After 50 years of “Asian American,” advocates say the term is ‘more essential than ever” May 31, 2018, 5:34 AM PDT By Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil LOS ANGELES — The term “Asian American” appears innocuous today. It’s in the name of film festivals, professional organizations, college clubs and an officially recognized heritage month. But that wasn’t always so. When the phrase Asian American was created — in 1968, according to activists and academics — it was a radical label of self-determination that indicated a political agenda of equality, anti-racism and anti-imperialism. Asian American was an identity that was chosen, not one that was given. Over the last 50 years, however, as people of Asian ancestry in the United States have grown in number and diversity, the term has evolved — raising new questions of who is included in Asian America, what it stands for and if it’s still relevant. “If you were to ask most people who are Asian American, ‘Describe your race or ethnicity,’ they would say, ‘I’m Japanese American,’ ‘I’m Thai, Cambodian, Filipino.’ Very few of us would start out by saying, ‘I’m Asian American,’” Daryl Maeda, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder and author of the book, “Rethinking the Asian American Movement,” said. “Instead, 'Asian American' — rather than describing our personally felt identities or describing our family histories — expresses an idea. And that idea is that as Asian Americans, we have to work together to fight for social justice and equality, not only for ourselves, but for all of the people around us.” Activists and academics trace the origins of the term back to 1968 and University of California, Berkeley students Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, who, inspired by the Black Power Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War, founded the Asian American Political Alliance as way to unite Japanese, Chinese and Filipino American students on campus. But Ronald Quidachay, who co-founded the Philippine American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE) at the then-San Francisco State College in 1967, said the term “Asian American” took time to catch on. “Nobody was referring to themselves as ‘Asian,’” he said of the Third World Liberation Front strikes in 1968 and 1969, when Ichioka and Gee’s Asian American Political Alliance joined with PACE, the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action, as well as black, Latino and Native American students at San Francisco State to demand ethnic studies and more faculty and students of color. “It was very interesting,” Quidachay, who is now a Superior Court judge in San Francisco, said of first hearing the term. “My step-dad from Guam, his father was decapitated in World War II by the Japanese… I didn’t have this animosity, but I was certainly familiar with these sorts of concerns that people from Guam, and even the Philippines, had.” A FRACTURED HISTORY This pan-Asian identity wasn’t necessarily an obvious one. Before this, people of Asian ancestry identified .

1. After 50 years of “Asian American,” advocates say the term is
‘more essential than ever”
May 31, 2018, 5:34 AM PDT
By Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil
LOS ANGELES — The term “Asian American” appears
innocuous today. It’s in the name of film festivals, professional
organizations, college clubs and an officially recognized
heritage month.
But that wasn’t always so.
When the phrase Asian American was created — in 1968,
according to activists and academics — it was a radical label of
self-determination that indicated a political agenda of equality,
anti-racism and anti-imperialism. Asian American was an
identity that was chosen, not one that was given.
Over the last 50 years, however, as people of Asian ancestry in
the United States have grown in number and diversity, the term
has evolved — raising new questions of who is included in
Asian America, what it stands for and if it’s still relevant.
“If you were to ask most people who are Asian American,
‘Describe your race or ethnicity,’ they would say, ‘I’m Japanese
American,’ ‘I’m Thai, Cambodian, Filipino.’ Very few of us
would start out by saying, ‘I’m Asian American,’” Daryl Maeda,
a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of
Colorado, Boulder and author of the book, “Rethinking the
Asian American Movement,” said.
“Instead, 'Asian American' — rather than describing our
personally felt identities or describing our family histories —
expresses an idea. And that idea is that as Asian Americans, we
have to work together to fight for social justice and equality,
not only for ourselves, but for all of the people around us.”
Activists and academics trace the origins of the term back to
1968 and University of California, Berkeley students Yuji
Ichioka and Emma Gee, who, inspired by the Black Power

2. Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War, founded
the Asian American Political Alliance as way to unite Japanese,
Chinese and Filipino American students on campus.
But Ronald Quidachay, who co-founded the Philippine
American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE) at the then-San
Francisco State College in 1967, said the term “Asian
American” took time to catch on.
“Nobody was referring to themselves as ‘Asian,’” he said of the
Third World Liberation Front strikes in 1968 and 1969, when
Ichioka and Gee’s Asian American Political Alliance joined
with PACE, the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action, as
well as black, Latino and Native American students at San
Francisco State to demand ethnic studies and more faculty and
students of color.
“It was very interesting,” Quidachay, who is now a Superior
Court judge in San Francisco, said of first hearing the term.
“My step-dad from Guam, his father was decapitated in World
War II by the Japanese… I didn’t have this animosity, but I was
certainly familiar with these sorts of concerns that people from
Guam, and even the Philippines, had.”
A FRACTURED HISTORY
This pan-Asian identity wasn’t necessarily an obvious one.
Before this, people of Asian ancestry identified with their
ethnic group and didn’t see commonalities with each other.
For instance, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was up for
renewal in 1902, Maeda said, Japanese immigrants didn’t
protest it, and when people of Japanese descent were forced into
incarceration camps during World War II, Chinese and Korean
Americans often wore buttons stating their ethnicity so that they
wouldn’t be mistaken for being Japanese.
“In other words, the injustice here isn’t that you’re
incarcerating Japanese Americans, the injustice is that you’re
lumping us in with them unfairly,” Maeda said.
The term Asian American, however, signaled a shared and
interconnected history of immigration, labor exploitation and
racism, as well as a common political agenda. It was also a

