html May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. At this time, American politicians will use some old-fashioned methods to pay tribute to the approximately 20 million Asian Americans in the United States. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States.
In contrast, TrumpPresident decided not to speak to Asian Americans but to speak on their behalf. On Monday, he rebuked CBS reporter Weijia Jiang for suggesting at a press conference that she was somehow close to China.
He responded to accusations of racism on Twitter , expressing his strong support for Asian Americans: "Asian Americans are very angry about what China, the United States and the world are doing. Chinese Americans are the angriest. . I don’t blame them!”
Regardless of how Trump came to these conclusions, it is a reminder that over the past 200 years, Asian Americans have become accustomed to a life of being used as pawns, subject to their inability to Control political fluctuations.
For the most part, Asian Americans experience apathy because we lack the critical mass (and shared interests) to influence national issues the way we do.
We Asian Americans seem invisible and if we look closely, we are indistinguishable. In bad times, like World War II or the decline of the auto industry in the 1980s, we all become scapegoats.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reawakened various and often conflicting stereotypes about Asians. On the one hand, Chinese people are accused of carrying the new coronavirus, which is reminiscent of 19th-century stereotypes about Chinese people, thinking that Chinese people are dirty. South Korea and Singapore, on the other hand, are being praised for preventing the spread of COVID-19 due to 20th-century stereotypes of Asians as passive, collective-minded and hygiene-conscious.
Andrew Yang published a column early in the pandemic about how Asian Americans had to double down on their American identity, an article that almost perfectly echoed the Japanese American Citizens League during World War II. Citizens League to incarcerated Japanese Americans.
A few weeks later, Joe Biden launched one of his boldest attacks on President Trump, actually an attack on China, accusing Trump of being too tolerant of authoritarian regimes. Biden urged ordinary Americans to distinguish between the government and the people, and the Chinese and other Asians. At the same time, many Asian Americans worry about a rise in anti-Asian violence and wonder whether stories of insults and attacks will unite a fragmented and seemingly fractured community.
This week, PBS aired the five-part documentary series "The Asian Americans," an ambitious attempt to educate the wider public about Asians. American History. But this documentary is more of a citizenship test, portraying subjects like baseball or jazz as purely American products.
In this case, “Asian Americans” celebrates a community that has become synonymous with the “American Dream.” How else to explain the Asian American rags-to-riches story? In this depiction, over the course of a few generations, the stereotype of Asians could go from being rat-for-snack, godless subalterns to a model minority whose achievements seem to make the entire United States utilitarian. rationalization.
The production team of "Asian Americans" is led by award-winning documentary director Renee Tajima-Pena. The series is told in chronological order and directed by a group of talented and experienced Asian filmmakers. . Thematically, the show ranges from the early struggles for citizenship and dignity of Asian immigrants, who played an important role in challenging the legal definition of whiteness and segregation in public schools, to how to integrate into the Eisenhower-era society. U.S. The series then focuses on the self-defining movement of the 1960s.
The first episode of Asian Americans begins with a brief introduction to the life of Antero Cabrera.Antero was one of 1,100 people brought to the United States at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904. The fair was one of the most popular, celebrating the United States' occupation of the archipelago after the Philippine-American War, and was probably the most ornate—it was later described as a "human zoo."
Cabrera was brought to the United States in order to create his image as a "savage", but he later stayed in the United States and built a good life for himself, even performing at subsequent exhibitions. A performance of racism.
In an episode about Chinese railroad workers, as the white working class tried to drive them out of the United States, many wondered, "Go back to China, or build a future in America?" History shows that many of these workers actually With no choice, they had almost no way to go back. Instead, they stayed, building Chinatowns on the edges of American cities.
When the transcontinental railroad was first completed, Chinese workers did not appear in official photographs.
But at the celebration of its 150th anniversary, things changed. Elaine Chao, a Chinese-American politician who is currently the Secretary of Transportation, stood on the podium to give a congratulatory speech. Like many postwar immigrants—especially those who made their fortunes in international shipping and trade—her connection to these railroad workers was largely abstract. Her relationship with the Asian American community has often been tense given her conservative loyalties.
Watching "Asian Americans" is a little surreal because it's a story about social mobility in a time when that wasn't possible, it's also a story about choice, but it's also about becoming a An ethereal hallucination.
From the beginning, the question facing Asian Americans was whether to stay in the United States or go home. One of the most compelling stories in the series is that of Buddy Uno, a Japanese-American who believed that World War II was a tragedy for his group. He decided to return to Japan not to serve the emperor but because he believed his chances in America had ended.
But his brothers stayed, volunteering for the all-Japanese-American 442nd Army Unit, leaving their families behind in the internment camps. As they returned from the front, heavily armed guards stood watching over them. "It's just something we have to live with," explains Buddy's brother Ernest. The irony of it all is that they risked their lives to protect a country that saw their family as a threat.
"Asian Americans" also reveals a tragic tone. The difficulties faced by previous generations are often incomprehensible to those who come after them. What does progress mean for the Asian American community? Is it the right to become a citizen, or the right to vote? But in democracies, these thresholds are too low. It's not surprising that incidents of harassment or violence against Asian Americans continue to occur, it's strange that this history can be forgotten so easily, if ever learned at all.
While watching "Asian Americans," it's hard not to feel the unique, cyclical history of this group. It is so obscure and fragile that every generation makes a new discovery. But viewers are treated to a cautionary tale: the dangers of not knowing yourself or your own history.
Tajima-Pena, the show's producer, has made great contributions to raising political awareness among Asian Americans. In 1987, she premiered "Who Killed Vincent Chin" with Christine Choy.
This fascinating documentary tells the story of the 1982 murder of a Chinese American by two Detroit autoworkers. The two workers were angry about the rise of Japanese automakers in the late 1970s. The incident proved to be a wake-up call for Asians across America, who suddenly understood the local and personal impact of larger economic or geopolitical rifts. The film delivers this message to young audiences.
"Asian Americans" inevitably embodies the observation that Asian Americans are "typically" Americans. But there are aspects of the Asian American experience that don’t fit neatly into this narrative, such as the rise of conservatives like Elaine Chao, active communities in Asian American churches, and the debate surrounding development and gentrification. Internal struggle.
In 1997, Tajima-Pena released My America . . . Or Honk If You Love Buddha, a touching first-person documentary film that was essentially A road trip that brings together all kinds of Asian American eccentrics: activists, rappers, Chinatown hippies. It captures an eclecticism that "Asian Americans" lacks.
While this PBS documentary doesn’t set out to reinforce the “good immigrant” narrative—that Asian Americans exist primarily to glorify the national myth of utilitarianism and meritocracy—it ultimately does something similar.
The difference in Tajima-Pena's film is that rather than personal achievement, the criterion promoted here is a kind of political consciousness, a kind of self-knowledge. This awareness is progress in itself. Rather than leaving individuals hopeless and lost in anger, it connects them to something bigger than themselves.
As award-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American, puts it, it is up to subsequent generations to determine their relationship with the past. It’s important for people to realize that they are not on this path alone, and never have been.
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