The elation of watching the first Black and Asian American woman sworn in as Vice President soured when, in the face of rising anti-Asian violence, the Biden-Harris Administration failed to install any Cabinet member of AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) descent.

This discrepancy was sharpened in Atlanta, Georgia, where a white man murdered eight people; seven were Asian. Solidarity squares dominated my social media from well-meaning non-AAPI followers. High-profile politicians and celebrities railed against sexual violence against women of (mainly) East Asian descent, bemoaning the “unprecedented” rise in anti-Asian rhetoric. “Stop AAPI Hate,” “Protect Asian Women,” and other low-calorie hashtags flooded Twitter.

Aside from occasional AAPI celebrities and politicians, the anti-AAPI narrative has been drafted mainly by well-meaning persons who don’t claim an AAPI identity. When AAPI people are not leading the movement supposedly for them, the Asian diaspora gets stereotyped as helpless, hapless sex workers or somebody’s auntie or uncle.

To understand why our representation is tied to our civic power, I explored the history of Asian American civic engagement: why is the fastest-growing ethnic group so poorly understood by the non-AAPI public and its representatives? In doing so, I acknowledge my own background as a (Japanese) American and that my own understanding is limited to that experience, too.

The History of Asian American Power

The fractious Asian American community is not a recent development but a product of (predominately White) American public opinion and U.S. immigration legislation. While white Americans inappropriately projected sameness onto migrants from the expansive continent, those arriving instead attached their identities to their homelands.

Notably, waves of anti-Asian sentiment in the United States follow economic trends impacting White Americans. Legislation often reinforced ethnic fault lines: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (and subsequent Geary Act) embittered Chinese communities against the Japanese migrants who enjoyed the privileges of the Gentlemen’s Agreement into the early 20th century. Subsequently, state legislatures enacted Alien Land laws blocking Asian migrants from owning  land. By the late 19th century, Japanese and Chinese immigrants were often at odds from disputes between their homelands and the hostile environment of their new country.

Economic competition between these two largest Asian migrant populations was amplified by racial discrimination. Consternation about Asian immigration engendered the term “Yellow  Peril,” and associated violence deepened the division between the communities. The Immigration Act of 1921 effectively barred non-white immigration to the U.S. into the 1960s.

Following the Pearl Harbor bombing, Korean and Chinese Americans distinguished themselves from Japanese peers, wearing buttons announcing their ancestry. During the 1980s, as Japanese auto industries in the U.S. exploded, causing a perceived loss of “American” jobs, Chinese American Vincent Chin was beaten to death, mistaken as being of Japanese descent.

This, limited to East Asian American experiences, is hardly comprehensive but demonstrates the intersectionality of violence against Asians in the United States and the history of pitting one nationality against another to the benefit of neither.

People wait in a line to vote in Queens, N.Y. during early voting for the Presidential election on Oct. 24, 2020.

Modern Political Capital

This history of Asian immigrants trying to differentiate themselves by nationality is perhaps why, despite becoming the United States’ largest immigrant group, with two-thirds of Asians in America being immigrants (Pew Research), collectively, we hold minimal power in public office and the private sector.

Outside the first Asian American woman Vice President, President Biden’s cabinet is infuriatingly devoid of Asian members. As President Biden rewarded former Democratic opponents, he conspicuously overlooked Andrew Yang.

This omission was noticed. The Japanese American Citizens’ League, one of the oldest civil rights groups in the country, condemned this oversight, as did Congress-persons Mark Takano (D-CA) (PBS), and Judy Chu (D-CA) (Vox), and others in the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus. Beyond outrage, however, there is little opportunity beyond calling for more representation.

Which brings me back to my question: Why, in 2021, over a century after the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the Alien Land Laws, are we Asian Americans struggling to gain meaningful traction in the public sphere?

Some might argue that I am focusing on ‘identity politics.’ To that, I say: I am focusing on identity. Because, despite being one of the highest educated and economically successful ethnic groups in the country, we have one of the lowest civic engagement rates by self-identified ethnicity.

Political Divide

Another anomaly of the Asian identity politic is the generalization of voting habits and political  identity. While pollsters can partially predict other racial minorities’ collective voting patterns, the same confidence is not afforded to Asian voters. Our voting habits mirror those of white voters, reflecting education and age more than race. This is partially attributable to the diverse Asian diaspora: none of some twenty-five nationalities holds a majority in our ethnic  group in America. Subsequently, there are few universal hallmarks of the Asian American experience aside, perhaps, from hate crimes and discrimination.

Without a robust activist body like other racial identities have leveraged for their interests, Asian Americans focus on ethnic identities over our larger demographic. Predictably, this has severe consequences for us collectively and individually. A Washington State school district scrubbed Asian Americans off their list of recognized racial groups, depriving them of civil rights protections (The Ticker). Washington also has consistently voted down Affirmative Action policies to protect Asian American students (NBC News). In 2020, hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans rose a staggering 150% across the country; several of these incidents have led to serious injury or death. These tragedies are often marked by the media as isolated events, only starting to recognize the causative anti-Asian endemic racism.

Unlike other BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color), Asian Americans often set aside racial identity for other influences. Few of us would say, “As an AAPI, I vote to represent AAPI interests.” Instead, we say, “As a business owner/parent/queer person/religious person/etc., I vote to represent those interests.”

Though President Biden signed an executive order condemning racism against AAPI individuals, his is the first cabinet with no Asian American leading an administrative department. The most partisan Congress in modern history passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act in the same session where President Biden quashed a protest by the only two Asian American Senators for lack of representation by promising to appoint a “Senior Liaison” to the AAPI community.

Conclusion

We are asked to support candidates and parties, and in exchange, are told to be content with what we receive. That exchange is an occasional pat on the head or empty hashtag. The message is clear: the 23 million AAPI Americans are not welcomed at the table we helped set.

