From Arizona’s SB1070 to anti-government rhetoric spouted by the Tea Party, this election season, threats to our basic civil liberties abound. Against this political backdrop, it seems more important than ever to remember the civil rights heroes and champions who paved the way ahead of us.
Fred Korematsu was one such champion — if an unrecognized one.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066, ordering the round-up and imprisonment of thousands of Japanese Americans along America’s West Coast. Families of Japanese Americans were herded into temporary internment camps, and later into permanent relocation camps that dotted the deserts of the Southwest.
An American citizen who was born in Oakland, California, Fred Korematsu refused to abide by E.O. 9066. As families across the West Coast were forced into barbed-wire camps, surrounded by armed guards, Korematsu refused to report for internment. In 1942, he was arrested and convicted in a federal court for violating a military executive order and forcibly detained at a series of internment camps. But that didn’t stop him from appealing his case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944 on the grounds that E.O. 9066 was “racist.”
Fred Korematsu, who passed away on March 30, 2005, dedicated his entire life to fighting for civil rights. Now, it’s our turn to honor him.
Jeff of “Asian Pop” has written a brilliant column this week, exploring the irony of the GOP’s war on birthright citizenship on the centennial anniversary of Angel Island. Jeff eloquently recounts how the ”paper son” phenomenon re-shaped the American landscape, and provided the basis for the Asian American community. Here’s an excerpt:
For his part, Wong’s father rarely talked about his paper son status at all. The remembered humiliations of detention and the lasting guilt at having borne false witness had created walls of shame around his Angel Island story, as restrictive as those that had jailed him decades before.
That desire to forget the past comes with its own price, Genny Lim notes. “My mother and father and sister all came through Angel Island, and I never even knew that until I started to do research on the subject,” she says. “My father even accused me of digging up something that shows our community in a very negative light — that we came here illegally, that we violated the law. His psychology is marked by this trauma that we Chinese are unwelcome here, that we are never going to be bona fide Americans. So he and my mother were afraid to participate in politics and in the civic process, because they never felt they had the right to do so, and were afraid that they would be condemned if they did.”
In 1980, Lim was moved by her parents’ plight to write a play about the Angel Island experience, “Paper Angels,” which still stands today as one of the most vivid and important illustrations of this painful era in immigration history. Written as a series of sharply drawn vignettes, it follows a group of detainees of varied background and purpose as they undergo ruthless cross-examinations, attempt to reconcile the bright promises made to them and the miserable reality of their internment, and ultimately, survive or succumb to stress, rage and frustration.
It ends with a resonant moment, as young, pregnant Mei Lai delivers her baby — a son, blessed by accident of geography with the right to U.S. citizenship; this leads the warden to release of Mei Lai and her husband out of “special consideration” for her status as the mother of a newborn American.
It is a hopeful ending to an otherwise bleak narrative, but one that highlights once again the dangerous rhetoric that has entered into recent discourse on immigration. In our contemporary era, Mei Lai’s son Yang would not be seen as a symbol of new hope in a new nation, but an “anchor baby” — an ugly term in an even uglier debate.
There’s little evidence that our borders are being threatened by an invasion of pregnant women, seeking to use their offspring as a tether to America (and the legal reality is that illegals still face deportation even if they have American-born citizen children).
Nevertheless, this alleged phenomenon has inspired leading Republicans like Sen. Lindsay Graham, Sen. Minority Whip Jon Kyl and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to call for hearings to discuss repealing or altering the 14th Amendment to eliminate jus solis, the standard of citizenship for any and all born on this nation’s soil and under this nation’s laws. It should be noted that without jus solis as laid out in the 14th Amendment and upheld in the Wong Kim Ark decision, some 90 percent of the Chinese American population might not exist today — and nor, in essence, would America.
That’s because birthright citizenship is a quintessential part of what makes our nation what it is — a free and democratic society that abhors tyranny and welcomes its victims; that treats people as individuals and respects their civil and human rights; that does not discriminate based on race, culture or country of origin.
