Since then, the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, the American Counselors Association, and the National Collegiate Athletics Association have all called for the elimination of such usage of American Indian and Alaska Native names, mascots, symbols, and logos. Several state boards of education have taken action to ban the use of these mascots and symbols in the schools within their states. But not all have.108
Leaving these symbols in place can create a hostile learning environment for students. Consider this example shared by Dahkotah Kicking Bear Brown, Miwok student and football player at a California high school:
One of our school’s biggest rivals is the Calaveras Redskins. Calaveras has always had an obscene amount of school pride, but little do they know how damaging their game-time routines are. With so many around me, I feel ganged up on, but at the same time, all of these screaming fans don’t know how offensive they are, or that they are even in the presence of a Native. Most of the time, they don’t even know that Natives are still around. Worst of all, the most offensive stuff doesn’t even come from the Redskins. It comes from their rival schools, mine included. I have heard my own friends yelling around me, “Kill the Redskins!” or “Send them on the Trail of Tears!”109
Some have argued that some of the mascot representations, such as a “chief,” are positive, honoring American Indian heritage. However, Native students say they do not feel honored. Cierra Fields, a Cherokee member of the National Congress of American Indians Youth Cabinet, articulated this viewpoint:
When I see people wearing headdresses and face paint or doing the tomahawk chop, it makes me feel demeaned. The current society does not bother to learn that our ways, customs, dress, symbols, and images are sacred. They claim it’s for honor but I don’t see honor in non-Natives wearing face paint or headdresses as they are not warriors who have earned the right. My heritage and culture is not a joke. My heritage and culture is not a fashion statement. For me it ultimately boils down to respect. Respect our heritage by not using a caricature of a proud people but by learning our history.110
The research of social psychologist Stephanie Fryberg and others has demonstrated that whether the stereotypical image is “negative” or “positive” in its content, the impact on Native American youth is harmful in terms of lowering self-esteem, feelings of community worth, and achievement-related possible selves. In the absence of a broader range of societal images of American Indians, the stereotypes have a disproportionate impact.
The current American Indian mascot representations function as inordinately powerful communicators, to Natives and non-Natives alike, of how American Indians should look and behave. American Indian mascots thus remind American Indians of the limited ways in which others see them. Moreover, because identity construction is not solely an individual process (i.e., you cannot be a self by yourself), the views of American Indians held by others can also limit the ways in which American Indians see themselves.111
The antidote to these limited images is to “either eliminate them or to create, distribute, and institutionalize a broader array of social representations of American Indians.”112 Parents, educators, and students themselves can work to eliminate the stereotypical representations from schools. Sonia Nieto and Patty Bode share a case study in their book, Affirming Diversity, of a group of eighth-grade students who did just that, with the support of their teacher.113
Paul Ongtooguk, an Alaskan Native educator, has made it his mission to develop curricula that assumes Alaska Natives such as the Inupiaq are not just people with a past but also people with a future. As he said in a speech to fellow educators in Alaska,
We have a suicide rate for Alaska Native males that is about eight times the national average in the age category from 15 through 24. What does that say? Some people would look at that statistic and say, well, that’s not about education—it’s not an educational statistic. But I look at that, and I look at the lives of the people who are trapped in it. We are talking about young people who are going through life so ill-prepared for the future, whose opportunities are so narrow, whose sense of the future is so bleak, and whose circumstances are so overwhelming that death is preferable to the life that lies before them. Isn’t that an educational issue? Something for us to consider.114
Throughout his career, Ongtooguk has pushed to create curricular materials that would inspire Native students to see themselves in the future. He worked to reconstruct the “Inupiaq Heritage Curriculum,” which at the time he began consisted primarily of Native arts and crafts projects. While the traditional arts and crafts were worthy of study, the curriculum embodied a “museum” perspective whereby the traditional life of Alaska Natives was studied as “an interesting curiosity commemorating the past.” Ongtooguk explained, “The most disturbing picture of Inupiaq culture, then, was of its static nature—something that had happened ‘back then’ rather than something that was happening now. Did this mean that the people living in the region now were like a cast of actors who had run out of lines?”
