Final Exam
Week #4 Lecture (July 31st ~ August 6th) "Asian Pacific Islanders Americans: Perpetual Foreigners?"
I am reading and grading your 2nd essays. I hope to have all of them posted by Tuesday, August 1st. The third critical essay prompt will be posted by Thursday, August 3rd. It will be due on August 11th.
Incorporation History of Asian Pacific Americans ("The Perpetual Foreigner")
WEEK #4 LECTURE
Required Reading:
*Nakanishi & Lai, “Part III: The Period of Political Incorporation (1965-Present)” pp. 89-133
*Nakanishi & Lai, “The ‘Four Prisons’ and the Movements of Liberation (G. Omatsu)135-162
*Nakanishi & Lai, “Serve the People” (by Kim Geron), pp. 163-179
*Ancheta, Angelo, “Chapter 3: Looking Like the Enemy.” pp. 61-83
*Ancheta, Angelo, “Chapter 4,” Race, Immigration & Citizenship.” Pp. 84-105
Recommended: *Aoki and Takeda, Chapter 4, pp. 78-94 & Chapter 5, pp. 95-116.
Identity, Agency, & Social Change
“Ban all Muslims!” says a presidential candidate, even though one of the San Bernadino killers and the latest mass shooter in Orlando, were both Americans, born and raised in the U.S. Because President Obama doesn’t say the words, “Radical Islamic Terrorism,” it “proves” he has a “secret agenda.” President Obama’s citizenship has been questioned since he had been running for president in 2007-08. Asian Pacific Islander Americans have long understood what it means to have their “American-ness” questioned, asked why their “English is so good, with no accent,” and where they are “really from?” Angelo Ancheta calls this process, “Foreigner Racialization,” --this idea that some people are “perpetual foreigners.” No matter how long they and their families are here (generation after generation), because of their “difference” and their “otherness,” they are unassimilable. The legal system and institutions have played a formal role in excluding Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and to perpetuate and reify this “perpetual foreigner” status.
A few years ago, Representative Curt Clawson mistook and assumed that two Asian Americans from the Obama administration (U.S. government workers) were representatives of the Indian government is an example of how Asian Americans are often assumed to be foreign rather than American. There is a social, legal and historical framework from which to understand why this is (and why this is problematic, as well). We might ask ourselves if Americans of English descent, German descent, Irish descent, Scottish descent or French descent are assumed to be from those European countries before they are from the U.S.? Why? Why not? Are there parallels with Asian Pacific Americans? How? How not?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/25/curt-clawson-indian-officials_n_5622078.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Asian Pacific Americans have been stereotyped as “passive” and “disengaged” from American society and most especially politics. This has contributed to the “perpetual foreigner” and “model minority” images. The laws have often supported, reinforced and reified this view, serving to exclude people of Asian descent from fully participating in American society. The invisibility of APAs, despite their ever-growing presence, continues to perpetuate this view to some extent in the 21st century. The critical mass of APAs and their growing numbers (as the largest immigrant groups in the U.S.) may begin to crack these long-held stereotypes and views.
Throughout U.S. history, however, we have seen APAs challenge the legal system (e.g. People v. Hall case in 1854, the Thind and Ozawa Cases on citizenship in the 1920s, WWII’s Hirabayashi, Korematsu , & Yasui Cases of the 1940s among many) and transgress the roles and positions they were often relegated to politically, socially, economically and educationally. Collective movements (such as Sugar Plantation Strikes in Hawai’i in the 1908 & 1920, the Asian American & Ethnic Studies Movement in the 1960s, the pan-Asian emergence from the Vincent Chin Case, organizing around saving the I-Hotel, etc.) moved Asian Americans from individually contesting U.S. institutions to developing "social movements" and impacting "social change."
Organizing and understanding oneself as part of a “pan-ethnic” social and political identity, “Asian American” and “Asian Pacific American” have been integral in engaging in “movement politics” and becoming an instrument for change (exerting “agency” or “actors” in their own historical making). In other words, from the social, cultural, and legal limitations within the context of the U.S., APAs have gone from awareness of their social reality, consciousness-raising, theory & ideology, participatory democracy, community-building to liberation. Furthermore, as APA political participation has increased both formally and informally, we have seen APAs express their advocacy, access, legitimacy, empowerment and assertiveness. In other words, a critical mass of APAs (and allies) with a shared sense of identity and history, raising awareness and concern can and have realized major social change.