From Life Magazine, this unpublished photo was taken in the ruins of a house in Nagasaki. On Sept 9, 1945, the photographer Bernard Hopkins wrote: "Assume this had been a private dwelling... remains the only evidence of what once had been a home and family."
Today — August 6th, 2010 – marks the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the first use of an atomic bomb for the purposes of warfare in history.
On this day in 1945, the “Little Boy” bomb was dropped by the United States military on the city of Hiroshima, which was chosen as a military target because it was “an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target.”
The purpose of the bombing was to convince Japan to enter into an unconditional surrender and end World War II, because there was a belief amongst Americans that the Japanese were so devoted to Emperor Hirohito that they would fight to the last man, woman, and child if invaded, which (if true) would compromise American military strength. Although Japanese loyalty to Emperor Hirohito was high during WWII, the perception of Japanese citizens as mindlessly loyal to their emperor was also predicated — at least in part — on racist stereotypes of the Japanese promoted through American WWII propaganda. Fearing the costs of a prolonged invasion of Japan, the United States decided to use their recently developed atomic bombs on civilian and urban centers, specifically for the purpose of maximizing civilian deaths and demoralizing the Japanese government and citizenry.
At 8:15am on August 6th, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” onto the city of Hiroshima.
After the clouds cleared, 30% of the residents of Hiroshima — 70,000 to 80,000 people — were vaporized in an instant by the initial blast. An additional 70,000 were injured by the resulting explosion. Shockingly, 90% of Hiroshima’s doctors were killed in the blast (most were concentrated in Hiroshima’s downtown sector, which received the most damage in the blast), which severely compromised the medical response in the aftermath of the explosion.
Three days later, on August 9th, 1945, the American government dropped a second atomic bomb onto Japan, this time on the decidedly civilian target of Nagasaki. This time, 39,000 were killed by the initial blast, and another 25,000 were injured by the explosion.
But, the true death toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be higher still. By 1950, it was estimated that over 200,000 had died as a result of medical conditions associated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings — including burns, radiation sickness, and cancer.
What’s scary is that scientists estimate that roughly only 1/10th of each atomic bomb’s power was actually unleashed onto these cities. Consequently, the true devastation that a single atomic bomb could yield onto an urban center is virtually unfathomable. To me, there is no political, historical or military reason that could justify the kind of mass murder we saw on this day 65 years ago.
While I abhor the idea of atomic bombs, I also do not believe that we can stop the progress of science. I believe that the atomic bomb is only one of many weapons of mass destruction our species has, and will continue to, develop — as a natural and inevitable result of scientific pursuit and exploration. But, as we gain this knowledge, we must work tirelessly to ensure the oversight, the ethics and the morality are in place to wield that power responsibly. We have evolved far past the days when we believed our species to be at the whim of an unseen natural force — we now understand that we are masters of our destiny, yet we still are infants when it comes to accepting the consequences of that realization.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki irrevocably changed the culture and history of an entire civilization. Thousands of men, women, and children were literally erased from existence in less than a minute by the decisions of men sitting in a smoke-filled room an ocean away.
Today, we must remember those people who should have lived, so that we will never allow this kind of senseless death and destruction to happen again. There are some lines that should never be crossed.
Book cover to "Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America"
There’s a book coming out late next month that is definitely on my wish-list — Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. Written by Erika Lee and Judy Yung, the book is a comprehensive history of Angel Island, the West Coast immigration station that housed and detained predominantly Chinese immigrants into the country.
While Angel Island was operational (between 1910 and 1949), it received substantial political pressure to reduce the number of incoming Chinese to the States by any means necessary. Consequently, prospective Chinese immigrants were detained for periods of months or even years in holding cells, awaiting approval of their entry. Some were even turned away, despite having spent weeks at sea to journey to the United States.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Angel Island Immigration Station, which minority groups have lobbied to protect as a historical landmark since the 1970’s. Angel Island holds a storied position in the history of Asian Americans, particularly after poems were found engraved in Chinese in the Island’s holding cells. These poems are remarkable because they document the experiences of Chinese immigrants, in their own words.