As I move into my adult identity, I’ve reckoned with the painful history and current trauma of my Asian heritage contrasting the anemic political force my community holds. Our self-partitioning by ethnic identity was a self-inflicted emasculation; the oppression and violence against our American bodies were not.

In the 21st century landscape of social justice and internet activism, the objective is tangible: making inroads to other cultural communities–not diminishing the experience of either, but coalescing the values of both.

BIO:  Lauren Yanase, a lifelong Portland, OR resident, is in her second year at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont.

An avid storyteller, Lauren has published creative fiction and nonfiction accounts of the Japanese American incarceration and has been recognized regionally and nationally for her writing. In 2019, she earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her documentary about the Japanese American incarceration. This is a prestigious honor, with fewer than six percent of Girl Scouts worldwide earning this award.

Her documentary, Shikata Ga Nai: An Inconvenient American, follows the story of the Kato family during World War II as Japanese Americans along the West Coast were forcefully relocated into concentration camps. John Golden, a TOSA in Portland Public Schools, says that this film, “sheds a light on a forgotten and shameful chapter in American history… and presents a story that is compelling and should be essential viewing for all high school students.” This film and other works can be found at her online portfolio, From Grandma’s House.

When she is not enjoying a mid-priced coffee or semi-athletic endeavors in the mountains, Lauren is studying and working in education and public policy.

Contributed by special guest writer, Becky Morgan

Nisei Daughter, a library find, appealed to me because I knew what Nisei meant, and as I began the read, I saw that it was a memoir set in Seattle in the 1920s, an area I’m familiar with now, a century later. It also takes place partly in the Midwest, where I’ve also spent a good portion of my life.

First-generation-born-in-the-U.S. also applies partially to my own children, since my husband and his family moved to the U.S. from an Eastern European country when he was twelve. My own side of the family is a mish-mash of nineteenth century, mostly Northern European immigrants. I never thought any particular group of people had a special right to be considered Americans, including Native Americans, who also immigrated here from somewhere else, probably Siberia, at least in the Northwest.

First published in 1952, the book recounts Monica Sone’s life growing up as the daughter of Issei, Japanese American parents both born in Japan, who owned and operated a hotel in the “Skid Road” area of downtown Seattle. Learning, to her surprise, that she was “Japanese” in addition to “Yankee” and would have to go to Japanese school after her American school let out in the afternoon instead of playing with her friends, Monica begins a journey of self-discovery. She attempts to piece together aspects of her personality, cultural and historical background, and life experiences, to form her own identity.

Well-written and expressive, this book shows us a lively young woman who has a warm family life at an interesting and, at times, semi-tragic period in our nation’s history. It contrasts the life of Issei Japanese Americans, born in Japan but developing a different culture in the U.S., with the Nisei, American-born children, Americans not always accepted as American by other U.S. citizens. It also contrasts the Issei and Nisei with their relatives in Japan, during a poignant visit there with Monica’s uncles, aunts, and grandfather: since a U.S. law in 1924 forbade further immigration from Japan, Monica’s father decided they should make the ocean voyage to visit the family there. From Monica’s brother screaming because he doesn’t want to remove his shoes to enter a restaurant, to Monica’s being amazed at her cousin sitting so politely still, while she herself at other times would do ten cartwheels – the contrast between cultural norms is seen, while the family connection remains.

Monica’s family was forcibly moved to the Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They were among the lucky families who were able to keep their business, the hotel, partly because of loyal friends and employees who ran it for them in their absence. Nevertheless, it took a good deal of resilience to cope with the experience of being removed from one’s home and confined to living in one room with furniture Monica’s father built from a pile of scrap lumber. It was especially difficult to endure the indignity of being held without having committed a crime or even being accused of one.

I didn’t know that there were more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent imprisoned behind barbed wire fences, guarded by military police. 77,000 were American citizens (and many more probably would have been citizens if the 1924 law hadn’t removed that possibility). The fact that many Japanese Americans living in Hawaii and German Americans living in the U.S. weren’t incarcerated shows how irrational and particularly unfair the selection of who to imprison was. And it must also have been partly motivated by greed, or why else did many of the prisoners never get their properties back?

Monica was allowed to leave the concentration camp in 1943 for a job in the Midwest, where she later went to college. One thing that surprised me was that Monica felt that she was treated better by the people she got to know in the Midwest than by those she knew in Seattle. In fact, she was appreciated for who she was as an individual and not just as a member of a particular group. This does fit in with current psychological research which shows that we tend to have less prejudiced attitudes towards people we know as individuals than toward groups of people we perceive as “different” and somehow “threatening” to us. This is not a logical thought process but a gut-level reaction that doesn’t go through the thinking parts of our brain.

Overall, Monica’s life was filled with the wonder, fun, and challenges of growing up as well as the difficulties of her own cultural and historical experiences. She found individual people interesting and was a keen observer of personalities, later becoming a clinical psychologist (like the author of this review!).

I suppose if I was going to give this review a bird-watcher’s perspective, I could say that if something is right on top of you, like happening in the moment, you can’t always see it very well. You need the right amount of distance – not too close and not too far – to focus and see what’s there. Memoirs are valuable for many reasons but I’m always glad to read one that describes a life experience that is different from mine. Memoirs help us know people as individuals so that we will be more inclined to see them as fellow humans and not be threatened by them even if they might not look like us.

Becky Morgan is a retired clinical psychologist (and bird watcher) who lives on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington and loves to read. And no, that bird did not actually land on her head – it was photoshopped there by a photographer-neighbor with a sense of humor!

