Asian American movement

The Asian American movement (AAM) is a sociopolitical movement active among Asian Americans, first peaking from the 1970s to the 1980s. During that period, Asian Americans engaged in anti-imperialist activism, organized for racial justice for Asians, and directly opposed what many also viewed as an unjust Vietnam War.[1] The American Asian Movement (AAM) differs from previous Asian American activism due to its emphasis on Pan-Asianism and its solidarity with U.S. and international Third World movements such as the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF).

Asian-American loggers in Clallam Bay, Washington, c. 1919.

Activist Daryl Joji Maeda states that, "Its founding principle of coalition politics emphasizes solidarity among Asians of all ethnicities, multiracial solidarity among Asian Americans, as well as transnational solidarity with peoples around the globe impacted by U.S. militarism".[2]

The movement was initially student-based, emerging simultaneously on various college campuses and urban communities. The AAM was largely concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York City but even extended as far as Honolulu, a city where Asian Americans make up a majority. The movement created community service programs, art, poetry, music, and other creative works; offered a new sense of self-determination; raised the political and racial consciousness of Asian Americans.[3]

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic where there have been a rise of anti-Asian racism and violence faced by most Americans of Asian descent, especially against the elderly, as well as a Proposition 16 vote in California for a proposal to reintroduce racial quotas, which would have severely affected Asian Americans, have led to calls among Asian American activists and celebrities for a new Asian American movement to advocate and counter racial discrimination and violence which has largely gone overlooked in the United States.[4][5][6][7][8]

Origins

Prior to the 1960s, Americans of Asian descent found themselves living and experiencing under the specter of the Yellow Peril in the United States for over a century. During this period, in time the racist ideology rooted in colonialism lead to the wide spread belief in the U.S. that Asians immigrants posed a threat to western civilization, this belief resulted in the mistreatment and abuse of Asian people across generations. Historical incidents like the Chinese massacre of 1871, Rock Springs massacre, the Chinese exclusion Act, Japanese internment camps and the Korean and Vietnam War added to the list of grievances many Asian Americans had with U.S society in the years leading up to the AAM.[9]

In the years that preceded the AAM Asian Americans were regularly lumped together solely for the purposes of exclusion in America despite having many different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The majority of U.S. society viewed Asian Americans as "perpetual foreigners".[9]

Asian-American groups started to merge as second- and third-generation Asian-American activists moved up in the leadership hierarchy of their interest groups. Many of these new leaders associated with each other growing up in schools and social groups and chose to focus on their collective identities as Asian-Americans rather than their national heritage. [10]

Though activism against this discrimination was a part of Asian culture before the 1960s it was limited in scope and lacking a wide base of support.[9] Class-based politics aimed to gain better wages and working conditions; homeland politics attempted to bolster the international standings of their nations of origins or free them from colonial rule; assimilationist politics attempted to demonstrate that Asians were worthy of the rights and privileges of citizenship.[2] In the early to mid-1960's, a number of individual Asian Americans activists such as Yuri Kochiyama participated individually in the Free Speech Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and anti-Vietnam War movement. These instances of social and political activism did not directly address issues facing all Asian Americans at the time. Asian immigrants were largely divided in America, before the 60's there was very little solidarity between the various Asian immigrant communities. These disparate groups dealt largely with issues concerning their own ethnic communities and conclaves focusing the majority of their efforts on survival in their exclusionary environment.[9] As a result of these factors pre-60's era activism never rose to the level of a movement.

The Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA)

Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee founded the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) in May 1968 at UC Berkeley. Ichoika coined the term "Asian American" for it during its founding.[11][12] Because Asian Americans had been called Orientals before 1968, the formation of the AAPA challenged the use of the pejorative term. According to Karen Ishizuka, the label "Asian American" was "an oppositional political identity imbued with self-definition and empowerment, signaling a new way of thinking.”[13] Unlike prior activism the AAM and by extension organizations like the AAPA embraced a pan-Asian focus within their organization accepting members from Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino communities regardless of whether they were born in America or immigrants.[2] The promotion of a pan Asian ideology brought together the formerly separated groups within Asian American communities to combat a common racial oppression experienced in the nation.

