Friday, 5/30/97 Asian-American movement continues living on
HISTORY: Forum to relate past, present, future of a peoples’
ongoing fight
By Stephanie Wang and Amy Luu Serve the People; Power to the
People; People Unite!! When you take these political slogans and
attach a face to them, odds are you wouldn’t pick a yellow one. Why
not? Since when has an Asian American become associated with
complacency and self-interest? Did we never learn our history of
struggle and resistance in the United States? Our ancestors in
America were field hands, slave laborers and prisoners in
concentration camps, excluded from the basic rights of citizenship.
We have been drafted to fight in a war against our own brothers and
sisters in Asia and evicted from low-income housing that service
our elderly immigrants. This is our history in the United States,
tainted with the spilled blood of our people. But it should not be
about victims of an oppressive society; rather, it should be about
Asian Pacific Islanders who have resisted oppression through
individual thoughts and actions. We were not voiceless entities
accepting the cultural, social and political upheavals of the ’60s,
the ’70s, the ’80s or now; rather, we built an Asian-American
movement marked by resistance, collective struggle and liberation.
When the United States government asked us to kill our own brothers
and sisters in a racist Vietnam War fueled by self-interest, we
struggled to understand our place in America. As Asian Americans,
we did not urge to bring our brothers home, but rather stood in
solidarity with the revolutionary struggles of the "yellow" people
across the world. In another instance, our movement – in coalition
with other progressive peoples – shook the ivory tower of academic
institutions to bring about ethnic studies that spoke of our
history and lives. And in a most fundamental way, this movement
really sought to define our space and place as Asian Americans,
through questions, ideological discussions and the liberation of
minds. Today, this need for struggle against oppression may seem
redundant to some. After 30 years of expanded immigration of the
professional class, our Asian Pacific Islander communities have
made great inroads into a society that has always resisted us with
their racist and sexist institutions. Our increased access to
quality education is one significant mark of this progress. There
are Asian Pacific Islanders who have rooted themselves in
middle-class lifestyles because of these expanded opportunities.
However, they forget that many of us, the "model minorities," live
in poverty. This complacency created from class stratification has
also blurred our concept of our American past rooted in mass
movement. Part of the legacy of the historical Asian-American
movement is the reminder that the struggle continues and the
mandate that we should learn from the past in building for the
future. An upcoming forum on the Asian- American movement, titled
"Learning from the Past and the Present for the Movement of the
Future," will place our contemporary struggles and issues in this
intergenerational context of mass movement. Our class, Asian
American studies 197J, the Asian-American Movement, co-instructed
by Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu at UCLA, will host this forum in
the hopes of raising the political consciousness of students and
community members about present social and political issues. By
linking the present struggle with the movement, we want to
demonstrate this continuing legacy. The forum will be held on
Saturday, May 31 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at UCLA’s Kerckhoff Grand
Salon. For more information, please contact Malcolm Kao at (310)
825-2974 or e-mail him at malcolmk@ucla.edu. Wang is a third-year
history and Asian- American studies student. Luu is a second-year
Asian-American studies student.