The articles you will be reading for this week by Glenn Omatsu, Kim Geron, Nakanishi & Lai, and Angelo Ancheta (and possibly Aoki & Takeda) provide an alternative view (arguably a more accurate view) of the engaged, active political participation and agency of APAs in their own historical making. From individual acts to collective organization, APAs have had to carve out their own spaces and places. This week’s readings fully detail a part of U.S. history that is most fascinating and yet most understated.
Asian Americans Becoming More Prominent in Immigration Debate & Political Elections
It's really interesting to consider these articles from a sociohistorical perspective (contextualizing APAs within their historical incorporation experiences from the readings)!
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/opinion-2016-asian-americans-pacific-islanders-are-ready-be-heard-n581866 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-13/asian-american-voters-are-left-behind-in-the-2016-presidential-election (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/asian-americans-growing-in-number-struggle-to-emerge-from-political-shadows/2016/02/16/91a5836c-ca8b-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Asians have become the fastest growing group since 2012! (Asians and Latinos are always engaged in a "healthy" competition of which group is the fastest growing! It appears, the Census, documents APAs, at least for now!) :)
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb13-112.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
During the last great immigration debate of the mid-2000s, it was mainly Latinos who were heard and seen pushing for an immigration overhaul. But things have changed. Take one single day this week in Los Angeles, when two Asian-American groups in different parts of town were speaking out in favor of comprehensive immigration reform.
At the Korean Resource Center in Koreatown, Dayne Lee and his colleagues were discussing a month-long phone effort to reach Korean-American voters.
"In the past, we’d be in coaltions or at rallies, and we’d be one of the only Asian-American faces in the room, or in the streets," said Lee, a civic engagement coordinator with the group. "I think what is happening now is that so many organizations are really making a push to get the word out to our community members."
Lee's coworkers and volunteers spent the past month working the phones, pushing Korean-American voters to ask their member of Congress to vote for comprehensive immigration reform.
On the same day, a few miles away in downtown L.A., an Asian-American civil rights group was kicking off a new campaign to help people start green card petitions for their adult married children and siblings, who stand to be cut off from immigrant visas under the immigration bill approved by the Senate.
Asian Americans Becoming Prominent in the Immigration Debate
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/multiamerican/2013/08/02/14422/asian-americans-become-a-more-prominent-voice-in-i/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Street vendors ask law enforcement to ease up on citations (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Such issues have become a rallying point for many Asian-Americans, says Stewart Kwoh, who heads the L.A. office of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
"About 55 percent of Asian-American immigration into the United States has been due to family preferences," Kwoh said. "And so when we've seen the interest of a number of elected officials to cut family immigration in order to boost the numbers for skills-based immigration, Asian-Americans have really been outraged by that choice."
More young Asian-Americans who grew up in the U.S. without papers have been going public with their status, as have young Latinos and other activists. They include people such as Kevin Lee, a 23-year-old UCLA graduate. He grew up in the U.S. without legal status after his family arrived from South Korea and overstayed their visas.
"More Asian Americans are ... sort of recognizing that a lot is at stake here," Lee said. "It's not just the students, it's not just the young folks, it's not just the parents, but it's everybody. It's our friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts."
Lee and seven other young Asian-Americans recently traveled to Washington, D.C. and met with lawmakers to share their stories. But even as Asian-Americans join Latinos and others pushing for an immigration overhaul, it's not clear how much influence their efforts will have, says Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political scientist who studies immigration policy at UC Riverside.
"This immigration bill involves a lot of compromises," Ramakrishnan said. "And I think you have a realistic recognition among many groups that they may not be able to get some of the most important things they are pushing for, but that it's still important to push for it in the chance that it might work out."
Immigration from Asia recently surpassed new arrivals from Latin America, with Asians becoming the nation's fastest-growing (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. racial group. If anything, Ramakrishnan says, the growing Asian-American presence in the immigration debate is helping reshape the present — and future — perception of who immigrants in the U.S. are.
Asian Americans' Fasted Growing Group:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asianamericans-graphics/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/asian-americans-growing-faster-any-other-group-u-s-n141991 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
