3. “social movement,”2 to the decline of the AAM in the late
1970s.
My analysis generates four periods of study. The first (late
1960s to
mid-1970s) was dominated by activists and activist-scholars
produc-
ing knowledge in the zenith of the AAM. The second (late
1970s to late
1980s) represented a vacuum in AAM research. The third (late
1980s to
late 1990s) saw a slow upsurge in AAM scholarship and a
greater inclu-
sion of scholarly works and civil rights frameworks. The fourth
(2000 to
present) can be seen as the “coming of age”—the adolescence,
but not full
maturity—of AAM scholarship, with the greatest number of
scholarly
works, a re-emphasis on the radical roots of the AAM, and
attention to
Steven Lawson’s “interactive model” that calls for connecting
local and
national, social and political issues.3
5. Five areas of struggle were critical to the 1960s–1970s AAM.
First,
Asian Americans of diverse ages helped to transform the
Antiwar Move-
ment from its emphasis on saving American lives to exposing
racism,
sexism, and capitalism at home and abroad. Activists linked the
U.S. war
in Vietnam to critiques of U.S. imperialism and militarism in
Cambodia,
Hiroshima, Okinawa, the Philippines, Hawaii, and elsewhere.
Second,
given the predominance of youth in the AAM, it is not
surprising that
educational transformation, particularly establishing ethnic
studies, cap-
tured their imagination. More than simply including
marginalized groups
on campus and in the curriculum, activists contested the very
structures
and purpose of the educational system and redirected learning
toward
community service rather than self- or corporate interests. San
Francisco
6. State College’s five-month strike that birthed ethnic studies
remains the
longest student strike in U.S. history. Third, “serve the people”
programs
and connections to the community, particularly working-class
communi-
ties, became central guiding principles of the AAM. Activists
developed
programs to meet basic human rights, including the provision of
housing,
jobs, healthcare, and education. Fourth, labor struggles were
integral to
the AAM, not only because of the working-class location of
many Asian
Americans in that period and historically, but also because of
the influence
of Marxist theory, which identifies capitalism as the primary
source of op-
pression and class struggle as key to liberation. Fifth, the AAM
originated
a new political and pan-Asian identity and a new vocabulary,
creating the
very term, “Asian American,” to signify a common experience
with racism
7. and a shedding of the passivity associated with the “Oriental.”7
129Who StudieS the ASiAn AmericAn movement? •
fujino •
MainstreaM social MoveMent literature
Mainstream social movement scholarship, primarily in the fields
of sociol-
ogy, political science, and history, has produced a voluminous
literature
on the 1960s–1970s social movements.8 Yet there has been
scant atten-
tion paid to the study of the AAM, with a few exceptions.9 Two
frame-
works—the logic governing U.S. race relations and the tendency
towards
liberalism—help to explain this erasure of memory in relation to
Asian
American resistance. First, two mainstream newsmagazines
popularized
the image of Asian Americans as the “model minority” in 1966,
the same
year that Stokely Carmichael popularized the concept of “Black
Power”
8. and that the Black Panther Party formed. The alleged Asian
American
tradition—upward mobility gained from hard work, delayed
gratification,
self-reliance, and passivity—contrasted sharply with the long-
established
Black protest tradition (and the earlier image of Asian
Americans as hy-
perpolitical yellow peril threats).10
Second, the social movement literature tends to privilege the
Civil
Rights and the early New Left movements of the mid-1950s to
early 1960s.