For the past four years, we have been led by those who want to build walls. To protect us, they say. To keep them out, they say. But with more and more incidents of “I can’t breathe,” it’s becoming harder to ignore the increasing restlessness born from the suspicion that maybe walls are being built to keep us in. In our places. It’s ironic that the virus we’re dealing with now also makes it difficult for its victims to breathe. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why we can empathize a little more with Eric Garner and George Floyd.

Certainly, the restlessness of 2020 is being caused by lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, working from home, travel restrictions, and other related pandemic measures. More than that, however, is the growing desire to breathe. Take for example our Election. The initial large number of Democratic candidates running for President might have been overwhelming to consider but I was encouraged by its diversity – even an Asian American! Yay Yang! And for the final Democratic candidate to commit to and follow-through with his pledge to pick a woman as his running mate was another surprise. Even though Biden had not been my first choice, his selection of a woman of color made me respect him more.

Still, our country is so divided that I didn’t want to hope too much. COVID exposed the many weaknesses in our American systems so that public health, the economy, and institutional racism became problems of contention rather than collaboration. It didn’t seem to matter that COVID was trying its best to point out to us that walls can’t protect us … that we, not the virus, can end up killing each other … unless we work together as Americans and Global Citizens to put sensible precautions in place to protect ourselves AND EACH OTHER, here in our country and beyond our permeable borders.

COVID also showed us that people are not treated equally in America. While our President and the wealthy in our country get the best healthcare, too many Americans don’t. Some die. Too many Americans are losing jobs and homes. They. Can’t. Breathe. Not everyone will recover. Protests happen when groups believe that the balance has shifted from “more to gain” to “less to lose.”

Big Disruptions like the ones we’re experiencing are humbling. They remind us to reflect on where we’ve come from, where we’re going, how we’re getting there. To make sure we’re on the right path. Getting there the right way. Because too often, we aren’t. We forget to remember we will all reach the same destination in the end, but it’s how we get there that really counts. We forget that reaching our destination matters less than how we get there. Losing our way matters less than how we deal with our losses. When this pandemic forced many of us to stay at home and drastically change our routines, it gave us the opportunity to pause and think more mindfully about our routines – about what we value and want from our lives. If we stopped breathing today, we would see our breaths passing before our eyes, showing us … what?

During this pause, I am having a hard time understanding why others don’t see the hurt and pain – the breathlessness – behind the Protests. Maybe most of us are like those blind men whose descriptions of an elephant depended on which part of the animal they had touched.

We argue and argue … but we can’t know what we don’t know. Non-Blacks haven’t driven while Black. Held a rifle and walked past police while Black. Taken a walk as a Black through a White neighborhood at night … maybe even during the day. Had a mental health episode while Black. Been on trial for murder while Black. We often find body swap movies funny but I think if a White American switched bodies with a Black (or non-White person), they would not find it funny at all. Sometimes I find myself wishing that those who claim they are not racist would swap bodies with a Black American or any non-white American and then tell me that institutional racism is a lie. I’m guessing that not many White Americans have been told to “go back where you came from”!

In a recent interview with Seneca Cayson, one of the leaders of the non-violent Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, he said that the social justice message has been diffused by other competing and opposing interests and “… it’s right and wrong …  that’s the true agenda.”

We don’t live in isolation, we live in families, communities, and societies where our actions can affect others among whom we live as well as those who want to live among us. It may help us breathe more easily and calmly if we tempered our desire for individualism and exclusivity with a more generous caring and kindness to those around us … even when it means acting for the greater good rather than our own preferences. We can choose to build walls … or, as Yo-Yo Ma proposes, bridges:

I’ve lived my life at the borders. Between cultures. Between disciplines. Between musics. Between generations. And throughout my life I’ve learned that in culture, we build bridges, not walls. We believe that we are better together than alone. I am worried that we’ve lost sight of that belief in America.  –  Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2010.

In a better world, we will be able to bridge the divide, tear down walls, problem-solve and accomplish wonderful things together, no matter our race, gender, sexual orientation, age, or political leanings. What we create will be meaningful more than expedient. Built without guns, bombs, tear-gas, batons, and knives. Shaped by kindness and caring for each other no matter how differently we look and think. Listening to each other. REALLY listening. Seeing deeply into each other’s hearts and souls, not just glancing at surfaces and assuming we know. And, in our Election cycles, it would be nice if seeing candidates who look like us was such a normal sight that it wouldn’t make us sit up, breathing accelerated; rather the focus would be on getting very excited about candidates who hope and dream with us no matter what they or we look like.

In a better world, we will all be able to breathe.

Bio:  Valerie Katagiri was co-editor of the community book project (available on Amazon.com): Where Are You From?: An Anthology of Asian American Writing. She coordinates the blog posts on the related Anthology website: AsianAmericanWriting.com

There are many cultural reasons why Asian Americans haven’t been more vocal in their attempts to be seen and heard but if we are to be visible, recognized, and counted in America, we will need to break down walls and speak up more, protest more … and yes, write more. We have to build more bridges and less walls. So people will see us as more than our faces. So that people will understand where we’re coming from … where we’re REALLY coming from.

Call for Submissions

BE VISIBLE.

* Tell YOUR STORY in your own words!

* Communicate perspectives that challenge or transcend mainstream stereotypes.

* Or simply write something uniquely personal as an Asian American.

Email your Asian American-related essay (500-1000 words) and short bio to info@asianamericanwriting.com

Contributed by special guest writer, Lauren Yanase

In early June, during protests following the atrocious murder of George Floyd, my Boomer-age Japanese American father expressed frustration about certain happenings in the news. He reiterated his general support for the demonstrations, then paused before saying, “You know, those people are horribly racist to us too.”

‘Those people’ were understood to be Black Americans, while ‘us’ was Asian immigrants and their Asian American children.