They drew upon influences from the Black Power and antiwar movements, activists within the Asian American movement declared solidarity with other races of people in the United States and abroad. Activists like Richard Aoki for example, served as a Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party prior to helping to form AAPA. Significantly, global decolonization and Black Power helped create the political conditions needed to link pan-Asianism to Third World internationalism.[2][9] Segments of the movement struggled for community control of education, provided social services and defended affordable housing in Asian ghettos, organized exploited workers, protested against U.S. imperialism, and built new multi-ethnic cultural institutions.[2] AAPA dissolved in 1969, after the conclusion of the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strikes.

At the AAPA Rally on July 28, 1968, Richard Aoki gave a speech that summarized the organization's ideology:

We Asian-Americans believe that American society has been, and still is, fundamentally a racist society, and that historically we have accommodated ourselves to this society in order to survive...

We Asian-Americans support all non-white liberation movements and believe that all minorities, in order to be truly liberated, must have complete control over the political, economic, and social institutions within their respective communities.

We Asian Americans oppose the imperialist policies being pursued by the American government...[14]

Ichioka and Gee included the words "political" and "alliance" in their group's name to emphasize its pan-Asian focus, its anti-imperialist stance, and its membership in the Third World Liberation Front.[15][16]

Asian Americans for Action (AAA)

The most significant organization which shows the relevance between the Asian American movement and the Black power movement is Asian Americans for Action (AAA). The organization was founded in 1969 on the East Coast by two longtime-leftist Nisei women, Kazu Iijima and Minn Matsuda. This organization was highly influenced by Black Power Movement and the anti war movement, even much more than the AAPA. Yuri Kochiyama was also one of the organization's members. [2]

Yellow Power

Yellow Power rose in the late 1970s and 1980s. This movement was inspired by the Black Power movement. It taught that economic power would follow political representation. Those who were a part of the Yellow Power movement voted for candidates that they believe represented their issues.

Yellow Power was not as successful as other "Power" movements. This is largely because individuals of different Asian backgrounds viewed themselves as separate cultural groups with unique and distinct backgrounds.[17]

American Citizens for Justice (ACJ)

In 1982, Vincent Chin was gruesomely murdered in an unprovoked attack. His killers mistook his Chinese heritage for Japanese, whom they blamed for a recent downturn in the automobile industry. He was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Despite their conviction and evidence, the killers never saw prison time and were only given light sentences.[10] His killers, Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, was only fined $3000 and given 3 years probation.[18]

In the mid-1980's people began to discover that the University of California, Berkeley was setting racial quotas for the amount of Asians that could be admitted to the schools. The American Citizens for Justice formed as a result of these events in order to prevent and rectify violence against Asian-Americans.[10]

In 1989, Patrick Edward Purdy, a drifter and former resident of Stockton, California, went to a school playground and opened fire on Cleveland Elementary School students who were mainly of southeast Asian descent. Within minutes he fired dozens of rounds although reports ranged. He was armed with two pistols and AK-47 with bayonet killing five students and shooting at least 37 others. After the shooting spree, Purdy killed himself.[19]

Revival of the Asian American movement
Anti-racism poster on the storefront window of the Mei Lai Wah restaurant in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood, pictured in October 2020

COVID-19 racism
See also: List of incidents of xenophobia and racism related to the COVID-19 pandemic § North America, and Social stigma associated with COVID-19

In 2020, increased attacks, both physically and verbally, have occurred against Asian-Americans as a result of COVID-19 paranoia and racism.[20]

On 10 March 2020, a Korean woman in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, was confronted on the street by somebody yelling "Where is your corona mask, you Asian bitch?" before punching the woman, dislocating her jaw.[21] Later in the week, in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, an Asian man walking with his 10-year-old son was harassed by a person yelling, "Where the fuck is your mask? You fucking Chinese" before being hit over the head.[22] Another incident occurred on 16 March where a woman in Midtown Manhattan was spat upon, and had her hair pulled out by a woman who blamed her for coronavirus.[23]

These are just a few of the many cases of Asian Americans, particularly women or the elderly, who have been relentlessly attacked or harassed for their race in the midst of the pandemic. This has led to calls for the revival of a "neo-Asian American movement" to address the rising racially motivated violence against Americans of Asian descent.[20][24]