These movements, while contesting racism and economic
inequality,
upheld views of U.S. society as pluralistic and committed to the
liberal
values of democracy and equality contained in the 14th
Amendment’s
equal protection clause. Social movement scholars, most
famously Todd
Gitlin, created a “good sixties/bad sixties” divide. Prior to 1965
or 1968, this
narrative goes, the Black freedom and New Left movements,
9. respectively,
were engaged in projects creating participatory democracy, the
beloved
community, and interracial unity. After that turning point, the
movements
turned towards militancy and violence, Black Power and
nationalism.11
Historian Clayborne Carson observed, “As the nonviolent
struggles of
the early 1960s gave way to the violent racial conflicts of the
late 1960s,
the understandable reluctance of scholars, most of whom were
white, to
study black movements close up rather than from afar became
more and
more evident.”12
The model minority logic promotes hard work and non-
resistance as
the main pathway to upward mobility; a liberal framework
promotes the
U.S. as a pluralistic society that provides channels for voicing
grievances
and is responsive to those concerns. The location of Asian
Americans as
10. 130 • jAAS • 11:2
a “wedge group” in the racial hierarchy with greater access to
economic
rewards seems to validate the democratic and egalitarian
structures of U.S.
society. But the AAM’s legacy negates these logics. The AAM
calls attention
to anti-Asian racism. The AAM embraced, to a large degree, the
ideology
of Black Power, with its radical analysis of U.S. racism,
capitalism, and
imperialism and its call for self-determination. Uncovering the
history of
the AAM raises questions about the nature of U.S. pluralism and
model
minority opportunities and suggests the relevance of grassroots
protest
and radical critiques in the past and present.
asian aMerican MoveMent scholarship in the Field oF asian
aMerican
studies
The field of Asian American Studies (AAS) has been critical to
11. the pro-
duction of AAM scholarship. Yet a paradox emerges. On one
hand, it is
not surprising that AAS scholars would study the AAM, given
the field’s
genealogy. On the other hand, a systematic and rigorous area of
social
movement research has not, after four decades, been developed.
This ten-
sion between acknowledging and erasing an activist history of
the field is
represented in two of the most influential Asian American
history books.
Ronald Takaki’s widely read and lengthy work, Strangers from
a Different
Shore, does not even mention 1960s–1970s activism. Sucheng
Chan does
discuss the 1960s–1970s AAM in one page of her slim Asian
Americans:
An Interpretive History. Yet several pages are devoted to the
post-1970s
struggles, particularly hate crimes and electoral campaigns—
issues that
reinforce a liberal framework.13 Chan’s focus is reproduced in
12. AAS antholo-
gies, which discuss Asian American resistance, but give
minimal attention
to the 1960s–1970s.14
Why hasn’t more AAM research been produced? Who studies
the
AAM? It was often activists-turned-scholars who studied the
early New
Left. Yet relatively few AAM activists became formal
scholars,15 perhaps for
two reasons. First, AAM activists had a different relationship to
race, class,
and cultural capital. Unlike Richard Flacks’s finding that many
early New
Left activists came from middle-class families with the cultural
capital to
facilitate doctoral studies, the families of Asian American
activists were
131Who StudieS the ASiAn AmericAn movement? •
fujino •
often either working-class or promoting study in the sciences,
professional
13. fields, or pragmatic occupations.16 When Asian American
activists became
academics, they were often located in “non-research” university
positions,17
resulting in a slower rate of scholarly production. Second, the
paucity of
AAM studies also reflects the AAM’s engagement with
radicalism. As the
New Communist movement emerged in the early 1970s, the
radical wing
of the AAM embraced Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and its
demand for
revolutionary transformation. This decision included
prioritizing work-
ing-class jobs and critiquing the mainstream educational system
as a
bourgeois social institution. Aligned with their political
ideology, several
AAM activists consciously left college and/or found working-
class jobs.18
For those located in the academy, the AAM is more dangerous
to study,
especially if one is closeted about a radical past.
Until the recent period, activist-scholars in “non-research”
14. university
positions and students have produced the bulk of AAM studies.
Most
notably, activists or “organic intellectuals,” in the Gramscian
sense, have
written personal reflections and activist analyses.19 Yet
priorities placed on
day-to-day organizing and the lack of institutional support
erected bar-
riers to sustaining an intensive and prolonged research project.
But more
recently, memoirs and biographies have been published as “pre-
Movement
activists” enter their golden years.20 As 1960s–1970s activists
approach
retirement or ill health, more memoirs—a popular genre for ‘60s
activ-
ists—are likely to emerge.21 In addition, the recent surge of
dissertations
on social movements suggests an upswing in AAM studies.