When pressed for his reasoning, he replied, “You know, they hate us ‘model minorities.’ They ‘ching-chonged’ me as much as any White kid growing up in the Sixties.”

Therein lies the answer to my unasked question: what formative encounter had he experienced to codify such views? How could my progressive, sensitive father believe that the long history of violent racism inflicted by White people on Black people is comparable to conflict between BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) communities?

Of course, this was not my first or only experience with casual anti-Black sentiment in my Asian American family and community.

As a Japanese American, family is everything – and nothing is more important than the sacred act of being together. My father’s extended family, numbering over fifty people, has come together for each holiday, big or small, for the past half-century. The most significant loss during the Coronavirus pandemic has been the inability to celebrate together; to break bread together; to simply be together.

Like many American families, ideologies within my dad’s family range from deeply conservative to extremely liberal and everything in between. And, like many families, there are strong opinions and emotions that vary wildly on race issues in America. It was counter-intuitive to me that anyone who had been discriminated against on the basis of race could be Anti-Black. How could those who lived through one of the worst violations of Asian American human and civil rights (the Japanese American incarceration camps) believe the worst of a group whose existence is a continued testament to their push for acceptance in a nation they helped build?

Ironically, there are deep, old roots of Anti-Black sentiment in my dad’s non-White family that lead to an attitude remarkably similar to the unforgiving racism carried by my mom’s White, old-genteel-Southern family.

Like most American families, my father and I come from a legacy of immigrants. His grandparents came from Japan in the late 19th century. The early history of Asian immigrants on the West Coast is notably marked by the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and the subsequent Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. But my great-grandparents held tight to their American Dream even though their new home was actively hostile against them.

Because of their radical pilgrimage and establishment, my father’s late grandparents are revered legends in my family and their American legacy weighs on our shoulders decades after their passing. An underappreciated fact of my family’s patriarch and matriarch was their unswayable, documentable anti-Black ideology in a time when they, too, were the targets of gross racial discrimination. My father grew up hearing his grandparents using English and Japanese slurs against Black people and their perceived offenses against our family. His father, my late grandfather, a state prosecutor, was convinced that Black people were intellectually inferior.

Anti-Blackness is embedded in my Japanese family’s roots, immigration story, and consequently our political identity. The racial obstacle my family faces now is acknowledging and confronting the anti-Black sentiment that has persisted for over a century in our heritage and our identity. Whenever this is mentioned in my family, I hear the uncomfortable “they were a product of their time” explanations … and more. Their intent is clear: don’t dishonor your great-grandparents’ memory by asking about their shortcomings.

It can be hard, then, to feel empowered to confront my family members’ views since setting aside individuality for the sake of deference to elders is doctrinal.

About a month prior to the killing of George Floyd, PBS released a fabulous five-hour film series, “Asian Americans,” on the history of Asian Americans starting from the first migrants. Particularly galling to me was a historian’s tongue-in-cheek summation of the plight of non-European immigrants and migrants: “each immigrant group is striving to be as far from ‘Black’ as possible.” In a gross generalization of the immigrant experience, this quip reveals the fundamental foundation behind assimilation culture: the systemic, institutionalized racism Black people face in America is so pervasive around the world that non-Black immigrants and Americans must distance themselves as far from Blackness as possible.

As a non-Black person, qualifying Blackness is impossible and inappropriate, so I will not attempt to try. I will say, however, that the non-Black perception of Blackness is often derived from stereotypes and pop culture. The tropes we consume from those media inform the unwritten non-Black POC (People of Color) handbook on achieving acceptance and admittance to White America.

And so is the paradox of Blackness for non-Black POC; we must shun and distance ourselves from the most egregiously ‘Black’ behaviors up until the point they are co-opted by White American pop culture.

With the quiet time that quarantine has afforded me, I realized that there is nothing more reverential to my family’s legacy than using the voice given to me.

The lived history of Asian Americans is radical: existing, struggling, learning to thrive in a space that has tried to exclude them from the beginning. In that way, Asian America is more similar than it is different from Black America. As a 21st century Asian American, I stand on the shoulders of Black abolitionists, suffragettes, civil rights leaders, and advocates. The object now is to demonstrate these fundamental affinities in our communities and broaden a coalition of support for Black empowerment.

I am not the first nor the last of my background to opine on and decry the apparent disconnect of my community to the plight of Black people in America and the bastardization of ‘Blackness.’ From outrage over skin-lightening creams to collaboration in the Civil Rights movement there is a through-line in history, however narrow, of Asian Americans as allies to Black lives. Unfortunately, as a whole, Asian Americans have not tied our empowerment to a synchronous Black liberation.

As poor White Southerners were intentionally turned against their Black peers in the Reconstruction Period and beyond, Asian Americans have tried to distinguish themselves as far from Blackness as possible. It must be my intention as a fourth-generation Asian American to promote breaking down the systemic walls that isolate minority groups from one another. We must be willing to risk the discomfort and offense of our Asian American families and be advocates because it is incumbent on the partnership of Black and Asian Americans to secure equality and dignity for both.

BIO:  Lauren Yanase is a recent graduate of St. Mary’s Academy in Portland, Oregon. An avid storyteller, Lauren has previously written creative fiction and nonfiction accounts of Japanese American internment and has been recognized regionally and nationally for her writing. In 2019, she earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her documentary about the Japanese American internment (see description of Shikata Ga Nai below). This is a prestigious honor, with fewer than six percent of Girl Scouts worldwide earning this award.

Lauren is attending Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, following a gap year of working in outdoor education and community organizing. She is an enthusiast of mid-priced coffee and semi-athletic endeavors in the mountains.

