Asian American activism

Asian American activism refers broadly to political movements and activities that Asian Americans have participated in. Asian immigrants to America had always been dissatisfied with the level of discrimination they received. For example, Asian Americans lamented the harsh regulation and discrimination opposed upon them with the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882 – 1943) and the Angel Island Immigration Station (1910 – 1940). Detainees in Angel Island turned to silent protests by writing poetry, often bitter and angry in nature, on the walls.[1] However, mass organizing did not fully begin until the 1960s.

Background

Segmentation of Asian immigrants

For over 150 years since Asians first immigrated to the United States, they did not refer to themselves using the term "Asian American." The term was only coined by scholar Yuji Ichioka in 1968.[2] Beforehand, Asian immigrants had preferred to identify themselves based on ethnicity, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.[3]

Mass organizing

In the late 1960s, Asian Americans first began to organize on a large scale, resulting in the Asian American movement, a pan-Asian movement that lasted until the 1980s. The movement aimed to combat Asian Americans' shared oppression and race-based violence. The Asian American movement arose spontaneously all over the United States, often having different perspectives.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, activists from college campuses such as the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University protested the absence of Asian American experiences from university curricula. Activists focused on a variety of issues, including improving the conditions of San Francisco's Chinatown, participating in Third World Liberation Front strikes, and protesting the eviction of Filipino and Filipina residents from the International Hotel (San Francisco). Meanwhile, in New York City and on the East Coast, two nisei women protested the absence of a Japanese American community. In the Midwest, college students of Asian descent organized communities of support, and many eventually migrated to coastal cities that had stronger Asian communities.[4] Asian American college students nationwide also protested the model minority framework that many Americans had used to view Asians. Opponents of this framework considered it a myth that denied the challenges faced by Asian Americans in a white-dominated society.[5]

The Asian American movement is thought to have reached a high point after the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, an employee of a Detroit engineering firm who was beaten to death by Ronald Ebens. Ebens had strong anti-Asian motives for committing the crime – he believed Chin was Japanese and partly responsible for the decline of the U.S. automotive industry.[6] Vincent Chin's murder and the resulting trials throughout the 1980s helped form a truly Asian American movement.[3]

Notable Asian American activist movements

Asian Americans have participated in a variety of movements and protests, including:

Asians4BlackLives

Asians 4 Black Lives is a coalition of Asian Americans from ethnic backgrounds such as the Philippines, Vietnam, India, China, Pakistan, Korea, Burma, Japan, and many more to advocate for the Black Lives Matter Movement. Their objective is to stand in solidarity with people of color and to mainly support Black communities facing racial injustice. Their mission is built on the Ferguson National Demands,[11] which call for the elimination of discrimination and police brutality and support in employment and housing for oppressed people in the US. These demands also address the school to prison pipeline: mass incarceration of people of color, and other demands regarding racial issues plaguing the American society.[12]

Asians 4 Black Lives focuses primarily on supporting the issues within African American communities as they believe that finding justice for this community is the foundation that liberation for other minority groups can be built upon. Their activism includes blockading Home Depot in response to the Emeryville Police Department’s murder of Yuvette Henderson,[13] and protesting in front of the Oakland Federal Building[14] and the Oakland Police Department.[15] They have also initiated action to build houses for impoverished people. In addition, they are involved in the work of groups such as the Blackout Collective, #BlackBrunch, and Onyx Organizing Committee among many others.[16]

Asians 4 Black Lives is also working with Letters for Black Lives[17] in a combined effort to root out “anti-blackness” (the notion that African Americans are inferior) in communities. Its goal is to encourage discussion between older and younger generations about issues regarding racism and discrimination.

Participation in social media

Since many Asian Americans are immigrants from Asia or have family living in Asia, it is more common for activists to use foreign social media platforms such as China's WeChat and Weibo,[18] Korea's KakaoTalk,[19] and Japan's LINE and Mixi,[20] rather than American platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to engage in discussions and organize protests.[21]

For example, during the February 2016 protests against Peter Liang's conviction of manslaughter for the shooting of Akai Gurley, Chinese Americans organized rallies primarily through WeChat. Participants in these protests often shared information to their close friends via private "friend groups" on WeChat, and this allowed Chinese Americans to easily relay up-to-date information to their relatives in China and around the world.[22]

List of associated political groups

List of notable activists
See also: Key figures of the Asian American Movement
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References
  1. Morris, Young. "Across Time And Space: The Transnational Movement Of Asian American Rhetoric." Composition Studies 44.1 (2016): 131-133. Education Source. Web. 25 November 2016.
  2. Ichioka, Yuji. "Takayama Chogyu And His Nihonshugi." (1968): HathiTrust. Web. 24 November 2016.
  3. Wu, Frank H. "Embracing Mistaken Identity: How The Vincent Chin Case Unified Asian Americans." Asian American Policy Review 19.(2010): 17-22. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 November 2016.
  4. Wei, William. The Asian American Movement. [Electronic Resource]. n.p.: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1993. (Baltimore, Md.: Project MUSE, 2014), 1993. OskiCat. Web. 24 November 2016.
  5. Nguyen, Thai-Huy1, and Marybeth1 Gasman. "Activism, Identity and Service: The Influence of the Asian American Movement on the Educational Experiences of College Students." History of Education44.3 (2015): 339-54. Eue. Web. 26 October 2016.
  6. Darden, Joe T, and Richard W Thomas. "Chapter 7. The Declining Auto Industry And Anti-Asian Racism: The Murder Of Vincent Chin." Detroit : Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide. 155. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Project MUSE. Web. 24 November 2016.
  7. "Asian-American groups challenge racial preferences in higher education". Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-10-26.
  8. Times, Los Angeles. "Chinese social media platform plays a role in U.S. rallies for NYPD officer". latimes.com. Retrieved 2016-10-26.
  9. Morris, Catherine. "Asian American Groups File Federal Complaint Against Harvard." Diverse: Issues in Higher Education 32.9 (2015): 8. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 26 October 2016.
  10. Decker, Cathleen. "Asian American voters are spurning Trump — and threatening to spurn the Republican Party". latimes.com. Retrieved 2016-11-24.
  11. "Ferguson National Demands". Retrieved May 9, 2017.
  12. "Asian4BlackLives". Asian4BlackLives. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
  13. "Blockading Home Depot to Demand Justice for Yuvette". Retrieved May 9, 2017.
  14. "Federal Building Shut down with 3rd World Resistance". Retrieved May 9, 2017.
  15. "OPD Shutdown". Retrieved May 9, 2017.
  16. "Who we are". Retrieved May 9, 2017.
  17. "Asian Americans must stand up and say black lives matter". Retrieved May 9, 2017.
  18. "WeChat's world". The Economist. 2016-08-06. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
  19. Cheng, Jonathan (2014-02-26). "South Korea's Kakao Pushes Boundaries of Social Media". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
  20. "5 things U.S. techies need to know about Japan's social media ecosystem". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
  21. Xu, Qiong, and Richard Mocarski. "A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Domestic American and International Chinese Students' Social Media Usage." Journal of International Students 4.4 (2014): 374-88.ERIC. Web. 26 October 2016.
  22. Makinen, Julie. "Chinese social media platform plays a role in U.S. rallies for NYPD officer". latimes.com. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
  23. Ogbar, Jeffrey OG. "Yellow Power: the Formation of Asian-American Nationalism in the Age of Black Power, 1966-1975." Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society 3 (2001): 30-8.
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