He set out to reconstruct the curriculum to reflect not only traditional life but also transitional life and the modern period. “If, as their teachers commonly implied, being Inupiaq only meant being traditional (or Ipani), then both assimilation and all of modern schooling were essentially cultural genocide in that they moved the students away from things traditional.… [Students] needed to know both what was and what is crucial for survival and for leading productive lives within the Inupiaq community.”115
The inclusion of contemporary life as part of this revised Inupiaq studies curriculum was essential if Inupiaq students were to see themselves reflected in the schools and see the Inupiaq identity as having a future, not only a past. They needed a coherent picture of the continuity, conflict, and cultural transformation that had shaped and continued to shape the Inupiaq community. Ongtooguk’s reconstructed curriculum was eventually adopted by the Northwest Arctic School District and became a model for Yup’ik studies in several school districts in southwest Alaska.116
Such curricular interventions stand in stark contrast to the deculturalization that has been the legacy of American Indian education, reminding us that education does not have to mean alienation. More such interventions are needed if faculty and students, both Native and White, are to realize that the Native community is not a relic of the past but a growing community with a future.
Another growing population, which, unlike American Indians, is usually assumed to have a very bright future, is the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community. The collective image of Asians as the “model minority” in the United States is a pervasive one. Yet, as we will again see, even a “positive” stereotype can have negative consequences, and like the Latinx and Native communities, the API community is not a monolith.
What Do We Mean When We Say “Asian”?
The terms Asian and Asian American encompass people of many different national origins, histories, cultures, languages, and religions. The federal government, for the purpose of the census, defines “Asian” as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand and Vietnam.”117
Cultural traditions and religious beliefs vary greatly across this vast geographic region and include Buddhism, Islam, Christianity (both Protestant and Catholic), Hinduism, Shintoism, Confucianism, ancestor worship, and animism.118
Given the wide range of countries of origin and the cultural diversity represented, it is reasonable to ask whether the umbrella category of “Asian” is a useful one. Scholars Min Zhou and Jennifer Lee say it is, primarily because of the way race operates in American society.
In the United States, race often overrides many major socioeconomic and cultural factors—including education, occupation, language, and religion—to affect the everyday lives of all Americans.… Asian-origin Ame
ricans… adopt the pan-ethnic label because of convenience and because other Americans cannot and often do not even try to make ethnic distinctions, despite vast differences in national origin, religion, language, and culture.119
Collectively, Asian Americans have the highest median family incomes, highest levels of education, highest rates of intermarriage, and the lowest rates of residential segregation in the country.120 They are also the fastest-growing racial group in the United States.121 The Asian population in the US grew by 43 percent, from 10.2 million to 14.7 million, between 2000 and 2010, while the US population overall grew 9.7 percent.122 In 2014, the estimated number of people of Asian descent was 20.3 million, approximately 6 percent of the total US population. At 4.5 million, the Chinese are the largest Asian group, followed by Asian Indians (3.8 million), Filipinos (3.8 million), Vietnamese (2.0 million), Koreans (1.8 million), and Japanese (1.4 million).123 Together these top six groups account for approximately 85 percent of the total Asian population. Asians in the US are concentrated on the West Coast (47 percent), with 20 percent living in the Northeast, 21 percent in the South, and just 11 percent in the Midwest.124
In 1960, most Asian Americans were descendants of early Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Changes in immigration policy in 1965 dramatically increased Asian immigration, significantly altering the demographic makeup of the Asian American community. By 2010, 59 percent of Asians in the US were foreign-born, compared to 13 percent of the total US population. Among Asian adults over the age of twenty-five, the percentage of foreign-born is even higher—74 percent. As is the case among Latinxs, each national group has its own unique immigration history that has shaped its experience in the United States. While it is not possible to review the immigration history of all these groups, the immigration experience of the most populous groups will be briefly summarized here.125