3. pushback against the pejorative word "Oriental."
“There was a recognition that the term Oriental was a
Eurocentric term that geographically referenced the East
relative to Europe,” said Karen Umemoto, director of UCLA’s
Asian American Studies Center, which was co-founded by
Ichioka in 1969. “Many of the stereotypes of Orientals and
Orientalism was part of the project of imperialist conquest —
British, and later, American — in Asia, with the exoticization of
the Oriental as well as the creation of threat and fear, as
evidenced in the yellow peril movement.”
The U.S. Census first used the term Asian American in 1980,
according to Paul Ong, a professor of Asian American Studies
at UCLA who has also served as an advisor to the U.S. Bureau
of the Census. It was only in 2016 that the U.S. government
formally banned the word Oriental in federal law, instead
requiring the use of the term Asian American.
CREATING A COMMUNITY
While the term Asian American was used in activist and
academic circles, it took decades for the term to become
popularized across the country.
The turning point, said Helen Zia, a journalist and author of the
book, “Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American
People,” was the 1982 killing of Vincent Chin, a Chinese
American who was mistaken for being Japanese at a time when
auto workers in Detroit were being laid off in part because of
competition with Japanese manufacturers.
“The nature of the killing of Vincent Chin compelled people to
see what there was in common,” said Zia, referring to different
Asian ethnicities. “So whether people wanted to feel like there
was anything in common or not, they could not deny that if they
looked that way, they could be killed, whether they were
Japanese ethnically or not.”
Zia, who helped organize the community in response to Chin’s
killing, said the national movement that followed helped bring
together Asian Americans of all different backgrounds at a time
when they made up only about 3.5 million, or less than 2

4. percent of the total population, according to the U.S. Census.
“The fact that they could come together and multiply their
presence in the American democracy was huge,” she said. “It
really was an empowering recognition… It raised the stakes in
terms of no—you can’t ignore this population.
In addition, Chin’s case also introduced the Asian Americans to
white Americans.
“To the rest of America at the time, Asian people didn’t exist in
the popular consciousness,” said Zia. “They were like, ‘Oh,
where did these people come from? What — they’re organizing,
they have a voice, they’re talking about racism? What — they
speak English?’ These were all the reactions we got… It was a
teaching process.”
But just as Asian America took shape, it expanded and evolved.
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act — which changed
immigration quotas for non-European countries — and the
conflicts in Southeast Asia resulted in new populations from
countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In addition, the U.S. Supreme
Court’s overturning of anti-miscegenation laws in 1967’s
Loving v. Virginia led to a boom in the number of multiracial
Asian Americans.
Even as Asian American remained a strategic political label,
this diversity also meant that recognizing each ethnicity on its
own terms became a critical tool for advancement.
For instance, Kathy Ko Chin, president of the Asian and Pacific
Islander American Health Forum, explained that when viewed as
a single group, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders had the
highest rates of health insurance coverage in the country in
2013. But by disaggregating the data, she found that not all
groups fared equally well — for example, more than 20 percent
of Korean Americans were uninsured in her analysis, a higher
rate than any other racial category. Knowing this, the APIAHF
was able to address the disparity.
“Because we see the challenges of having only aggregated
data,” said Chin, “the only way to address those challenges is

5. through disaggregated data. It’s using a powerful tool to zero in
on how to best achieve equity for our communities.”
'THAT NEVER FELT LIKE US'
There are approximately 21.4 million people of Asian descent
living in the United States, according to a 2016 U.S. Census
estimate. They come from more than 20 countries and are now
the fastest growing major racial or ethnic group in the United
States, according to the Pew Research Center.
With this growth and diversification of the community come
new questions about what it means to be Asian American, who
belongs, and which issues to advocate for.
Sarath Suong, executive director of the Providence Youth
Student Movement, which organizes Southeast Asian youth in
Rhode Island, said that as a Cambodian refugee, he often feels
like he doesn’t fit into Asian America.
“Growing up during the 1980s and 1990s, the Asians we saw
were East Asian, and often images of the model minority,” he
said. “And that never felt like us. We were failing out of
schools, we were being harassed and profiled by the police, and
there was a really fast school to prison pipeline — and now, a
school to deportation pipeline.”
“When I wanted to join Asian-American groups, I always felt
like I was othered by my skin color, my class or my refugee
experience,” Suong added. “I’ve always felt, personally and as a
community, rejected by Asian America.”
Deepa Iyer, author of the book “We Too Sing America: South
Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our
Multiracial Future,” said South Asians grapple with similar
questions of who — and which issues — belong under the
umbrella of Asian America.
“In the wake of 9/11, South Asians would bring up the need to
address national security and that be something that Asian
Americans look at broadly, but oftentimes they felt that those
issues were not part and parcel of the policy agenda of Asian-
American organizations,” she said, citing Islamophobia as
another such issue.