Shikata Ga Nai: An Inconvenient American follows the story of the Kato family during World War II as Japanese Americans along the West Coast were being forcefully relocated into incarceration camps. John Golden, a TOSA in Portland Public Schools, says that this film, “sheds a light on a forgotten and shameful chapter in American history… and presents a story that is compelling and should be essential viewing for all high school students.”

Contributed by special guest writer, Anne Hawkins

As we sat in the circle, I asked them to share about a holiday or tradition they celebrate in their family. They spoke about Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah – as others in the circle nodded along. And finally, one spoke about a holiday when he dressed in red and ate noodles to represent long life. Where he danced in a line led by a big lion’s head. And when, he smiled, he “gets lots of red envelopes with money.” The others asked questions – they’d heard of this holiday in school and maybe even gone to an event – but they had never listened to someone who celebrated it describe it in such a meaningful way.

And when he was done, I asked everyone to close their eyes and think about the holidays others had just shared, and the ones they themselves had shared, and I asked them how they felt hearing and sharing their stories. They said they felt proud. They felt happy. They liked talking about times with their families that made them feel happy. They felt sad, missing family they normally celebrated with, but haven’t seen because of the coronavirus. They felt excited to learn more about their friends and their families – the things their families did that might not be like their own. They had allowed themselves to be vulnerable, and as a result, they felt connected.

As the parent of a nine-year-old boy, I think often about the kind of person I hope he will grow up to be. I hope he will be kind and fair. I hope he will be able to think about his feelings and manage them before his actions harm others. I hope he will understand the history of this country and his place and relative privilege in it. This summer, following the murder of George Floyd, and in the wake of the protests that followed, it became impossible for me to believe that my own children would grow up to be all the things I hope they will be without putting in a great deal of work.

And so I found myself speaking to close friends – also parents of nine-year-old boys –  with an increasing sense of urgency. We all wanted to engage in deeper more difficult and uncomfortable conversations with our sons, but we didn’t always know how. We read books and some of us took our children to the protests. We believe they are good kids and are grateful that they share friendships with other good kids – but that didn’t seem like quite enough. Certainly many “good” kids grow up to perpetuate racism and violence. And so my son and I invited five other boys to join us in our backyard for a discussion circle. And, as I always do, I found a book to help me out.

Tiffany Jewell’s This Book is Anti-Racist asks the questions and provides the background to generate critical discussions about identity, racism, and how to do the work to be anti-racist. I used this book as a jumping off point – to get these boys thinking about their own identities, how they see themselves and how the world sees them. And while they may not have a comprehensive understanding of the legal and social systems that have gotten us to this point, they certainly understand the ideas of fundamental fairness and what it means to feel left out or mistreated. They also know what it means to be treated better than others because of certain talents or immutable attributes and recognize moments where they have used that treatment to their own advantage.

With each circle we have leaned forward, and sometimes we have had to step back. We have talked about gratitude and what it means to set goals and work hard toward them. We have explored the difference between dignity and respect and why that matters. We have talked about celebrating our own backgrounds, and the boys have done research and presented on traditions they had never previously heard about. They bring up stories they have heard in the news. They wonder together why things happen and how we might prevent such things in the future. They see that solutions are more than just “being nice” or believing that all people are created equal.

For so long I have just worried and asked the questions in my head. How can I be doing more to better educate myself and my children? How do we understand history to improve the future? How do I reconcile my own feelings about the discrimination against our own Asian/Asian American communities with our need to be an ally to Black and Brown communities? I think about the boy describing his celebration of Lunar New Year and why that matters. In this life, we come together often because we share some common ground. But, we grow and learn because we value the sharing and celebration of our differences.

Through this circle, these boys have shown me that I certainly don’t have all the answers, but that we will engage in the process of learning and growing together. A nine-year-old child holds a lot of power – to act in ways that promote equality and inclusion in their own circles, as well as to hold their parents accountable to do the same.

BIO:  Anne Hawkins is the mother of three elementary-aged children and a criminal defense attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area. When she isn’t leading discussion circles for nine-year-old boys, she can be found reading or pacing on the sidelines of her children’s baseball and soccer games.

Contributed by one of our Anthology authors, Simon Tam

Recently, I had an impactful (and surprising) discussion around race. Here’s how it went …

Them: “… I grew up here in the South in an Irish and Catholic family; it was really bad.”

Me: “Indeed, Irish immigrants were treated very poorly.”

Them: “Yes, we were treated just as bad as Black families.”

Me: “Well, I wouldn’t say that …”

(at this point, I thought, “Here we go …”)

Them: “And I don’t know where all this hate comes from, that’s not how we bring people up in this country.”

Me: “It’s complex, we’re taught a lot that reinforces inequality. We’re also not taught many things that would show us other experiences other than White dominant culture, at least in any real sense.”

Them: “I had a Black friend so I learned about some things.”

(Inner nervousness about what comes next)

Them: “Well, I don’t know how to put it right but it was like I realized that my experience as an Irish was different because I could hide behind it. My friend couldn’t hide. When we were in public, my friend was only seen as Black. People didn’t know I was Irish so they didn’t treat me like they would if they actually knew.”

In one fell swoop, this person inadvertently described one of the benefits of this thing we talk about called “White privilege,” the ability to hide, to blend. To not be a target.

Based on many conversations I’ve had before, I was expecting a different trajectory. And because it changed course, I got less tense. I talked about my own experiences, we shared culture, approached things with compassion.

… and yes, addressed some of the misconceptions/differences in how the Irish experience differed from the African slave trade. But I’m not sure that would have happened without listening first. If I’d jumped in with counterpoint arguments, they’d probably have just gotten defensive and derailed it all.

It reminded me once more of Dr. West’s words, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Sometimes that just means listening, something I’m trying to better learn myself, every day.