In his historiographical essay, Steven Lawson observed three
periods
of Civil Rights Movement scholarship. The first generation of
scholars
15. (late 1960s to late 1970s) focused on national leaders and
events and
privileged judicial and legislative strategies. The second
generation (late
1970s to mid-1980s) shifted attention to local and grassroots
organizing.
The third generation (mid-1980s on) adopted an “interactive
approach,”
connecting “the local with the national, the social with the
political,” and
internal with external factors.22 Though AAM scholarship also
began in the
late 1960s, the study of the AAM does not fit with Lawson’s
periodization
for several reasons. First, from the start, the AAM, by and
large, did not
promote individual leaders, though activists like Yuri
Kochiyama were seen
132 • jAAS • 11:2
as leader-mentors. Instead, there was a conscious adoption of
collective
leadership models. Former AAM activists highlight this idea in
16. Philip Vera
Cruz’s memoir: “Leadership, I feel, is only incidental to the
movement. The
movement should be the most important thing . . . . It must be
something
that is continuous, with goals and ideas that the leadership can
then build
upon.”23 Second, rather than making policy change or
government reliance
its central goal, the AAM emphasized the power of people to
create self-
sustaining institutions. AAM scholarship, with some exceptions,
tended
to repudiate, from the start, the focus on national leadership and
electoral
victories. Not surprisingly, AAM studies have been heavily
social histori-
cal, with a focus on ordinary people and everyday lives. Third,
given the
geographic concentration of Asian American communities on
the West
Coast, AAM activity occurred in local and regional areas,
particularly in
urban sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles and
17. to a lesser
extent in New York City. Rather than spotlight national
organizing, per
se, AAM studies reflected this focus on local struggles and on
an interac-
tive approach connecting local, national, and international
movements.
In contrast to Lawson, my periodization of AAM historiography
attends
to the issues of author’s location, audience, political economy,
and larger
social movement activity.
i. late 1960s to Mid-1970s: activist productions; radical,
coMMunity-based issues
Material on the AAM began emerging as the Movement
unfolded. The
UCLA Asian American Studies Center (AASC) played a central
role in
its production. In 1971, a mere two years after its
establishment, AASC
published Roots: An Asian American Reader. Roots contains
close to sixty
articles, many reprints from AAM publications, arranged in
three broad
18. sections on identity, history, and community.24 As examples of
the assimi-
lationist logic, Roots included: (a) the 1966 U.S. News & World
Report’s
article, “Success Story of One Minority Group in America,”
which popu-
larized the image of Chinese Americans as “model minorities”
and (b) an
interview with S.I. Hayakawa, president of San Francisco State
College
during the strike and future Republican U.S. senator, who
stated, “The
133Who StudieS the ASiAn AmericAn movement? •
fujino •
wartime relocation” was positive because it “gave us a chance
to really
become Americans, to integrate into U.S. cities, rather than
remaining
residents of Little Tokyo.”25 By contrast, the majority of
articles in Roots
promoted political protest, Third World solidarities, and
opposition to
19. institutionalized racism and imperialism as strategies for
gaining collec-
tive mobility.
Amy Uyematsu’s “The Emergence of Yellow Power in
America,” first
printed in the UCLA student-activist publication, Gidra,
captured the
AAM generation’s rejection of their parents’ assimilationist and
integra-
tionist aspirations. Instead, she positioned the Black Power
movement,
with its bold efforts at self-definition and self-determination, as
a model
for the nascent AAM. She turned the racial order on its head by
asking
Asian Americans to see a shared oppression with Black
Americans and
to challenge the anti-Black racism harbored by many Asian
Americans.26
AAM leader Pat Sumi rebuked the commodity desires and
political myopia
of many; borrowing from Mao, she likened this logic to “a frog
sitting at
the bottom of the well” who thinks “the sky’s no bigger than the
20. well.”