The Chinese were the first Asians to immigrate to the United States in large numbers, arriving in California in 1850 as part of the rush for gold. These first arrivals were single men who paid their own way to the California gold fields, hoping to get rich and then return to China. As the gold rush waned, many Chinese did not have enough money to go home. Hired at wages one-third below what Whites would have been paid, Chinese men found employment as laborers working on the transcontinental railroad and on California farms.126 When the US economy took a sharp downturn in the mid-1870s, White labor union leaders blamed Chinese workers for the depressed wage levels and the Chinese became a frequent target of racial bigotry and violence. In fact, in 1871 the largest mass lynching in US history took place in Los Angeles when a mob of White men attacked and lynched more than twenty Chinese men.127
The anti-Chinese sentiment culminated in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.128 Immigration was severely restricted by the Chinese Exclusion Act and completely forbidden by the 1924 Immigration Act. Like Blacks and Indians, the Chinese, referred to as the “yellow peril,” were reviled and viewed as a threat to White racial purity. Laws prohibiting marriage between a White person and a “negro, mulatto, or Mongolian” were passed.129 These laws, combined with immigration restrictions, special taxes directed against the Chinese, and discrimination in housing and employment, limited the growth of the Chinese population. Most of the men did not start families in the United States, and many returned to China.130
A second wave of Chinese immigration occurred after World War II. In an effort to promote an alliance with China against Japan, the US government repealed the Exclusion Act to allow a few thousand Chinese to enter the country. Chinese scientists and professionals and their families escaping communism were part of this second wave.131
A third wave of Chinese immigration occurred after the 1965 Immigration Act (and its 1990 extension). Because racial quotas on immigration were eliminated by this legislation, Chinese immigration dramatically increased, with entire families immigrating at once. The Chinese population grew from 237,000 in 1960 to over 4 million in 2010.132 In the last fifty years, Chinese immigrants have come not only from China but also from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as other parts of Asia, some arriving with little education and few resources while others have college and graduate degrees, family savings, and in-demand job skills. The latter group of new Chinese immigrants is not drawn to ethnic enclaves like the Chinatowns found in major cities; instead, they have the financial ability to settle in affluent suburbs or in “new suburban ethnic enclaves known as ‘ethnoburbs.’”133
In contrast to the Chinese and other Asian immigrants, more than three-quarters of the people with Japanese ancestry in the United States are American-born, descendants of those who came to the US mainland or Hawaii before 1924. These early immigrants were attracted by higher US wages, and because the Japanese government encouraged women to emigrate as well, often as “picture brides” in arranged marriages, Japanese families quickly established themselves. While Japanese workers were welcomed on the plantations of Hawaii, there was considerable anti-Japanese feeling on the West Coast.134 In 1906 the San Francisco Board of Education established a separate school for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children, and the California Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited Japanese immigrants and other foreign-born residents from purchasing agricultural land because they were ineligible for citizenship. (The Naturalization Act, passed in 1790, only allowed Whites to become naturalized citizens, so while children born in the United States automatically became citizens, until this law was repealed, their immigrant parents could never be eligible.) As with the Chinese, immigration of Japanese came to a halt with the Immigration Act of 1924.135
The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 certainly intensified anti-Japanese sentiment. In March 1942, Executive Order 9102 established the War Relocation Authority, making it possible to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes without a trial or hearing and confine them in internment camps in places as far away as Idaho, Colorado, and Utah.136 One response to this internment experience was for Japanese American families to encourage their children to become as “American” as possible in an effort to prevent further discrimination. For this reason, as well as their longevity in the United States, Japanese Americans as a group are the most acculturated of the Asian American communities, and the only Asian ethnic group not currently growing in population size. Japanese have high rates of intermarriage—more than half of Japanese American newlyweds in 2010 married a non-Asian—and 35 percent of Japanese Americans identified themselves as multiracial in the 2010 census.137
