America in context
Asian Americans: A Closer Look
For the first time in its 44-year history, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival will focus on what it means to be a person of Asian or Pacific Islander descent living in the United States. With a population of about 15.5 million, Asians comprise 5 percent of the U.S. population; there are approximately 30 Asian-American and 24 Pacific Island-American groups in the United States
That diversity presents a challenge for the event organizers, said Nash, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Maryland, in his blog about the festival. “How do we describe the great diversity of peoples, cultures and customs that make up the APA community in the D.C. metro area without reducing them to caricatures?”
The Asian-American community has the opportunity “to show itself in all its complexity to a broader audience,” just as the 2007 festival offered a “much more nuanced and balanced view” of the history, culture and peoples of the Mekong River region than most Americans had seen before, he says.
May is Asian–Pacific American Heritage Month in the United States
“I didn’t see any Chinese in the photograph,” Lee said. He even bought a magnifying glass to take a better look, “but I still couldn’t see any Chinese. They didn’t have any Chinese at the celebration.”
More than 10,000 Chinese had worked on the railroad “under the most dangerous conditions, handling explosives used to blast through the Sierra Nevada mountains,” notes a website sponsored by the American Anthropological Association, but “Chinese railroad workers present at the site were deliberately excluded from the photograph.”
Today, a national historic site in Promontory Point, Utah, offers visitors a chance to walk to the Chinese Arch, a natural limestone formation dedicated to the memory of those Chinese workers, and a website discusses their role in the building of the railroad.
Lee hopes that Asian–Pacific American Heritage Month, which is celebrated in the United States each May, plus an exhibition on Asian Pacific Americans at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington this summer, will help the public become more aware of the contributions made by the 15.5 million U.S. residents (5 percent of the population) who claim Asian heritage.
There definitely is some catching up to do, Lee said. It’s not well known, for instance, that Chinese fought on both sides during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). Another forgotten group is the Filipinos who aided American troops in World War II; more than 200,000 fought, but a 1946 law denied or limited their service-related benefits and veterans’ status. (The 2009 economic stimulus law provides a one-time payment to the 15,000 Filipino veterans still living.)
It’s also not well known, said Lee, that a Japanese-American secretary of transportation — Norman Mineta — took a stand against racial profiling of Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mineta, who spent time as a boy in an internment camp during World War II, sent a letter to all U.S. airlines forbidding them from practicing racial profiling or subjecting Middle Eastern or Muslim passengers to a heightened degree of pre-flight scrutiny, stating that such discrimination is illegal.
A GROWING BENEFIT TO AMERICAN SOCIETY
C.N. Le, creator of the website Asian Nation, points out that Asians are “one of the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group (in terms of percentage increase) in the U.S.” More Asians are moving out of traditional enclaves in big cities such as Los Angeles and New York and settling in suburbs and smaller cities in the South and Midwest, he states.
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“This introduces more Americans to elements of Asian and Asian-American culture,” said Le, who emigrated from Vietnam as a boy and now teaches sociology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. “They can see firsthand that these residents and small businesses are part of the community and are helping strengthen their communities.”
“We are just as American as anyone else,” he said.
Le said he hopes the exhibitions on Asian–Pacific Americans at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in late June and early July will offer a broad look at the role of people of Asian descent in America’s history and culture as well as portraits of individuals “who are contributing to everyday life in American society.” One such person he admires is Edward Tom, principal of the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics in New York City, a school for minority and underprivileged students that is praised for its academic rigor.
He pointed out that there are three Asian Americans in President Obama’s Cabinet: Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, and Secretary of Veteran Affairs Eric Shinseki. Obama also issued an executive order renewing the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
In a proclamation, the president said that despite many obstacles, “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have persevered and flourished, achieving success in every sector of American life. They stood shoulder to shoulder with their fellow citizens during the civil rights movement; they have served proudly in our Armed Forces; and they have prospered as leaders in business, academia, and public service.”
DOCUMENTING DIVERSITY
Lee said that on May 2 he would be taking photographs at the 31st Annual Asian/Pacific American Festival in New York’s Union Square Park, as he has done every year. Throughout his career he has documented the Asian-American experience.
“If I’m called upon to photograph something else, I will,” he said, “but given a choice between photographing an azalea festival or a dragon-boat race, I’ll probably pick the dragon-boat race.”
Lee said he would like to see schools teach more about the history and contributions of Asian–Pacific Americans. In an interview in AsianWeek, he said his photographs are a way “to combat indifference, injustice and discrimination, trying to get rid of stereotypes.”
More information is available from the Census Bureau’s Facts for Features on Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month and the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Pacific American Program. Also see “Landmark Exhibit on Race Asks ‘Are We So Different?’“
Corky Lee’s photography can be seen on VisualizAsian.com. He is based in New York.
By Louise Fenner
Staff Writer
This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.