Instead, she urged readers to feel a connectedness with
community and
contestation: “If you identify with your people, then you
become part of
their suffering and also part of their fighting power.”27 Most
articles focused
explicitly on AAM struggles, organizations, or individuals, or
offered social
analyses of community conditions, economic and racial
inequalities, and
collective resistance. Several articles framed social problems
through a
critique of capitalism, imperialism, and racism, including I Wor
Kuen’s
Twelve-point Program, which called for “an end to male
chauvinism,”
“community control of institutions and land,” and “a socialist
society.”28
Roots, as “the standard textbook for AAS courses throughout
the nation
for many years,” had a major impact on student and activist
understand-
ings of Asian American history.29
21. Five years after Roots, AASC published Counterpoint. In
offering a
more scholarly approach, particularly in its critical assessment
of the state
of AAS scholarship and its call for new theoretical and
methodological
models, Counterpoint helped to propel an analytic turn in the
nascent
field. In particular, editor Emma Gee criticized earlier
paradigms for their
reliance on the assimilationist framework, including an
exclusive use of
134 • jAAS • 11:2
English-language sources. Yuji Ichioka’s article on Issei
socialists and H.
Mark Lai’s on the Chinese American Left are but two of the
more widely
known of the many Counterpoint articles that created an Asian
American
history marked by resistance and political engagement.
Counterpoint was
not striving to emulate mainstream academic standards, but
22. rather to
develop alternative theories, particularly on institutional racism,
internal
colonialism, and Marxism, and a methodology of praxis. Gee
noted, “All
[articles] are here to aid in the search to uncover the wrong
questions
divorced from social reality and to raise new questions rooted in
it.”30
Because Counterpoint, like Roots, emerged in the context of the
AAM,
virtually all of the articles—whether on immigration,
community forma-
tion, history, media, or “land, labor, and capital”—contained a
political
edge and a critique of social conditions. Most articles on the
1960s–1970s
AAM centered on educational transformation, labor struggles,
and
redevelopment campaigns within a U.S. context. But given the
Third
Worldism of the times, it was not surprising to see a discussion
of global
issues, including “The Story of Marcos Coercion.” Still,
23. compared to
Roots, Counterpoint had a diminished activist focus. One could
interpret
this change as the turn from activism towards
institutionalization taking
place in many AAS programs by the mid-1970s. Another
reading is that
Counterpoint was seeking to develop critical theoretical
paradigms and to
encourage original research on issues of race, class, and
nation.31
As the oldest journal in AAS, Amerasia Journal has exerted a
major
impact on the direction of the field.32 That the 30th anniversary
cumulative
index, published in 2001, lists one heading as “Asian American
Studies and
the Movement” is suggestive of their mutually constitutive
nature.33 The
journal has focused on political issues, educational
transformation, critical
pedagogy, and critical essays on the development of the field—
all integral
to the origins of the AAM. But, a careful examination of the
24. entire run
of Amerasia Journal reveals surprisingly few articles on the
1960s–1970s
AAM, outside of the 1989 special issue.34
Anthologies produced at other universities also reflected the
field’s
origins in the AAM and, in turn, helped to shape the nascent
AAM.35 Stu-
dent-based women’s collectives at UC Berkeley and Stanford
University
published Asian American women’s anthologies.36 That
Berkeley’s Asian
135Who StudieS the ASiAn AmericAn movement? •
fujino •
Women (1971), the more sophisticated and politically radical of
the two,
was also more influential is suggestive of the ways that their
critiques of
racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism resonated with
the larger
AAM. Asian Women sought to articulate an analysis of Asian
women’s
25. subordination linked to class and race inequality: “The
liberation of our
revolutionary sisters in China and Vietnam has taken place
within socialist
revolutions.”37 As was typical of Asian American women’s
organizing at the
time, Asian Women articulated a sense of alienation from the
mainstream
women’s movement and a desire to work alongside “our
brothers” against
sexism because “[i]t is the social system [referring to
capitalism], not men,
which is the enemy.”38
Internationalism, anti-imperialism, and Third Worldism were
com-
mon themes throughout Asian Women. Several articles centered
on opposi-
tion to the Vietnam war, including a delegation’s report on the
influential
Indochinese Women’s Conference in Vancouver, and on how the
U.S.