Like the Chinese, Koreans arrived in the US in distinct waves of immigration, beginning with seven thousand farmers who came to Hawaii to escape poverty and work on plantations there in the early 1900s, followed there by Korean “picture brides.” Koreans were subject to the same antimiscegenation laws that affected the Chinese. Another small group of immigrants came to the United States after World War II and the Korean War. This group included Korean adoptees and Korean women who were married to US soldiers. As with the Chinese, the 1965 Immigration Act dramatically increased Korean immigration of entire families, with thirty thousand Koreans arriving annually between 1970 and 1990. Most Korean Americans currently living in the United States were part of this post-1965 immigration. Typically these families consist of immigrant parents and American-born or American-raised children, families in which differing rates of acculturation may contribute to generational conflicts.138 Koreans in the US come from a wide range of socioeconomic and educational levels, but more than half (53 percent) of Korean adults over the age of twenty-five have a college degree, earned either in Korea or in the United States.139
Filipino Americans also experienced a pattern of male immigration to Hawaii, and then the mainland United States, in the early 1900s. Because these men could not establish families, there are few descendants from this wave of immigration. This pattern ended in 1930 when Congress set a Filipino immigration quota of fifty per year. As with Chinese and Koreans, tens of thousands of Filipin
os have immigrated annually since 1965. As of the 2010 census, 69 percent of Filipinos were foreign-born. Forty-seven percent of Filipino adults have a college degree, and the poverty rate is only 6 percent, the lowest of all Asian groups in the US.140 Reflecting the colonial history of the Philippines, Filipinos have a multicultural heritage of Chinese, Spanish, Malayan, Indonesian, South Asian, American, and Muslim cultural influences and are similar to Pacific Islanders in many ways.141
Southeast Asian refugees are quite different from other Asian immigrant groups in their reasons for coming to the United States and their experiences in their homelands. After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, a large number of mostly educated Vietnamese arrived. After 1978, a second group of immigrants, many of them uneducated rural farmers traumatized by the war and its aftermath, came to the United States to escape persecution. This group includes Vietnamese, Chinese Vietnamese, Cambodians, Lao, Hmong, and Mien.142
Among Vietnamese, another wave of immigration occurred after 1980 as the result of an agreement negotiated between Vietnam and the US. A subsequent wave of Vietnamese immigration in the 1990s was the result of the process of family unification, as new immigrants came to join family members that had already established a presence in the United States. Vietnamese now represent 10 percent of the adult Asian American population, 84 percent of whom are foreign-born. Less well educated than other Asians, 26 percent of Vietnamese adults have college degrees and 15 percent live in poverty, compared to 12 percent of Asians overall.143
Asian Indians have also experienced a dramatic population growth in the United States since 1965. The number of Asian Indians in the United States increased from eight hundred thousand in 1990 to almost four million in 2014. The first wave of immigrants from India—about six thousand—came to work as farmhands, arriving in the first decade of the twentieth century. Initially, Indians were classified in court cases of 1910 and 1913 as “Caucasians” and consequently were allowed to intermarry with US-born Whites.144 Because previous Supreme Court rulings had established that being Caucasian was synonymous with being White, a group of Asian Indians, on the basis of their Caucasian classification, pursued their right to become citizens but were denied because of their brown skin. In 1923 the case went to the Supreme Court—United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. The judges ruled that while Asian Indians were Caucasians (descended from the Caucasoid region of Eurasia), they could not be considered White and consequently were not eligible for US citizenship. This ruling made explicit the concept of skin color as a bar to becoming a citizen. As the court ruling stated, “It may be true that the blond Scandinavian and the brown Hindu have a common ancestor in the dim reaches of antiquity, but the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences between them today,” adding that “the intention of the Founding Fathers was to ‘confer the privilege of citizenship upon the class of persons they knew as white.’”145 This racial barrier to citizenship was not removed until 1952 when the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act revoked the Naturalization Act of 1790.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 30
