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| AGW Welcome | The Witness Magazine |
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Asian Americans: Where Do We Belong?By T. James Kodera
“Where are you from?” “No, where do you really come from?” “My, where did you learn to speak English so well?” “Where is the best Chinese restaurant around here?” “Are you Chinese or Japanese?” Are you a computer engineer?” “Can you teach me karate ?” These questions are asked more often than many Asian Americans wish to remember. The power of stereotypes is overbearing. While no stereotype is ever completely true, none is without some truth, historically or culturally. Who are “Asian Americans”? Where do they live? “Asian American” is an American invention. In that sense, there are no “Asian Americans” in Asia. They live only in America – when “America” is meant chauvinistically to refer to the United States of America. And yet, many Americans think of Asian Americans of being more Asian than American. To some, Asian Americans are “foreigners” and not “real Americans.” "Asian and Pacific Islander American" refers to American citizens whose ancestry represent more than a half of the global human race, while some of the rest of humanity, especially people of Western European heritage, are referred to by much finer and better informed distinctions. “Asian American” is a term artificially constructed by the federal government for use in the 1970's U.S. Census, in order to gauge a small but emerging segment of the U.S. population after the 1965 Immigration Act. “Asian Americans” were grouped together with “Pacific Islander Americans,” as if they shared something in common. “Asian American,” too, is a category that presupposed, wrongly, that these peoples were somehow alike. “Asian and Pacific Islander American” refers to American citizens whose ancestry represent more than a half of the global human race, while some of the rest of the human race, especially people of Western European heritage, are referred to by much finer and better informed distinctions. For centuries, the Chinese and the Indians alone have comprised one-half of the global human population. This sweeping generalization stems from our wrong, if not dangerous, habitual thinking that “they” are more or less the same, while “we” represent a rich diversity of heritage. Asian Americans, therefore, have been linked to those Asians “out there,” who all look alike, think alike and behave alike.
The “Model Minority”One common stereotype of Asian Americans is that they are a “model minority.” They are the ones who do well in school and who have well-paying jobs. Their children are well behaved and multi-talented, especially in music, math and science. While the last U.S. Census indicated that “Asian and Pacific Islander Americans” comprised 4.2 % of the total U.S. population, the 48% increase since the 1990 Census makes Asian Americans the fastest growing segment of the population. Asian Americans have also come to represent the largest “minority” student population in so many of the most selective colleges and universities in the United States, even if none of these elite schools is headed by an Asian American. The term “model minority” was first used in 1960 by sociologist William Peterson in his article in the New York Times Magazine (“Success Story: Japanese American Style,” Jan. 6, 1960). He regarded Japanese Americans as being family oriented and hard working, and therefore the most unlikely to become another “problem minority” in America. Since then, the “model minority” label has been applied to most, if not all, Americans of Asian heritage. It, however, belies the fact that many Asian Americans are far from what they are supposed to be. While the wealthiest ethnic group in the U.S. is Asian American – namely Indian Americans, who are heavily represented in the medical and high tech industries – the poorest is also Asian American, namely Cambodian and Hmong Americans, most of whom still languish at the bottom of the American society. They are also the victims of the highest rate of domestic violence. Moreover, the “model minority” stereotype pits one minority group against another, as if to reprimand non-Asian American minority groups by saying, “Why can't you be like these Asian Americans?” The “model minority” praises a small number of Asian Americans for having “succeeded,” while it blames and ignores those who have not “made it.” It may also be mentioned that the criteria used to praise some Asian Americans are the values of Euro Americans. Praiseworthy Asian Americans are those who have become like whites, or almost like whites, even at the expense of losing their Asian values. It should never go unnoticed that model Asian Americans are the quiet, docile Americans, those who never complain, as if they had no legitimate grievances. Even before the federal government's use of “Asian American” for the 1970 Census, the term “Asian American” had been coined by college students in the late 1960's in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Civil Rights Movement no doubt provided an impetus for activist students. They had come to view their ethnic heritage no longer as a source of marginalization, embarrassment and shame, but rather of pride and self-empowerment. The tragic turn of evens in the Vietnam War (which Vietnamese called the “American War”) exposed, perhaps for the first time in the history of American wars, the futility of American militarism and the arrogance of white racism. The self-immolation of a venerable Vietnamese Buddhist monk on the street of Saigon (today's Ho Chi Minh City) in June 1963 (1) confirmed for many Americans the impression, formed by the suicide mission by the Kamikaze pilots of Japan, that Asians somehow did not regard life as much as “we Americans do.” And yet, for some, especially college students, the Vietnamese's monk's action was a noble self-sacrifice, an act of defiance against the corrupt U.S.