But Lee and Yung’s book is unique because it uncovers a relatively unknown fact about Angel Island: non-Asians also found their way to this immigration station. In an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lee and Yung talk about their findings:
“For a long time I thought this was just a Chinese American story,” says Lee, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Minnesota who also traces her ancestry back to Angel Island.
“But from time to time in my research, I’d come across a file that dealt with a Japanese picture bride, or an Italian, or someone from a totally different country. That sparked my interest in telling a much larger story.”
And a large story it is. “Angel Island” explains how seven diverse ethnic and national groups ended up at the immigration station, which was segregated by race and gender.
In addition to the story of the Edelstein women (who were detained for only three days), the authors tell of figures such as Kanta Chandra Gupta, an 11-year-old South Asian girl who arrived with her four brothers and sister, or Nadia Shapiro, a young Russian journalist who stepped onto the island seeking sanctuary from Bolshevik revolutionaries.
“Even though Angel Island did process much smaller numbers of immigrants than Ellis Island, its diversity of immigrants really helps us understand a much more realistic, complicated and complex story of immigration,” Lee says.
A couple of months ago, I was chatting with some friends when the topic turned to immigration. One of my friends remarked that Angel Island and Ellis Island were the same, just on two different coasts. That statement is flat-out untrue: whereas immigrants from Europe who were processed at Ellis Island spent hours or days waiting entry, Chinese immigrants faced weeks, months or years of immigrant limbo.
While some might argue that the different processing time was due to the swollen number of immigrants traveling through Ellis Island or due to different administrative policies, the story of the Edelsteins (recounted in the excerpt above) effectively counters that argument. Processed through Angel Island, the Edelsteins — two Jeweish women – were only detained for three days.
To me, Angel Island serves as a silent reminder of an unjust and discriminatory era during America’s history, when Americans did everything in their power to tell Asian immigrants that they were unwelcome. To remember what life was like for the Chinese immigrant in 1943 is to see how far we have (or haven’t) come now. And we should never forget that.
You can pre-order Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America here on Amazon.com.
It’s almost the end of May. Do you know your Asian-American history?
Most of America isn’t aware that May is Asian-American Heritage Month. It’s a celebration that started in 1978, when Congress urged President Jimmy Carter to declare the week of May 4th ”Asian-American Heritage Week.” (That date was chosen to coincide with the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants on May 7, 1843, and with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad — built largely by Chinese laborers — on May 10, 1869.) More recently in 1990, following another vote by Congress, President George H.W. Bush expanded Asian-American Heritage Week to encompass the entire month of May.
Sadly, Asian-American history and heritage is rarely taught in U.S. public schools. So for those of you who’ve missed such curriculum, here’s a list of 10 factoids you may not have known about the history of Asian-Americans in this country:
A cartoon from a nineteenth century newspaper, detailing contemporary anti-Chinese immigrant sentiment
Last month, Arizona passed an insidious piece of legislation known as SB 1070 — a law that makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime and empowers state and city police officers to conduct immigration checks. While supporters of the law claim that it only enforces federal immigration guidelines, the fact of the matter is that SB 1070 is little more than a modern-day Chinese Exclusion Law.
How ironic is it, than, that SB 1070 was passed within days of the start of Asian American Heritage Month?
In 1858, the Chinese Exclusion Law (not to be confused with the later federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) was part of a series of laws passed by California city and state governments that attempted to address the so-called “problem” of Chinese immigrants by making life virtually impossible for a Chinese immigrant. Coupled with laws that taxed foreign miners, prevented the ringing of gongs, and banned the wearing of queues (the fashion of the day for Chinese men) in city prisons, the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1858 made it a state crime for a “Chinese” or “Mongolian” person to land in a California seaport. This is eerily similar to the text of SB 1070, which charges illegal immigrants with a misdemeanor crime of trespassing in the state of Arizona if they are found to be within Arizona state borders.
