By Min Yu Huang
Recently, PBS released a docu-series called Asian Americans after their previous series The Jewish Americans, The Italian Americans, and Latino Americans in hopes to “share significant stories of the entire American people.”1 Although there was a generous amount of coverage about East Asian Americans and their fight to naturalization and acceptance in America, there was little talk about other Asian ethnicities such as South Asians and South East Asians.
Courtesy of UCLA Asian American Studies Center
The term Asian American has been traditionally associated with East Asians. “In fact, the evolution of Asian American was originally driven by the Japanese and Chinese, who were later joined by other East and Southeast Asians.”2 In 1968, University of California Berkeley students Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka were inspired by Black and American Indian civil rights movements to create an organization and a term to bring all people of Asian descent together.3 The racial discrimination East Asians Americans experienced during WW2 and the Vietnam War acted as catalyst for the Asian American organization. And throughout the years, Asian American unity has continued because of the continuous anti-Asian sentiment.
Although the term Asian American did bring people together and celebrated their shared history, it also brought setbacks. In recent years, the term has evolved to incorporate over 50 ethnic groups who speak over 100 different languages and have different cultures into one single racial category.4
As seen many times in history, when we put a diverse group of ethnicities under one single racial category, we are erasing their cultural identity, not allowing others to be exposed to diversity, and creating wrongful hostility towards another ethnic group. During WW2 many East Asians were afraid that they might be mistaken as Japanese as there was a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment at that time, they made signs and labels of what type of Asian they were. In 1982, Vincent Chin was mistaken for Japanese and was beaten on the skull with a baseball bat by two white men four days before his wedding.5 Then, after 9/11, Sikhs were mistaken as Muslims.6 Similar to how Muslim women wear hijabs or some sort of coverings, Sikhs often wear Turbans. And because many Americans are unaware of the different ethnicities that fall under Asian, ethnic groups with similar traits are frequently confused with one another. This occurrence can be explained by the ethnicity paradigm, which is where race or ethnicity is “conceptualized in terms of attitudes and beliefs, religion, language, ‘lifestyle,’ and group identification.”7 Therefore, people often confuse ethnicities within sub groups of the umbrella term “Asians” with each other. For example, some do not know the difference between the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese nor with the Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis because of their shared cultural beliefs, skin color, hair color, and many other traits.
Secondly, with the news media and the general public regularly excluding Asian groups other than East Asians when talking about topics relating to Asian Americans, we are giving the misconception that East Asians are the only Asians. In 2016, a video featuring Asian Americans and their similar experiences to New York Times Editor Michael Luo who had a white woman yell racist remarks at him was released. E.J.R David, a Filipino-American and a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska-Anchorage felt invalidated when he noticed that the video did not include his people. In response, he and four other collaborators criticized the many organizations that failed to show equal representation of Southeast and South Asians by stating:
“Even though we compose more than half of the Asian Pacific Islander population, even though we have been in these lands now called the United States since 1587, and even though many of us trace our roots back to lands that are affected by U.S. colonialism and imperialism, we still don’t belong. We’re still forgotten. We’re still not Asian American, let alone American. It’s one of the reasons many brown Asians do not identify as Asian Americans. Perhaps we just don’t feel connected to East Asian people, cultures, and lived realities. Perhaps we also don’t feel welcomed and included.”8
The marginalization and exclusion of Southeast and South Asians within the pan-ethnic group is not uncommon. Since the term Asian American was created by Chinese student Emma Gee and Japanese student Yuji Ichioka to unite and fight against the racial discrimination aimed at mostly East Asian Americans, South and Southeast Asian Americans were initially not represented. For decades, Southeast and South Asian Americans have continuously shared how they have been excluded from Asian studies, narratives, and media presentation. In the late 1960s, the Asian American Studies was established. However, the course content often surrounded Chinese and Japanese American experiences and excluded Southeast Asian Americans’.9 Then, in the late 80s, “South Asian American student groups formed on college campuses, with the intention of combating religious bigotry affecting their communities, while also challenging the exclusion of South Asians within pan-ethnic organizations and Asian American Studies departments.”10
To combat the exclusion and underrepresentation, Southeast and South Asian Americans created ethnic-specific organizations to address the needs of marginalized Asian American ethnic groups. For instance, in 1979, the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC) was formed and remains to be the “only national civil rights organization devoted to uplifting Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese American communities.”11 And in 2000, the South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) was founded as the only national South Asian organization with a social justice framework that advocates for South Asian communities and “administers the National Coalition of South Asian Organizations – a network of 60 South Asian American organizations across the US.”12
Some ways the public can show support to Southeast and South Asians includes being mindful that “Asian” and “Asian Americans” are very broad terms that encompass multiple ethnicities, separating data into ethnic-speicifc categories when possible, acknowledging the varied experiences of different Asian ethnic groups, and doing personal research to stay updated with the terminologies as they continue to change.