Since mid-March that same year, "STOP AAPI HATE", an incident-reporting center founded by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, has received more than 2,500 reports of pandemic-fueled harassment or violence in 45 states and Washington, D.C. Although 38% of the hate incidents took place at businesses, STOP AAPI HATE also reported that discrimination affects Asian people of all ages: one in seven of those reporting were young people under 20 years old (14%) and elderly individuals made up 7.5% of the respondents. The national report shows verbal harassment and name-calling made up over 70% of the incidents, which affected women 2.4 times more than men.[8][6][25]

Physical attacks against elderly Asians

Notwithstanding the anti-Asian hysteria amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a sharp statistical rise in random, unprovoked attacks against elderly Asians throughout North America. In Oakland's Chinatown, its President of the Chamber of Commerce, Carl Chan, reported that they are on high alert after more than 20 robberies were reported only within a span of two weeks. Women and seniors were often targeted, and Chan stated that "What you're seeing is only a fraction of what has happened in Chinatown," and that "Many are not willing to, they feel that if they report it nothing happens."[26]

On the same day of Chan's report on 1 February 2021, an 84-year-old Thai man Vicha Ratanapakdee died after he was randomly forcefully pushed to the ground by 19-year-old Antoine Watson of Daly City who ran across the street in San Francisco's Anza Vista neighborhood.[27] While Watson's motivation is currently unclear, the family of the man killed believes that the attack was racially motivated as he was an Asian senior citizen and therefore less likely to fight back.[28]

On February 5, actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu has offered a $25,000 reward for information of a 91-year-old man who was randomly assaulted also in Oakland's Chinatown. The official reward was subsequently raised to $30,000 with the addition of the city's Metropolitan Bank donation. Kim stated that "The number of hate crimes against Asian Americans continues to skyrocket, despite our repeated pleas for help. The crimes are too often ignored and even excused."[29]