While SB 1070 (read the full text) does not specifically target Latino men and women (and, indeed, the law may affect any person of colour who appears to be of the same ethnicity as common illegal immigrants — including South Americans and Asians), it is virtually certain that SB 1070 will institutionalize racial profiling particularly against Latinos because of Arizona’s position along the U.S.-Mexico border. In essence, Arizona is attempting to affect federal immigration policies using state laws to name and target undesired immigrants, just as California attempted to do more than a century ago.
Furthermore, the Chinese Exclusion Law made it a state crime (punishable by a hefty fine or imprisonment) for any person transporting an immigrant to a California seaport. Specifically, the text of the Chinese Exclusion Law reads:
…it shall be unlawful for any man, or person, whether captain or commander, or other person, in charge of, or interested in, or employed on board of, or passenger upon, any vessel, or vessels, of any nature or description whatsoever, to knowingly allow, or permit, any Chinese or Mongolian, on and after such time, to enter any of the ports of this state, to land therein, or at any place, or places, within the borders of this state, and any person of persons violating any of the provisions of this act, shall be held and deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be subject to a fine in any sum not less than four hundred dollars, nor more than six hundred dollars, for each and every offence, or imprisonment in the county jail of the county in which the said offence was committed, for a period of not less than three months, nor more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
Again, this passage is virtually indistinguishable from SB 1070, which applies a punishment to any person who knowingly transports an illegal immigrant into the state or anywhere within the state using any form of motor vehicle.
But what hammers the similarity home, for me, is that SB 1070, like the Chinese Exclusion Law, was not passed in isolation by their respective state governments. More than 150 years separate SB 1070 from the Chinese Exclusion Law, yet both the spirit and the practice of targeting immigrants is the same: in response to a perceived influx of immigrants of colour, a flurry of city and state laws are passed in rapid succession to make life unlivable for the targeted immigrant community. In Arizona, SB 1070 is joined by other laws coming down the pipeline that target aspects of the Latino community here in Arizona, specifically HB 2281 which was conceived of to target a publicly-funded Mexican-American high school studies program. Furthermore, state laws requiring employers to use E-Verify to determine the immigration status of prospective employers are, in spirit, the same as California’s law of 1862 — called An Act to Protect Free White Labor against Competition with Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage the Immigration of the Chinese into the State of California– which instituted a fine for any Chinese person who was deemed to be in competition for “White” jobs (i.e., if they were employed as anything other than a rice, tea, sugar or coffee farmer). In both cases, fears that people of colour are taking up all the jobs fuel the passing of laws that limit employment opportunities for the targeted immigrant groups.
While it is tempting to dismiss Arizona as a progressively whacko state, history teaches us that state governments are the testing grounds for federal legislation. The Chinese Exclusion Law codified an anti-Chinese sentiment that, thirty years later, was institutionalized as the more well-known Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Chinese Exclusion Act specifically prevented any Chinese person from being able to naturalize as an American citizen, and it is widely criticized as being the most Draconian immigration law in American history. Furthermore, it introduced a new form of legislative codespeak with which to target Chinese people — as aliens ineligible for citizenship. Following the CEA of 1882, subsequent local and state laws could be pased affecting aliens ineligible for citizenship that would target the local Chinese community without ever having to refer to race or ethnicity.
Folks who are better scholars of American immigration law than I have compared SB 1070 to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, but I think the parallel is better drawn to California’s Chinese Exclusion Law of 1858. In both cases, the state oversteps its jurisdiction and attempts — and arguably succeeds — in influencing federal immigration statutes by passing Orwellian state laws that criminalize immigration into its borders. And, in both cases, we see these laws enacted during a time of fervent anti-minority anger (than against Chinese, now against Latinos) and as part of a series of state and local laws targeting specific minority groups.
The only difference here is that whereas the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1858 paved the way for the devastating Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (which stayed in effect for 60 years until it was repealed in 1943 by the Magnuson Act which finally allowed people of Chinese descent to naturalize as American citizens), there is still time to interrupt the sentiments that allowed SB 1070 to pass from making it to the halls of the federal legislature.