BIO:  Simon Tam is an author, musician, activist, and troublemaker. He is best known as the founder and bassist of The Slants, the world’s first and only all-Asian American dance rock band. He is the founder of The Slants Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing scholarships and mentorship to artist-activists of color.

Simon has been a keynote speaker, performer, and presenter at TEDx, SXSW, Comic-Con, The Department of Defense, Stanford University, and over 1,200 events across four continents. He has set a world record by appearing on the TEDx stage 13 times. His work has been highlighted in over 3,000 media features across 150 countries including The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, NPR, BBC, New York Times, and Rolling Stone.

In 2016, Simon joined President Barack Obama, George Takei, Jeremy Lin, and other celebrities in the #ActToChange campaign to fight bullying. He recently helped expand civil liberties through winning a unanimous victory at the Supreme Court of the United States for the landmark case, Matal v. Tam in 2017.

He has received many accolades for his work, including: “The Mark T. Banner” award from the American Bar Association, the “Hugh M Hefner First Amendment Award,” “Milestone Case of the Year” from Managing IP Magazine, the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Ovation Gala, and “Distinguished Alum Award” from Marylhurst University.

In 2019, he published his memoir, Slanted: How an Asian American Troublemaker Took on the Supreme Court. You can purchase it wherever books are sold and read excerpts at www.slantedbook.com

Contributed by special guest writer, Yongsoo Park

Sending my brother and me to camp was my mother’s idea. She had grand notions about how children should spend their summers to become adults of distinction and believed that summer camp would help us develop American independence. My mother’s desire to send us to camp was also fueled by guilt for having moved our family from Seoul to the United States. We hadn’t been well-to-do in Korea. But we’d definitely been middle-class. My mother had been a middle school teacher, and she and my father had run a cram school out of our house, a spacious home with a yard. In contrast, our home in America was a one-bedroom apartment in Elmhurst, an immigrant enclave in Queens with very little that evoked the pastoral glory that had lured my parents to leave their homeland.

The only problem was money. At the time, my father ran a small shoe repair shop and my mother worked as a secretary for a fly-by-night Korean businessman. My brother and I ate free lunch at school and wore hand-me-downs my mother scrounged up from other mothers at church. A TV commercial that we happened to see one night made camp a reality for us. In it, a dozen robust white children with rosy cheeks hiked in unison to the summit of an impossibly-picturesque mountaintop while a narrator urged parents to send their children to camp to experience the joys of nature.

My mother called the number that flashed on the screen and  explained our situation as best as she could in her stilted English. When she learned that sending two boys to camp would only cost $50, she wasn’t at all alarmed. Quite the opposite, the low price fit neatly with the vision she’d had of the U.S. as a munificent country that willingly shared its bounty with newcomers and those in need.

On the designated day, we went to the address in Manhattan where the lady on the phone had told my mother that campers would be ferried by bus to the camp in New Jersey. The address turned out to be a Salvation Army office in the heart of Harlem. We’d only been in the U.S. for two years, but we’d heard many horror stories about Harlem from other Korean families.

We stepped into a large gymnasium, which was filled with about five hundred African-American kids who turned and stared at us in unison, wondering what the heck we were doing there. My parents looked shell-shocked. The scene was nothing like the TV commercial. My parents were so startled by what they’d unknowingly signed us up for that they pulled me aside and offered me the option to skip the camp and stay home. But I declined their offer. I’d talked up the camp to my friends back home. I couldn’t possibly face them and report that I’d chickened out of going to the camp.

I was teased a lot and got called all sorts of names, especially at the start of camp, but overall, I had fun because it was still summer camp and we campers were all little kids. I also won some status at camp for being one of just a handful of kids who could swim and for being the only kid who could do the Rubik’s Cube.

I don’t attribute my parents’ decision to let us get on that bus that day to some inner nobility or exceptional ability to transcend their prejudices. They must have had some sleepless nights. I’m not sure I could have done the same had I been in their shoes, but I’m glad that they sent us. Had they not sent us, I probably would have held it against them, especially during my prickly adolescence.

As fate would have it, I live today just five blocks away from where the bus picked my brother and me up to take us to Camp Star Lake nearly 40 years ago. Gone are the boarded-up buildings and the vacant lots. Such lots have been bought up by developers who are building condos on them. But the Salvation Army is still there, and Camp Star Lake is still in operation.

With the passage of time, I’ve gained greater appreciation for my fish-out-of-water experience. When I was younger, my going to Star Lake highlighted my parents’ cluelessness and bumbling in their attempt to navigate American life. Now that I’m older and have children of my own, my perception has changed.

My parents took a leap of faith. They knew that their children would likely experience discomfort and unease, but they trusted the world and let us go off on our own with the belief that such trials would only make us stronger. I’m not sure that I could have mustered the courage to trust the world the way they did with my own children, but I gained so much from going to Star Lake and rubbing elbows with African-American kids whose lives were even more messed up than mine. It was a pivotal experience that helped shed many of the misguided notions I’d held about life in America and opened my eyes to the stark inequities of racism. To this day, I thank my mother for always thinking about her children’s future and for sending me to Camp Star Lake.

BIO: Yongsoo Park is the author of the novels BOY GENIUS and LAS CUCARACHAS, the memoir RATED R BOY, and the essay collection THE ART OF EATING BITTER about his losing battle to give his children an analog childhood. He lives in Harlem and gets around on an old bicycle.

Contributed by special guest author/writer/lecturer, Linda Tamura

Gifts from my mom have recently emerged in surprising ways and at unexpected times.

Cooking more frequently now while quarantined, I’m reminded when I flick on the rice cooker how Mom painstakingly steamed rice in a foaming pot on the stove, keeping an eye on the temperature and time – and chiding herself when pearls of rice emerged a bit scorched. How did she manage to cook rice the “old fashioned way” while juggling her other chores?