Key figures of the Asian American movement

Key organizations

See also

References
  1. "The Forgotten History of America's Radical Asian Activists". Splinter. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  2. Maeda, Daryl Joji (2016-06-09). "The Asian American Movement". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.21. ISBN 9780199329175.
  3. J., Maeda, Daryl (2012). Rethinking the Asian American movement. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415800815. OCLC 641536912.
  4. "Californians for Equal Rights Coalition". Our Coalition. Californians for Equal Rights. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  5. "NO on Prop 16 Campaign Announces Record Small-Dollar Donors - No on Proposition 16". No on Proposition 16 - Californians for Equal Rights. 2020-10-02. Retrieved 2020-10-03.
  6. Kambhampaty, Anna Purna; Haruka, Sakaguchi (25 June 2020). "'I Will Not Stand Silent.' 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality". time.com. Time. Retrieved 24 December 2020. Today, as the U.S. struggles to combat a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 120,000 Americans and put millions out of work, President Donald Trump, who has referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and more recently the “kung flu,” has helped normalize anti-Asian xenophobia, stoking public hysteria and racist attacks. And now, as in the past, it’s not just Chinese Americans receiving the hatred. Racist aggressors don’t distinguish between different ethnic subgroups—anyone who is Asian or perceived to be Asian at all can be a victim. Even wearing a face mask, an act associated with Asians before it was recommended in the U.S., could be enough to provoke an attack.
  7. Patrick, Alvin (8 October 2020). "How Asian Americans are fighting bias and racism in 2020". cbsnews.com. CBS News. Retrieved 26 December 2020. Nevada community activist Jaewon Jung said, "I am scared for the future of the country. I think one of the biggest issues right now is that people are so divided. One thing I'm going to look for in a candidate is to unite all of the groups together.
  8. "Combatting racism against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders". en.unesco.org. UNESCO. 10 November 2020. Retrieved 26 December 2020. I start to notice a lot more people look at you differently…the narrowing of the eyes as they look at you… it’s just very intimidating to be an Asian American in this country amidst COVID pandemic. There is the stereotype that all Asians look the same and so people look at you say, ‘Oh, you must be Chinese, you must have brought the virus here.
  9. 1948-, Liu, Michael (2008). The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism : Community, Vision, and Power. Geron, Kim, 1951-, Lai, Tracy A. M., 1951-. Lanham, Maryland. ISBN 978-0739127193. OCLC 231680155.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  10. Helweg, Arthur W. "Asian American Movement." Racial & Ethnic Relations in America, edited by Kibibi Mack-Shelton and Michael Shally-Jensen, Salem, 2017. Salem Online, https://online-salempress-com.libwin2k.glendale.edu
  11. "U.S. History in Context – Document". ic.galegroup.com. Retrieved 2016-11-30.
  12. Daryl (2012). Rethinking the Asian American Movement. New York: Routledge. pp. 9–13, 18, 26, 29, 32–35, 42–48, 80, 108, 116–117, 139. ISBN 978-0-415-80081-5
  13. Karen L. Ishizuka (15 March 2016). Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties. Verso Books. pp. 70–. ISBN 978-1-78168-864-9.
  14. "AAPA Rally July 28, 1968". Asian American Movement 1968. January 15, 2008. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
  15. "Asian American Political Alliance 1968". aam1968.blogspot.com. January 15, 2008. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
  16. "SF State College Strike: Asian American Political Alliance". San Francisco State University. October 6, 2009. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
  17. Ward, Annita Marie. "Yellow Power." Racial & Ethnic Relations in America, edited by Kibibi Mack-Shelton and Michael Shally-Jensen, Salem, 2017. Salem Online, https://online-salempress-com.libwin2k.glendale.edu
  18. American Citizens for Justice Records, 1983-2004
  19. Schoolyard gunman called a troubled drifter, The Deseret News (January 18, 1989)
  20. Yan, Holly (21 February 2020). "What's Spreading Faster than Coronavirus in the US? Racist Assaults and Ignorant Attacks against Asians". cnn.com. CNN. Retrieved 24 December 2020. Rampant ignorance and misinformation about the novel coronavirus, experts say, has led to racist and xenophobic attacks against fellow Americans or anyone in the US who looks East or Southeast Asian.
  21. "'Where's your (expletive) mask?': Asian woman attacked in Manhattan hate crime". ABC7 New York. 11 March 2020. Archived from the original on 13 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2020.
  22. "Cops bust suspect accused of coronavirus-related hate crime on Asian man". New York Post. 14 March 2020. Archived from the original on 15 March 2020. Retrieved 17 March 2020.
  23. "Asian woman assaulted in Manhattan, blamed for coronavirus". New York Post. 17 March 2020. Archived from the original on 19 March 2020. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  24. "Covid-19 Fueling Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia Worldwide". hrw.org. Human Rights Watch. 12 May 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Asians and people of Asian descent have been targets of derogatory language in media reports and statements by politicians as well as on social media platforms, where hate speech related to Covid-19 also appears to have spread extensively. US President Donald Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s use of “Wuhan virus” may have encouraged the use of hate speech in the United States. Although by late March Trump stepped back from using the term and issued a tweet in support of “our Asian-American community,” he has not directed any specific governmental response toward protecting Asians and people of Asian descent.
  25. Strochlic, Nina (2 September 2020). "America's long history of scapegoating its Asian citizens". nationalgeographic.com. National Geographic. Retrieved 22 December 2020. In the months since the coronavirus pandemic began, thousands of Asians in the U.S. have become targets of harassment and assault. The racist incidents began as the first cases of coronavirus spread across China last December and disinformation reigned. As infections appeared in the U.S., President Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus" and "Chinese flu," and pushed a disproved theory that it had originated in a Chinese lab. By April an IPSOS poll found that three in 10 Americans blamed China or Chinese people for the virus.
  26. Lim, Dion (1 February 2021). "Oakland's Chinatown on edge after more than 20 reported robberies, Chamber of Commerce president says". abc7news.com. ABC News. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  27. Lim, Dion (1 February 2021). "84-year-old killed after horrific daytime attack caught on video in San Francisco". abc7news.com. ABC News. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  28. Sernoffsky, Evan (2 February 2021). "Family of 84-year-old killed in SF believe attack was racially motivated". ktvu.com. KTVU. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  29. Bisacky, Taylor (5 February 2021). "Actors Daniel Dae Kim, Daniel Wu offer reward to find suspect who assaulted elderly man in Oakland". kron4.com. KRON-TV. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
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