government’s use of toxic chemicals in Vietnam and the
sterilization of
Third World women created a situation of “genocide.” An
26. interview with
activist Pat Sumi revealed the impact on her political
transformation of
her trip to North Korea, North Vietnam, and China on a
delegation led by
Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. Though there was less
attention to
sexuality than in current women’s anthologies, Asian Women
criticized the
inequality of birth control (sterilization and IUDs to Third
World women
and the Pill to middle-class U.S. women), advocated women’s
control of
their own bodies and sexuality, and supported gay rights.”39
In her implicitly socialist-feminist analysis of the Asian
American
women’s movement, Mayumi Tsutagawa (1974) criticized
women, espe-
cially those of the middle class, for engaging in a “superficial
rebellion”
based on “a highly individualist way of thinking”:
[They] may study the Joy of Sex and seek equal partnership in
bed rather
27. than studying the history of our society and seeking a better
way of life
for all our people . . . . They also may think that “I should get a
high paying
job just because I am a woman and just as good as a man” rather
than
thinking about a better work situation for all sisters . . . . It is
not enough
to rebel against the un-cute little stereotypes of Asian
females.40
Instead, Tsutagawa called for a historical and materialist
analysis of wom-
en’s oppression based on women’s unpaid domestic labor, the
ideology of
136 • jAAS • 11:2
“the happy home and lovely family,” and the double oppression
of Third
World women. She also urged unity and struggle with Asian
American
men and “all Third World peoples.”41
UC Berkeley’s AAS second anthology, Asian American Review
(1976),
28. focused less on activist issues and its editorial staff consisted
mainly of
faculty, paralleling the changes towards institutionalization and
Movement
decline seen in the UCLA AASC anthologies. Still, Asian
American Review
diverges from mainstream academic content and form. A staff
member
served on the editorial board; contributors were students, staff,
and faculty;
and materials covered intellectual, personal, and creative
expressions. Two
articles focused explicitly on AAM issues outside of
pedagogical discus-
sions: the International Hotel struggle for low-income housing
and a story
on activist-poet Janice Mirikitani.42
In this first period, it was mainly activists who produced AAM
studies,
with institutional support from newly emerging Asian American
Studies
programs. Among the ideological heterogeneity in these
publications, there
was a strong tendency towards radical analyses, with critiques
29. of racism,
capitalism, and imperialism (and sexism to a lesser degree); the
study of
domestic issues in global contexts; a focus on grassroots and
community-
based issues; and dialectical movement among ethnic-specific,
pan-Asian,
and Third World contexts.43
ii. late 1970s to late 1980s: vacuuM oF aaM studies
From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, there was a near vacuum
of AAM
studies, outside of valuable AAM newspapers.44 This decline in
production
coincides with what Sucheng Chan calls a period of
“stagnation” in AAS,
in terms of program development, faculty hires, and
publications.45 Still,
this period saw numerous books published on Asian American
subjects,46
including resistance outside the 1960s–1970s.47 So beyond
stagnation, this
publication void hints at the impact of the political economy
and social
30. movement activity.
Many argue that the AAM was in decline by the late 1970s,48 a
phe-
nomenon related to the conventional wisdom that the “long
‘60s” ended
by the mid-1970s.49 To the contrary, activist-intellectual Max
Elbaum, in
137Who StudieS the ASiAn AmericAn movement? •
fujino •
Revolution’s in the Air, convincingly argues that the “New
Communist
Movement” flourished throughout the 1970s and into the
1980s.50 More-
over, as the nationalism of the late 1960s morphed into the
Marxist-Lenin-
ism of the 1970s, separate groups that worked in alliance with
one another
(Third World solidarity) transformed themselves into
multinational
formations.51 In the AAM, for example, I Wor Kuen and the
Red Guard
Party, both formed in 1969, merged in 1971 to become the first
national
31. Asian American revolutionary organization. Then, in 1978, I
Wor Kuen
merged with the largely Chicana/o August Twenty-Ninth
Movement to
form the League of Revolutionary Struggle, one of the largest
New Com-
munist organizations, unique in its predominantly oppressed
nationality
membership and women’s leadership.52
My point is that these groups existed throughout the 1970s and
1980s,
during the period of decline in the production of AAM
scholarship. So,
what changed the correspondence between the larger social
movements
and AAM publishing? Clearly, the increasingly conservative
political
climate exerted an influence on the direction of both political
organizing
and AAS. While these multinational groups continued to
organize around
Asian American issues, they did so in less visible ways. More
significantly,
32. the revolutionary nature of these groups created a divide with
AAS, which
was becoming de-radicalized—thus, contributing to the vacuum
of AAM
studies in this period.