To that end, Asian Americans cannot remain quiet about SB 1070. Our community has lived the consequences of SB 1070, and the nearly 100 years of institutionalized racism that a law like SB 1070 introduces against a minority people. This is the very month when we are supposed to remember our history — so let us do just that: we cannot allow America to forget the lessons that our history teaches.
According to one of the comments, the translation is:
The life here is pretty bad. The work environment is inadequate, and there are no benefits. But don’t worry. Although everyday about 10 people get hurt, I’m very careful.
I’ve opened a small shop, and business is slow. Even though I don’t understand English well, I can still somewhat understand what the white people are saying.
Hopefully one day I’ll make something of myself. I will work hard and also take care of myself.
How are you guys doing?
Thinking of you guys, hopefully we can meet again.
It’s not too often that I get to attend an Asian American-related event in Tucson. Yesterday, I got the opportunity to watch a screening of the documentary Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority and attend a Q&A with filmmaker Kimberlee Bassford, afterwards. The screening was sponsored by several local feminist progresive groups, and proceeds from the event went towards funding female progressive candidates in the next election cycle.
As you can imagine, Patsy Mink is one of my all-time heroes. Mink was the first woman of colour (let alone the first Asian American woman) to be elected to the House of Representatives, and is among the feminist movement’s most influential figures for being the principal author of Title IX, which established equality for women in academics and sports. Quite simply, Title IX states:
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…
Ahead of the Majority is a thorough documentary that follows Mink’s rise through the political ranks in Hawai’i to her election as congresswoman when she lobbied to pass Title IX, and finally to the end of her life in 2002.
From the documentary, I learned quite a bit about Mink’s legacy that I didn’t previously know. For example, I had no idea Mink ran for president in Oregon on an anti-Vietnam War platform in 1972. Though she only garnered 2% of the vote in the Oregon primary (her candidacy was a political anti-war statement), Mink is the first Asian-American to run for president of the United States of America.
I was also struck by how often racism and sexism placed obstacles in front of Mink, and how she powered through each and every challenge without ever appearing defeated or weakened. When Hawai’i first achieved statehood in 1959, Mink and fellow politico Daniel Inouye ran for House of Representatives and Senate respectively. The documentary noted how Mink and Inouye initially hoped to both be elected and to work together in Washington D.C .to represent Hawai’i. However, Democratic party leaders in Hawai’i pressured Inouye to drop out of the Senate race a month before the election and challenge Mink for Congressman. Already a popular political figure in Hawai’i, Inouye ran essentially on the platform that voters should choose a man, not a woman, as their representative — and Mink lost the seat overwhelmingly.
Mink ran again in 1965 and was finally elected to the House of Representatives, where she ultimately served 6 terms and worked tirelessly to author and pass Title IX. Mink was an outspoken advocate for women, children, and the poor, and the documentary includes many clips of Mink speaking passionately on these issues in interviews and on the floor of the House.
In 1976, after serving as a Congressman for 11 years, Mink gave up her seat to run for Senate. Again, her opponent, Spark Matsunaga, launched character attacks against Mink causing her to eventually lose the race. Returning to Honolulu, Mink was elected to City Council. After failed races for Mayor and Governor of Hawai’i, Mink again ran for her House of Representatives seat in 1990, winning on a platform of experience and dedication. She won in a landslide victory, and returned to Washington where she advocated tirelessly on behalf of poor people and women until her death in 2002.
Ahead of the Majority is eye-opening and well-researched; no easy task for filmmaker Kimberlee Bassford considering no full-length biography of Patsy Mink has ever been written. And it is this one simple fact that is perhaps most striking about Ahead of the Majority. After viewing this film, I couln’t help but wonder: Why is it that we remember Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Shirley Chisholm, and feminist theorists like Gloria Steinam and Andrea Dworkin, but most people are unaware of Patsy Mink and her legacy? Why has her story been ignored for so long by biographers, filmmakers, and modern historians?
