"ASIAN AMERICAN PACIFIC ISLANDER DESI HERITAGE MONTH"

 “ASIAN-AMERICAN PACIFIC ISLANDER DESI  HERITAGE MONTH”

    The official celebration of Asian-American Heritage (APIDA) began in May, 1979.  It began as a week of celebration and expanded to a month in 1990.  The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the USA in 1843 and to remember the work of the Chinese workers on the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in May, 1869.   In the evolving American system of race, people of Asian descent have not reached “ethnic” status as people of Hispanic/Latinx have.  So, they are still classified as a “race,” even though no one really fits under that oppressive word, designed by Anglo men to be able to exploit labor and lands as those who were on top of the racial ladder. Pacific Islanders were added as a category with Asian-Americans in 2009.  Recently “Desi” was added to the month to indicate that South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankas, etc.) are included in this fluid “racial” category.

The killing of Asian-American women in Atlanta in 2021 is a reminder of the deadly power of race in American culture.  A young man classified as “white” blamed Asian-American women for his sexual addiction, and rather than seeking a group to help him cope with his addiction, he decided to seek to eliminate what he took to be the source of the problem.  He saw Asian-American women as the “other,” as the enemy.  There is an enraging and long history of this kind of treatment of people of Asian heritage in USA, from the Chinese Exclusion Acts to the Japanese internment camps of WW II to the blaming of Asian-Americans for Covid, leading to many random vicious attacks. 

         Because the system of race has so long focused on Black and white issues, it is not clear where Americans of Asian heritage fit into the system.  Using Isabel Wilkerson’s category of “caste,”  people of Asian heritage would be considered in “the middle caste,”  not quite Black but not white.  We had a few Asian families in my small hometown of Helena, Arkansas, and in our separatist school system, they went to the “white” school.  At that time, people categorized as “Asian” were seen as descendants of what we then called “Far-East Asia,” such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.  As far as I can recall, we had no families of Indian or Pakistani or Sri Lankan heritage in Helena, but they now are incorporated into the category of “Asian.”

         Asian-Americans present a profound problem for the system of race, because many of them routinely beat those classified as “white” on national test scores for academia and research. If those classified as “white” are superior to all other racial categories, then why do Asian-Americans score higher on the intelligence tests?  One of my good friends, Inez Giles, has long asserted that Korean-Americans will one day be absorbed into the racial category of “white.”  Part of this assertion is the sense that people of Korean heritage have never been enslaved in American history, as have their cousins from Japan, China, the Philippines, and other Asian cultures. 

    Because Asian-Americans tend to bust the categories of race, it is not surprising that SCOTUS has agreed to reconsider the lawsuit on affirmative action against Harvard and University of North Carolina.  This was a suit brought by those classified as “white” and those classified as “Asian-American,” claiming that those two universities favored those classified as “Black” and as “Latina/o” over “white” and “Asian” in admission policies.  After a lower federal court threw out the suit, and a federal appeals court upheld that decision, the plaintiffs appealed, and SCOTUS heard the case in January.  A decision is expected soon in this case, and given the composition of the current SCOTUS, it does not look good for the long-established doctrine of affirmative action.  I do have to hand it to Inez that she was on the money on this prediction, mainly because she as a Black person understands the system of race much better than I do.

    As we celebrate and give thanks for the contributions of APIDA folk to our common life, let us also remember the complicated and oppressive system of race into which they and we fit, and let us work to break down the barriers that the system of race creates – its main goal is to promote white supremacy, and that is a goal that we all must oppose.  We give thanks to the many people of APIDA heritage who have persevered and worked to help us move towards the idea of equality, which is a beacon for us and for all people.