III. Late 1980s to Late-1990s: MoveMent towards acadeMIc and
reforMIst currents, PersIstence of actIvIst and radIcaL anaLyses
In the late 1980s, there was a re-surfacing of AAM publications.
Important
to launching this period was Amerasia Journal’s special issue
commemorat-
ing the 20th anniversary of the San Francisco State College
strike.53 That
the strike had led to the establishment of ethnic studies helps to
explain
why an AAS journal might focus on these events. But, why
now? Why
commemorate the 20th anniversary, but not the 10th or 30th?
Editor Rus-
sell Leong offers clues in his introduction. His brief
commentary begins
and ends with a discussion of the tenure battle of an AAS
professor. Don
Nakanishi had been denied tenure, but his case was fraught
33. with, ac-
138 • jAAS • 11:2
cording to his attorney, Dale Minami, “racism and bigotry” and
“fraud
in high places.”54 Not just any UCLA faculty, Nakanishi was
co-founder
of Amerasia Journal and longstanding director of UCLA’s
AASC. To the
journal staff, Nakanishi’s case signaled the ongoing need to
organize
against anti-Asian racism and to continue the struggle for
educational
transformation. In this context, it seemed apropos to reflect on
the San
Francisco State strike.55
The 1989 special issue was unique among Amerasia Journal
issues in its
focus on the 1960s–1970s AAM. Glenn Omatsu’s influential
“Four Prisons”
commenced the issue by examining changes in political
thought—from
1960s radicalism to 1980s neoconservativism—generated by
34. shifts in the
political economy, particularly the “one-sided class war” waged
by corpo-
rations in the 1970s. In response to those who locate the AAM
within a
civil rights framework, Omatsu argues that the AAM “coincided
not with
. . . civil rights but with the later demand for black liberation; .
. . was not
centered on the aura of racial identity but embraced
fundamental ques-
tions of oppression and power; . . . and that the main thrust was
not one
of seeking legitimacy and representation within American
society but the
larger goal of liberation.”56 Karen Umemoto’s article was the
first study
to highlight the role of Asian American students in the San
Francisco
State strike, though Asian American groups comprised fully half
of the
six organizations in the Third World Liberation Front. Her
article locates
educational inequalities within social structure, particularly
35. institutional-
ized racism and increasing corporate control over education,
and articu-
lates Black Power-inspired theories and strategies of the strike,
including
the concept of student- and community-based self-
determination. The
article, which has become a …
Reading Journals (10% or 100 points total / 8) Each week for
weeks 2-9, you will complete and submit a reading journal that
summarizes the main points from the week’s reading and
discusses ideas you developed based on the readings. The length
and style are at your discretion. I cannot imagine that you
would be able to adequately summarize and reflect on the
week’s readings in less than two pages, but you might. It will be
most helpful to you if you complete these weekly.
There are three grade possibilities for these assignments:
12.5 = You submitted something and it met expectations by
engaging all the readings;
9 = You submitted something and it did not meet expectations;
0 = You did not submit anything. This is almost a simple
“check” assignment.
The “9” grade is for those submissions that show you have not
done (all) the reading or not done it thoroughly.
These assignments are mainly for you to a) keep you on track
and b) give you a record of your ideas about the readings.
Length: 2+ pages Style: Informal, Formal, Academic, Whatever
Works For You Citation: Mention the authors, use quotations
marks, and, if it’s helpful for you, refer to pages.