As an Asian American and as a feminist, Patsy Mink is the quintessential role model. As alluded to by Ahead of the Majority’s tagline, Mink would not be defeated by oppression and discrimination: rather, she changed the rules. The documentary notes that in the less than fifty years since the passage of Title IX, the number of higher education degrees awarded to women went from roughly 7% to almost 50%. It is amazing to realize that a woman like Mink, who did so much to forward the cause of women’s rights, was an Asian American and a feminist — her lasting legacy to the Asian American community is that we, too, can aspire to be more than society would limit us to be. We can and should be fighters for the equality that all people (regardless of gender, class, colour or creed) are deserving of. We, too, are part of America.
Unfortunately, even after her death, inklings of the racism and discrimination that Mink faced during her political career remain apparent. Although Mink was a strong feminist figure, she faced endless sexism and racism throughout her life. The film opens with a clip from the Mike Douglas show, where Patsy Mink, then a sitting U.S. Congressman, is asked to dance the hula with a girl clad in a Hawai’ian grass skirt — no male sitting Congressman would be expected to do something so kitschy and degrading, both then and now. The documentary also includes a newspaper headline reporting Mink’s election to the House of Representatives; it reads: “Pert and Pretty Patsy Mink Also Has A Lot of Serious Ideas” — diminishing her status as a newly-elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives to little more than a novelty. And, time and again throughout Mink’s life, the Democratic Party of Hawai’i preferentially awarded opportunities to “haoles” despite the dedication that Asian American politicians like Mink (and Inouye) showed to the party.
And while it would be nice to hope that the kind of racism and sexism that Mink faced in her lifetime had decreased, I was appalled by some of the general ignorance I witnessed during the event’s Q&A. As if unable to grasp the fact that Mink was a Japanese American woman, some in yesterday’s audience seemed unable to consider Mink anything but Japanese. With no mention made of Mink’s religion in any part of the film, audience members were convinced that Mink — based purely on her Japanese ancestry — must be a devout Buddhist (because all Japanese people are Buddhist, right?). One audience member asked Bassford whether, in her research, she uncovered evidence that Mink was Buddhist. Bassford replied, clear as day, that while Mink’s grandparents were Buddhist, Mink was not devoutly religious. However, Bassford added, Mink was likely Christian, not Buddhist.
Not five minutes later, a second person raised their hand and asked whether, outside of the public burial and memorial service held for Mink after her death, there was a private, Buddhist ceremony.
Cue eyeroll.
It was this generally awkward (mis)treatment of Mink’s racial identity that I encountered while attending the event. Event organizers touted the film entirely from a feminist perspective and only to Tucson’s feminist community, practically ignoring her place in Asian American history. Consequently, outside of myself and one or two others, there were no Asian/Asian Americans to attend yesterday’s screening of Ahead of the Majority. When Electroman questioned event organizers as to why there didn’t seem to be any representatives of Tucson’s Asian American community participating in the event, he was told that organizers didn’t know where to find politicizedAsian Americans in this town. While the documentary fairly addressed Mink’s relationship with her racial identity, it felt as if event organizers weren’t sure how to honour Patsy Mink as not just a feminist figure, but as a feminist of colour.
That being said, the conflict between feminism and racial activism reared its head even in Mink’s life. One audience member asked during the Q&A whether Bassford intended to make such a starry-eyed tribute to Mink’s career, or whether she had deliberately excluded criticisms of Mink. Bassford said that, in general, it was hard to find things to criticize about Mink; yet, despite my general hero worship of Mink, I think she can be fairly criticized on her lack of interest in helping to elevate other Asian Americans to elected office, or in championing Asian American issues. Unlike her colleagues, including Senator Daniel Inouye (who comes out somewhat like a villain in the documentary), Mink focused on women’s issues and poverty during her political career, and did little to encourage other Asian Americans to become more politically educated. Since Patsy Mink’s time as a Congressman, the number of women in elected positions has increased dramatically, yet there still remain only a handful of Asian Americans in higher office. As Bassford put it when I asked her about Mink’s lack of involvement in Asian American politics, she replied that while Mink is considered a role model for Asian Americans, she is not considered one of our political leaders.