Notes
1. PBS Publicity, “PBS and WETA Announce Groundbreaking Documentary Series Asian Americans,” Published on July 29, 2019, Last modified on August 17, 2020, https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/pbs-and-weta-announce-groundbreaking-documentary-series-asian-americans/.
2. Sangay K. Mishra, Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans (University of Minnesota Press. 2016), 38.
3. Anna Purna Kambhampaty, “In 1968, These Activists Coined The Term ‘Asian American’ – And Helped Shape Decades of Advocacy,” Published on May 22, 2020, https://time.com/5837805/asian-american-history/?amp=true.
4. Li Zhou, “The Inadequacy of the term ‘Asian American’,” Published on May 5, 2021, https://www.vox.com/identities/22380197/asian-american-pacific-islander-aapi-heritage-anti-asian-hate-attacks.
5. Asia Blog, “35 Years After Vincent Chin’s Murder, How Has America Changed?,” Publsihed on June 16, 2017, https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/35-years-after-vincent-chins-murder-how-has-america-changed.
6. A.C. Thompson, “Sikhs In America: A History of Hate,” Published on August 4, 2017, https://www.propublica.org/article/sikhs-in-america-hate-crime-victims-and-bias.
7. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation In The United States, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2015), 22.
8. Asia Blog, “Why Some ‘Brown Asians’ Feel Left Out of The Asian American Conversation,” Asia Society, Published on October 19, 2016, https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/why-some-brown-asians-feel-left-out-asian-american-conversation.
9. Fred Cordova, Filipinos, forgotten Asian Americans: A pictorial essay, 1763-circa 1963. Hunt Publishing, 1983, quoted in Kevin L. Nadal, “The Brown Asian American Movement: Advocating For South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Filipino American Communities,” AAPR,Published on February 2, 2020, https://aapr.hkspublications.org/2020/02/02/the-brown-asian-american-movement-advocating-for-south-asian-southeast-asian-and-filipino-american-communities/#_edn20.
10. Kibria Nazli, “The racial gap: South Asian American racial identity and the Asian American, quoted in Kevin L. Nadal, “The Brown Asian American Movement: Advocating For South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Filipino American Communities,” Published on February 2, 2020, https://aapr.hkspublications.org/2020/02/02/the-brown-asian-american-movement-advocating-for-south-asian-southeast-asian-and-filipino-american-communities/#_edn20.
11. Kevin L. Nadal, “The Brown Asian American Movement: Advocating For South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Filipino American Communities,” AAPR, Published on February 2, 2020, https://aapr.hkspublications.org/2020/02/02/the-brown-asian-american-movement-advocating-for-south-asian-southeast-asian-and-filipino-american-communities/#_edn20.
12. Nadal, “The Brown Asian.”
Bibliography
Asia Blog, “35 Years After Vincent Chin’s Murder, How Has America Changed?,” Publsihed on June 16, 2017, https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/35-years-after-vincent-chins-murder-how-has-america-changed.
Asia Blog, “Why Some ‘Brown Asians’ Feel Left Out of The Asian American Conversation,” Asia Society, Published on October 19, 2016, https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/why-some-brown-asians-feel-left-out-asian-american-conversation.
Kambhampaty, Anna Purna. “In 1968, These Activists Coined The Term ‘Asian American’ – And Helped Shape Decades of Advocacy,” Published on May 22, 2020, https://time.com/5837805/asian-american-history/?amp=true.
Mishra, Sangay K.. Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans (University of Minnesota Press. 2016), 38.
Nadal, Kevin L.. “The Brown Asian American Movement: Advocating For South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Filipino American Communities,” Published on February 2, 2020, https://aapr.hkspublications.org/2020/02/02/the-brown-asian-american-movement-advocating-for-south-asian-southeast-asian-and-filipino-american-communities/#_edn20.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation In The United States, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2015), 22.
PBS Publicity. “PBS and WETA Announce Groundbreaking Documentary Series Asian Americans,” Published on July 29, 2019, Last modified on August 17, 2020, https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/pbs-and-weta-announce-groundbreaking-documentary-series-asian-americans/.
Thompson, A.C..“Sikhs In America: A History of Hate,” Published on August 4, 2017, https://www.propublica.org/article/sikhs-in-america-hate-crime-victims-and-bias. Zhou, Li. “The Inadequacy of the term ‘Asian American’,” Published on May 5, 2021, https://www.vox.com/identities/22380197/asian-american-pacific-islander-aapi-heritage-anti-asian-hate-attacks.