When I harangue officials appearing on TV news after they spout put-downs and falsehoods, I hear her voice reminding me, “Now, now, don’t say anything you’ll regret later.” How did Mom keep her cool even when she recognized outright wrongs?

While downsizing and rearranging our home, I’ve taken a second look at remembrances from Mom. And I wonder: How did she balance nine-hour work days hoeing trees or thinning pears with Dad in our orchard or hammering boards into boxes (even with a big bandage from misjudging her finger placement) with cooking, cleaning, doing laundry with a wring-washer and clothes-line while still managing to raise three daughters? And how did she find time to crochet delicate doilies and tablecloths, embroider pillowcases, sew dresses and outfits for all of us – and then find joy in gardening, too? How did she manage to multitask before that concept even became vogue?

I recently found the baby book that Mom lovingly compiled 70 years ago. Tucked inside the cover in a plain envelope were two yellowed Hood River News articles. The first, labeled June 18, Parkdale, Oregon, had a simple title: “Baby shower.” It detailed an event hosted by “Miss Jessie Akiyama” three days before I was born. Not only did it list the 17 “mesdames” (listed by their spouses’ names) who attended, but it included the eight who sent gifts but were unable to attend. Notably among the guests were the spouses of two Euro-American men who’d been supportive of my grandparents’ family both before and after the war, despite a caustic community campaign to prevent the return of Japanese Americans after their wartime incarceration. This was a ruthless drive supported by “No Japs Wanted” ads signed by more than 1,800 locals that brought national notoriety to my hometown. So, in a way, after the scourge of wartime exclusion and the fear about how they’d be accepted in their own community, this article represented more than just a celebration of life, albeit mine. It was also an exemplar of friendships and reunions that crossed racist borders, maybe even an oblique call for unity. Could it be that Mom is speaking into my ear again, this time urging our efforts toward the equity and balance that were amiss when she was growing up – and that challenge us in new ways today?

Oh, and the second article I found? A short clip entitled “Births” listed newborns for the previous week. Mine was the last of thirteen entries, announcing the birth “to Mr. and Mrs. Harry M. Tamura, a son, Daniel James, June 21.”  Now my sisters tease me that they had always wanted a big brother …

Bio:  Linda Tamura is a third-generation Japanese American, an orchard kid raised in Hood River, Oregon and the daughter of a World War II veteran. A Professor Emerita of Education at Willamette University, she is the author of two books on Japanese Americans:  Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence:  Coming Home to Hood River and The Hood River Issei:  An Oral History of Japanese Settlers in Oregon’s Hood River Valley. Linda is a co-editor-in-chief of The Oregon Encyclopedia (www.oregonencyclopedia.org) and is involved in other projects and programs, including the upcoming exhibit on Japanese American women for the Japanese American Museum of Oregon (JAMO).

Contributed by special guest writer Summer Tan

Bio:  Summer Tan is a high school sophomore who lives in West Linn. She enjoys mock trial, and her team won first place in the 2020 Oregon State Championship. She loves competing in debate tournaments, participating in Model United Nations, and playing golf with the high school team. She is also currently Vice-Chair of the City of West Linn Youth Advisory Council and has volunteered for various non-profit organizations with the National Charity League.

I have lived in the Portland area my entire life. As such, I have been privileged in how I have had, for the most part, nothing but positivity directed towards the subject of my race. In fact, on that day in late January when a stranger accosted me at the mall, I’d been commenting how happy I was to see Chinese New Year decorations everywhere.

“Are you worried about the coronavirus?” this woman asked, out of nowhere in the middle of a store in Washington Square Mall. Was I what? Confused, I had tried to get out of her way. I’d panicked for a few seconds as I tried to identify her, even as I responded that, no, I wasn’t worried about the coronavirus — as far as I knew, there had been no cases in Oregon. “Oh,” she’d responded, almost disappointed. “I was just wondering because your people are spreading it everywhere.” I wish I had asked, “What do you mean, ‘your people’?” I wish I could have gathered myself enough to ask her what could have possibly possessed her to walk up to a girl distracted by shiny bracelets and accuse “her people” of spreading some disease. Selfishly, I wish I had made a scene.

I did none of those things. Instead, I’d looked at her, smiled, and replied, “Well, there have been no cases in Oregon,” and then fake-coughed, making only superficial efforts to cover the cough as she cringed away from me. While I felt some satisfaction from her discomfort, I still mostly felt like crying as I walked back to my friends.

I wonder, now, if she even realized that what she’d done — what she’d said — was wrong. After all, if she had been bold enough to approach a 15-year-old with a baby face and accuse “my people” of “spreading around” a virus, who could say what else she was willing to accuse other people of? Maybe she had thought that her comments were a lead-up to appropriate conversations, though I cannot imagine any circumstance where those comments were appropriate. Maybe she had been intentionally rude. Maybe she just didn’t think, and spent the rest of the day regretting her words, even as I tried to forget she’d said them.

I knew that I’d done nothing wrong — and yet, I felt “dirty” throughout the rest of the day, carrying around the baggage of her words as if something was undeniably my fault. Besides those two minutes of my life, nothing eventful happened at the mall that day.

Here’s the thing: I know that there has been much fear over the coronavirus pandemic. The event at the mall, as well as reading accounts of increased racism towards Asians, however, have made me realize that, while fear of a deadly disease is understandable, those fears have allowed people to abandon civility in favor of stark racism and xenophobia.

Perhaps I was naive in not considering that people would turn against each other in fear and that their fear would bring out the worst versions of themselves. I still believe, though, that we ought to try harder to not let this fear cripple ourselves or our empathy. As Oregon schools close, events are cancelled, and people self-quarantine, we must choose kindness. We owe it to each other to try.