Bassford hits on an important point: many of the Asian American community’s political leaders are men (Councilman and current candidate for NYC comptroller John C. Liu, Senator Daniel Inouye, and Senator Daniel Akaka to name just a few). Why was it that Patsy Mink, a woman who faced so much racism in her life, and who clearly considered herself an Asian American, did not include the Asian American community as one of her political priorities? And does this abject underrepresentation of Asian American women amongst the leadership roles of our community result in a lack of attention given to Asian American feminist concerns?
A woman came up to me after the event and asked me about my question regarding Patsy Mink and the Asian American community. I suggested that many feminists of colour often face sexism within their racial communities (and racism within the feminist community) that often leads to ostracization. Despite Professor Gary Okihiro’s appropriation of the phrase “when and where I enter” to describe the critical importance of eliminating sexism within the Asian American community to achieve equality for all Asian Americans, in our community as well as in other communities of colour, male leaders often emphasize an expectation that women should act in a supporting role to elevate male community leaders, rather than to seek prominence or equality themselves. Feminist issues are frequently seen as distractions from the struggle for racial equality, and too often, sexist attacks are lobbed against empowered feminists of colour from both within and outside the community when those feminists speak out against intraracial sexism.
But that should not be the status quo. After watching Ahead of the Majority and witnessing the passion with which Mink challenged injustice, I wish some of her incredible energy had been used to specifically help the Asian American community. Compared to the emphasis Mink placed on sexism and women’s rights, Mink rarely spoke about the racism she encountered as an Asian American. And while Mink’s contribution towards women’s rights in this country cannot be denied, the Asian American community needs Asian American political leaderswho are willing to break the silence regarding Asian American issues of all kinds, including gender issues.
To that end, Patsy Mink is an amazing pioneer. She is an example to the Asian American community that we can (and should) make a difference. But Mink can certainly be criticized for the lack of attention she paid to Asian American issues, and I hope that from her life, we can remember that while Mink’s accomplishments cannot be overstated, there is much more work still left to be done. I hope that we can learn to be inclusive of feminist concerns within the Asian American community, and reduce the mistrust that seems to exist between Asian American race activists and Asian American feminists.
And above all, I hope that we can take inspiration from Patsy Mink’s story to encourage more young Asian Americans to enter into politics — so that they, too, can change the rules for the better.
The New York Times had an excellent article on the “paper son” phenomenon that hugely impacted Chinese American immigration into this country. Here’s an excerpt:
“When we think about illegal immigration, we think about Mexican immigrants, whereas in fact illegal immigration cuts across all immigrant groups,” said Erika Lee, the author of “At America’s Gate: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943.” The book traces how today’s national apparatus of immigration restriction was created and shaped by efforts to keep out Chinese workers and to counter the tactics they developed to overcome the barriers.
The current parallels are striking, said Professor Lee, who teaches history at the University of Minnesota. And though some descendants of paper sons do not make the connection, many others have become immigrant rights advocates in law, politics or museums like this one, which hopes to draw a national audience to its new Chinatown space, designed by Maya Lin.
“In the Chinese-American community, it has only been very recently that these types of histories have been made public,” Professor Lee said. “Even my own grandparents who came in as paper sons were very, very reluctant to talk about this.”
[...]
“To get into the U.S. under the laws back then, I had to pretend to be another person,” Mr. Hom wrote. His father had bought him immigration papers that included 32 pages of information he was to memorize in preparation for hours of interrogation at Ellis Island.
Such cheat sheets were part of an elaborate, self-perpetuating cycle of enforcement and evasion, historians say. The authorities kept ratcheting up their scrutiny and requirements for documents, feeding a lucrative network of fraud and official corruption as immigrants tried to show they were either merchants or native-born citizens, groups exempt from the exclusion laws.