6. “Questions from those who find themselves on the margins of
the Asian-American community — who are mainly South Asian
and Southeast Asian — can be really helpful in refining an
analysis of what it means to be Asian in this country.”
For others, the future of Asian American is about reconnecting
with the term’s roots.
“Today when a community of immigrants and the descendants
of immigrants from Asia is more diverse than ever, the term
Asian American is more essential than ever before,” Maeda
said. “People of Asian ancestry continue to face discrimination,
harassment and prejudice, and just as it’s been over the past
century-and-a-half, we exist in a society that sees us all as one,
as all looking the same, as all being the same.”
“And given that that’s the case,” he added, “it’s even more
incumbent upon us to come together to fight for social justice.”
Assiri 1
Essay 1 outline
Q1: What is the central question you are engaging in?
Who I am?
framing question?
1. Who are you? who were you before? and who will you
become?
- I choose this question because it will be easier for the reader
to get to know me first before diving into my identity.
2. How has your identity consciousness developed over time?
- There is a link between this question the previous question at
what point who I am now and how my consciousness of my
identity is developed Day by day.
Q2: What’s your central response to these questions?
-Thesis: There are many factors that make a person’s identity,
including personal and external factors.

7. Q 3 and 4: what are the source and evidence? How do these
sources and evidence supports your response?
1. Race: Usually seen as biological, referring to the physical
characteristics of a person.
- This concept will help me by showing my race and talking
about my people to the reader and where I come from. the use of
the concept of race is important for the raider to know about my
culture and identity of the social in which I grow up.
2. Education : the knowledge and development resulting from
the process of being educated.
-This concept will make it easier for me to answer the question
who were you before? where I will talk about the level and the
method of education in my country.
3. Liberation: the act of liberating : the state of being liberated.
- I will use this concept to describe the situations I went
through to discover my identity. In my opinion, the first way to
recognize my identity is liberation.
4. worldviews: a comprehensive conception or apprehension of
the world especially from a specific standpoint.
- I will use this concept to explain how the world views my
community and identity and how the media has a significant
role in changing the world's view
5. Dominant and subordinate group : the dominant group is that
which holds the most power in a given society, while
subordinate groups are those who lack power compared to the
dominant group.
- I will use this concept to show the reader which group I am
Essay : Asian American Consciousness and Identity
Texts:

8. Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil: “After 50 Years of ‘Asian
American’…”
Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “Banking Concept of
Education.”
Beverly Tatum: Why are all the black kids sitting together in
the cafeteria? “The Complexities
of Identity.”
Russell Jeung: Mountain Movers, “Introduction.”
Jennifer Ho: Keywords, “Identity.”
Context:
Tatum explains that all people possess multiple identities which
are shaped by and embedded in our “social, cultural, and
historic contexts.” She also notes that our consciousness of
these identities and their meanings develop through self-
reflection over time. Through Freire, we learned that critical
consciousness entails not only the “emergence of
consciousness” but also a “criticalintervention in reality.”
On a parallel track, we learned from Kandil and Jeung that the
term “Asian American” can be traced back to a specific
political, cultural, and social intersection in U.S. history. The
Asian American identity, then, was created by people who
found it necessary to assert an autonomous identity against
oppressive forces.
Essay question:
Reflect on your journey in coming into identity-consciousness,
specifically your racial and ethnic identities. In a narrative
essay answer the following perennial question: Who am I?
You must apply at least five of the concepts from at least two
readings, three of which should be quoted passages.
There are countless ways you can answer this question, so you
must “frame” or guide your response based on one or two of the
following questions:
Framing questions:

9. 1. Who are you now? Who were you before? And who will you
become? In other words, how has your identity consciousness
developed over time?
Requirements:
· 4 pages in length minimum (no upper limit)
· MLA format
· 12 pt font, Times New Roman, 1 inch margins all around,
100% double spaced
· Relevant and creative title (not “Essay #1” or “My narrative”
Essay question 2:
In an argument-based (i.e., thesis-driven) essay answer the
following question: In your opinion, what was the most
significant cause and most significant consequence of the
creation of an Asian American identity? You must build your
argument on the unit readings and provide at least two passages
from at least two different readings (total of four passages, at
least).