Summer’s essay was originally printed on March 16, 2020 in the WestLinnTidings, published by the Pamplin Media Group.

Oregon Public Broadcasting followed up with Summer on their Think Out Loud program. You may listen to it here, if interested.

And then there is … music that transcends borders during this global pandemic …

Portland cellist brings peace during epidemic

Kira Wang of Portland is one of 24 cellists acknowledging difficult times but giving hope through ‘The Swan Project.’

Contributed by special guest writer, Michelle Hicks, as part of our collaboration with APANO (see organization description at end of this blog).

“Aga” (Korean for “baby”), why should we fill out the census?

When has it ever mattered to us?”

For my mom’s generation, this sentiment reflects their experiences coming to America, being here, and living under this government. In her life, she has lived through wars, corruption, and global calamity. In her time in the U.S., she has experienced the failures and successes of various government-funded programs. She has seen the Immigration and Naturalization Service expand into Immigration and Customs Enforcement and continually target our Korean community and many other immigrants. She has seen the prisons expand and our community separated.

Why should she fill out the census? I try to tell her why.

Eomma (“Mother”), we should fill out the census because we have the power to change the story of our community and this country. When people think of a state like Oregon as a White place, they overlook our community and the power that we have when we come together. By being counted, the data tells our histories of migration, of family. It tells the rest of the country that this is our home. Eomma, you came here because of the promise that we are all equal. Under the census, that is finally true. We fill out the census the same as Kate Brown or Timothy Boyle or Phil Knight, and each of our data is weighted the same. We are equal — if we are counted.

Eomma, we should fill out the census because it shows the government how much funding we need for programs our community uses every day. The census lets them know how many kids will go to school so that our classrooms won’t be crowded. It lets them know how many people might go to college so they can allocate money for Pell Grants. It lets them know how many people need SNAP so that our families can be fed. It lets them know how many people might need Medicare and Medicaid so that they can actually see the doctor and get care. If any one of us isn’t counted, it doesn’t mean that we’ll have less need. It means our communities will not get enough resources to support that need over the next 10 years.

Eomma, we should fill out the census because it amplifies our political power. To me, this is one of the most important things about the census. Census data is how the government figures out how many representatives we have at the federal and state level. States like Oregon could gain another seat in the House of Representatives and this increases our community’s chances of being represented and more visible.

Eomma, when our community doesn’t fill out the census, we miss out on billions of dollars over the next 10 years. We don’t get a chance to get it right again until 2030.

Eomma, you came here to give us a better life. This is why I care so much about the census because it helps give our community a better life with access to resources that we deserve. I learned this from you and your example. Now, I want to make sure our family and our community is counted.

As for filling it out, it’s pretty easy. 10 questions in 10 minutes. Online, by phone, or by mail. Call me, we can talk through it.

Sarangheo Eomeoni (“I love you, Mom”),

Michelle

Note: There is no consistent way to romanize Korean words because many letters are between two sounds in English. For example, eomma makes the sound of eo+aw+uh all at once but it can be romanized as eomma or ahmma or umma. The romanization in this piece was provided by the author.

Bio:  Michelle Hicks is a Field Organizer at APANO. She was raised in San Jose, CA by her mother, a Korean immigrant, and two incredible older sisters. Her upbringing influenced her to study Politics with minors in American Ethnic Studies and Spanish at Willamette University. Michelle is passionate about political engagement, civil rights, and human rights and is committed to cultivating a more equitable Oregon.

How to Fill Out the 2020 Census

You can fill out your census online here in 10 minutes: https://my2020census.gov/

You can also give your responses by phone by calling 844-330-2020.

If you live in a more rural area, or you don’t respond online or by phone, the Census Bureau may send you a paper copy of the survey, that you can fill out and mail back in.

You can respond in 12 non-English languages when you fill out the form online or over the phone. Those languages include Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Vietnamese, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Tagalog, Polish, French, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Japanese.

The census is safe. Your personal information won’t be shared with other government agencies or anyone else and will only be used for statistical purposes. The census will not ask you for your social security number, money or donations, your citizenship status, your political affiliation, or bank/credit card numbers.

Did you happen to receive two surveys? In addition to the 2020 census, the Census Bureau is conducting another survey called the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS samples a segment of people living in the U.S. (the 2020 census counts EVERY person) and also provides important information for local leaders to understand their community. If you fill out the ACS, you still need to fill out the 2020 census separately.

Do you have other questions? The 2020census.gov site has more information, or you can call one of these national organizations who can answer your questions in English and other languages:

• Asian Americans Advancing Justice
  • (844) 2020-API or (844) 202-0274
  • Available in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Urdu and Bengali/Bangla
  • Live from 8:30am – 8:30pm Eastern Standard Time
• Arab American Institute
  • (833) 333-6864 or (833)-3DDOUNI (“Count me” in Arabic)
  • Available in English, Arabic
  • Live from 9am-9pm Eastern Standard Time
• NALEO Educational Fund
  • (877)-EL-CENSO or (877)-352-3676
  • Available in English/Spanish
  • Live from 8:30am – 8:30pm Eastern Standard Time

APANO is a statewide, grassroots organization uniting Asians and Pacific Islanders to achieve social justice. We use our collective strengths to advance equity through empowering, organizing and advocating with our communities. APANO’s strategic direction prioritizes four key areas: cultural work, leadership development, community organizing, and policy advocacy and civic engagement. Through APANO’s arts and cultural work, we create a vibrant space where artists and communities can envision an equitable world through the tool of creative expression. We strive to impact beliefs, center the voices of those most impacted and silenced, and use arts and cultural work to foster unity and vitality within our communities. Learn more about APANO on our website and read more writings by APANO members on Medium.