-backed regime in South Vietnam. How many of us know that, until 1952, Asians in the United States were ineligible for naturalization as U.S. citizens? Although Asians started crossing the Pacific in significant numbers in the mid-19th century, about the same time as the Italians, the Irish and the Poles, Asians were considered only migrant laborers, and not immigrants. Racism and CitizenshipHow many of us know that, until 1952, Asians in the United States were ineligible for naturalization as U.S. citizens? Although Asians started crossing the Pacific in significant numbers in the mid-19th century, about the same time as the Italians, the Irish and the Poles, Asians were considered only migrant laborers, and not immigrants. The “Nationality Act” of 1790 had limited naturalization only to “free white persons.” Leland Stanford and other railroad tycoons eagerly sought hard working, and cheap, Chinese laborers for the construction of the cross continental railroads. (2) It was said that a “Chinaman” died for every mile of the railroad construction from the rugged Sierra Mountains through the vast plains of the Midwest to the East Coast. The greatest engineering feat of the 19th century America would not have been possible without the Chinese. And yet, when Stanford went to the nation's capital as the newly elected U.S. Senator from California, he worked hard to disallow the Chinese from the United States. He described the Chinese as “rat eaters.” His effort led in 1882 to the passage of the “Chinese Exclusion Act.” The Chinese thus became the fourth category of people barred from the United States, after the felons, the insane and the prostitutes. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act was meant originally to be in effect for ten years, the Geary Act of 1892 not only renewed it for another ten years but it required that all Chinese be “registered,” to be watched. Chinese were given the right to naturalization in 1943, though in small numbers, when the U.S. government in a war against Japan had come to regard the Chinese as victims of Japan's military and colonial rule in China. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 remained intact for other Asians until the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 that allowed upwards of 3,000 Asians to be naturalized U.S. citizens. (3) There were, of course, American citizens of Asian ancestry before the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, if they were born on the American soil. Most of them were children born of Asian laborers already in the U.S. and the “picture brides,” often from the same province as the men. [ “ Picture bride” was a term in common use among the Japanese and the Koreans. In 1910, the first year of Japan's colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula, the first band of “picture brides” from Japan and Korea arrived in California.] While young able-bodied men were sought for their labor on the plantations of Hawaii and the railroads and the mines of the mainland, women were not. Women were, in fact, barred entry to the United States to prevent Asian children born on the U.S. soil, unless they were prostitutes. In the late 19 th century, over two-thirds of the Chinese women in San Francisco were in prostitution. [In 1870, of the 3,535 Chinese women in California, 2,157 had their occupations listed as “prostitute.”] The anti-miscegenation law that had had been introduced first in Maryland in 1661, prohibiting marriage between whites and blacks, was the law in most states at the beginning of the 19 th century. In California, the law was expanded in 1880 to include the Chinese. (4) Chinese men, who could ill afford to send for a “picture bride,” continued to labor long and hard in the hope that they would eventually return prosperous to their families, eagerly awaiting the return of their sons and husbands from the “Gold Mountain,” as the Chinese called the United States. But the labor conditions became progressively restrictive. For example, the Alien Land Law, passed by the State of California in 1913, prohibited “aliens ineligible to citizenship,” a euphemism for all Asians, from purchasing or leasing land for longer than three years. Asians were wanted as long as they remained in servitude, whose livelihood and lives were at the expense of white employers. Doors to self-sufficiency were closed. Anti-Asian immigration and labor laws were particularly stringent in California. It is well to remember that the paranoia for, prejudice against and discrimination of Asians spread from California to other states, sometimes reaching the law makers of the federal government. In the late 19 th and the early 20 th centuries, over 600 anti-Asian legislations were passed, limiting or denying Asians' access to housing, education, intermarriage, employment and land ownership (Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities . Philadelphia, Temple Univ. Press, 1992, p. 135). The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is but an example. “Where do you really come from?” is a question that presupposes that Asian Americans, even if they are born and bred in the heartland of America, are presumably foreigners, temporarily residing in the United States. A frequent follow-up question, therefore, is: “So, when are you going home?” The Effects of WarWar is another discernible theme in Asian American history. War pits “us” against “them,” the “enemy,” not only politically but ideologically, socially and culturally. This is the clue for the stereotype about Asian Americans as more Asian than American, and therefore forever foreign. “Where do you really come from?” is a question that presupposes that Asian Americans, even if they are born and bred in the heartland of America, are presumably foreigners, temporarily residing in the United States. A frequent follow-up question, therefore, is: “So, when are you going home?” Most of the wars that the United States have fought since the World War I have been against people of non-European background, in short “people of color”: the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese; the Cubans, the Nicaraguans; the Iranians and the Iraqis. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was repealed during America's war against Japan. American war veterans brought home Japanese and Korean brides during the 1940's and the 50's. The new Immigration Act of 1965, a landmark decision for Asian Americans, removed “national origins” as the basis for U.S. immigration policy followed immediately the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations. The 1965 Immigration Act also allowed refugees to immigrate to the United States. A good majority of today's Asian Americans were the direct beneficiaries of the 1965 Immigration Act, for which President John F. Kennedy provided the vision and which President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed. William Peterson's “model minority” was applied to the Japanese Americans whose forbearers had come to Hawaii and the West Coast with no right of citizenship. But the label came to be applied to those who came to the United States after 1965, and their American-born offspring, who worked tirelessly against odds, racial and economic. The “refugees,” especially from Southeast Asia, include many whose physical survival would have been at stake had they not escaped and sought refuge in the United States. Among them are the Cambodians who ran through the “killing fields” of Pol Pot, and the Hmongs who were recruited as mercenaries by the United States, when President Richard Nixon decided to withdraw U.S. ground troops from Vietnam. The “refugees,” however, also include those who wreaked havoc in their own countries until their U.S.-backed regimes could no longer stay in power. Tragically for many, and fortuitously for others, war is also in the background of contemporary American popular culture's portrayal of Asian and Asian American women as sexually desirable. American soldiers knew of Asians either as “enemy” or as objects of sexual gratification. This sad, if all too real, fact of war also explains why there are fewer Asian-American male models than Asian-American female models. Asian-American women are desirable, as long as they fit into the image, shaped by America's wars in Asia. Connie Chung is a continuation of Suzie Wong, a “prostitute with a heart of gold.” [See The World of Suzie Wong , a 1960 Hollywood movie, starring Nancy Kwan as Suzie Wong and William Holden as an American soldier.] The story of Asian Americans, however brief, is never complete without mentioning the valor of the Nisei Japanese-American soldiers during the World War II. On February 19, 1942, two months after Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066, ordering some me 120,000 Japanese to be deported from the West Coast and be detained in camps operated by the War Relocation Authority. At first reluctant, F.D.R. was in the end persuaded by the repeated urging of Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, then head of the Western Defense Command. 70% of the incarcerated were American citizens by virtue of their birth in the United States. The arrest and deportation were without charge, only on suspicion of their disloyalty to and sabotage of the United States. The incarcerated were accorded neither access to legal counsel nor due process of law. “Military necessity” was the justification for the internment. They were reclassified as “enemy aliens.” The ten camps were invariably located in desolate places, unfit for human habitation. (5) Little known in history books, perhaps by design, it was the Nisei soldiers of the combined 442nd [militia] who helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. . . After the war in Europe ended, they returned triumphantly to the New York Harbor. Later, they found their parents still incarcerated in camps as “enemy aliens.” It was out of these camps that the Nisei , or the second-generation Japanese Americans, were recruited to form the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Merged with the all-Hawaiian Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion, the combined 442nd played a critical role in the Allied Forces victory in the European theater of World War II. Little known in history books, perhaps by design, it was the Nisei soldiers of the combined 442nd who helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. They suffered 9,486 casualties, including 600 dead. But they also became the most highly decorated unit in U.S. military history. They were awarded 18,143 individual decorations, including one Congressional Medal of Honor, forty-seven Distinguished Service Crosses, 350 Silver Stars, 810 Bronze Stars, and more than thirty-six hundred Purple Hearts. After the war in Europe ended, they returned triumphantly to the New York Harbor. Later, they found their parents still incarcerated in camps as “enemy aliens.” After the war, and after the closing of the camps, President Truman welcomed the Nisei soldiers on the White House lawn, and said, “You fought not only the enemy, you fought prejudice – and you won.” [Chester Tanaka, Go for Broke: A Pictorial History of the Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , Richmond, Oregon, 1982, p. 171.]
Theological Implications for ChristiansThere are many questions that Christians should ponder with respect to the issues named above. Church people have been intricately involved in the process of immigration of Asians to the U.S., and the economic and social challenges they've faced here. For instance, the first wave of Asian migrant laborers went to Hawaii to work on pineapple and sugar cane plantations, many of which were owned by sons and grandsons of Protestant missionaries from New England. The haole missionaries from Connecticut and Massachusetts went to Hawaii to do good, as they say in Hawaii today, but their descendents ended up doing well! So where does this retrospective leave us? How does a historical inquiry shape our theological and ecclesial views, our pastoral responsibilities and eschatological expectations? I would identify but a few questions for consideration.
The Rev. T. James Kodera, Ph.D., is Professor of Religion at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., and rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Hudson, Mass. He may be reached by email at jkodera@wellesley.edu .
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