Americans from around the nation stood alongside African American protestors. One photograph of that period shows an Asian American college student holding a sign asserting, “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power.” This “Yellow Peril” referred to a derogatory term that White Americans used in the 19th century to incite animosity towards the mass immigration of Asians during the late 1800s. There was a belief circulated by popular press that the Asian immigrants threatened the White laborers’ livelihoods and standard of living. Although the connotation is negative, the “Yellow Peril” protestors of the late 1960s used the phrase to convey their awareness that the discrimination in the United States was more than the work of just individual bigots; the intolerance of other cultures was in fact an inherent characteristic of American society.

The Asian American Movement reached a deeper significance in 1982, after the hate crime beating and murder of Vincent Jen Chin in Detroit, Michigan. This period showed many layoffs in Detroit’s auto industry due to a growing market share of Japanese automakers. The two men that attacked Chin both were involved with the auto industry and had personal resentment toward the Japanese. Many critics believed that Chinese American Vincent Chin was harassed and attacked in retaliation. The attack, which consisted of blows to the head with a baseball bat, was racially motivated. A witness of the incident overheard Ronald Ebens, one of the assailants, yell out, “It’s because of you little motherf*ckrs that we’re out of work!” Prior to Chin’s passing, he was employed as an industrial draftsman for Efficient Engineering Co. and had set to marry his fiancé on June 27, 1982, four days after his unforeseen death.

The resulting lawsuit convicted the two men, Ebens and Nitz, to second-degree murder. They were given three years of probation, fined $3,000 and served no jail time. The Judge on the case, Charles Kaufman, stated, “These weren’t the kind of men you send to jail … You don’t, make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal.” In objection, this case became a rallying point for the Asian American community. It angered the Asian American community around the country. The appeal accusing the two men of violating Chin’s civil rights ensued; but after years of court battles, Nitz was acquitted and Ebens was cleared of all charges due to a legal technicality. After the verdict, Vincent’s mother decried, “What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail; maybe for their whole lives … Something is wrong with this country.”

The civil suit for the unlawful death of Vincent Chin was settled out of court. Nitz was ordered to pay $30 weekly installments for ten years. Ebens was ordered to pay $200 per month up to a total of $1.5 million. Yet Ronald Ebens did not carry out his payments; as of 1997, with accrued interest and charges, Ebens adjusted total payment balance became $4.7 million. Chin’s murder continues to be controversial even today; because of the racial motivations on the attack and the relaxed sentencing that resulted from the court decision. The attack was a hate crime, but pre-dates hate crime laws in the United States. This case has since been referred to by a number of Asian Americans as verification to their belief that they are seen as underprivileged citizens, or “perpetual foreigners” compared to “real” Americans. Even while the criminal cases were lost, Vincent Chin’s murder is regarded as the establishment of a pan-ethnic stage of the Asian American movement. The subsequent failed appeal in federal court was a product of public pressure from a union of many Asian ethnic organizations.

It was also during this period that Asian American Studies started to become established within the curriculum of American universities. Their goals were to include ethnic studies that would be available to all students with multicultural backgrounds who wanted a higher education. Its central purpose was to instill them with the facts, awareness, and dedication needed to solve the issues of their communities. In addition, there was a need to increase diversity to the student body and faculty of colleges and universities. Thus, it made these educational centers more representative of the society in which they served, and less exclusively European American. This change was considered necessary because traditional learning offered a program that was unrelated to the experiences of Americans from largely ignored ethnic backgrounds and only advanced a Eurocentric ideology that degraded other cultures.

Today, Asian American Studies is an academic discipline which studies the experiences of people of Asian ancestry in America. It critically examines the experiences, issues, culture, history, and politics of Asian Americans. The Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University created the College of Ethnic Studies, which offers a Masters Degree program and is the first and only such “college” in any United States university. Many universities that offer Major programs in Asian American Studies are located in California because of the high concentration of Asians living in the state. These universities comprise of Cal State Northridge, UC Berkeley, UC San Bernardino, UCLA, UC Irvine, Stanford, UC San Diego, SFSU, UC Davis, City College of San Francisco, and The Claremont Colleges. Outside of California, the Major programs are offered at Columbia University, University of Colorado, University of Washington, Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition, City University of New York and Queens College is home to both the Asian American Center and Asian American Research Institute. It is located in Flushing, New York, a neighborhood which is populated heavily with Asian Americans.

The Asian American Movement created a tidal wave of change and recognition for the Asian immigrants that transplanted themselves here in the United States, some as far back as 160 years ago. With Asian American Studies, the present generation of ethnic Asians has the opportunity to discover his or her heritage and the history of Asians living in America. A profound and reflective testimony by Gordon Lee, an Asian American, attests to this change of awareness:

“I had never thought of myself that way – a grain of sand, in the belly of a monster, a yellow pearl – descended from a line of courageous workers who built railroads, enduring great hardships, facing exclusion acts, were not allowed to own property or to marry outside our race – raised by women who slaved in sweatshops.

It’s hard to explain why it affects me so deeply, but it’s like ‘seeing’ for the first time. Seeing that we didn’t have to fit into someone else’s world, into someone else’s image.

Learning about our own history, our own culture, one that had been hidden for a long time. It is – like finding a piece of myself. I learn how to write my Chinese name. I begin looking for my own stories.”

Asian Americans have certainly taken their part in American history, from the arduous building of the transcontinental railroad to the inequitable movement of Japanese Americans into internment camps, Asian immigrants have countless stories to impart. No longer are Asian Americans the submissive and silent minority in the United States, it is time they are finally noticed.