Asian American History: The Asian American Civil Rights Movement
As a biracial Asian American, AAPI history and rights have always been an interest of mine. Asian American people have habitually been ignored; their history and experiences have been disregarded and summed up to nothing more than the “model minority myth”. This, along with other harmful stereotypes, has caused the true Asian American narrative to be silenced. However, during the height of the Vietnam War, this changed: Asian Americans no longer stood silent. This is the history of how the racial prejudice during Vietnam caused the massively influential Asian American Civil Rights Movement.
Though many know about the Civil Rights Movement, the Asian American Civil Rights Movement is something less talked about. Originating in the 60s during the Vietnam War, this movement was a way for Asian Americans to gain a voice and fight against prejudice. The Asian American Civil Rights Movement was fueled by the anti-war actions and the discrimination felt by Asian Americans after the Vietnam War. The movement gained traction during and post war; it reinstated power and reshaped the Asian American identity. The Black Power movements paired with the clout around anti-Vietnam aided Asian Americans in rejecting the prejudice that had been placed on them. The 1972 newspaper Getting it Together further highlights this, the excerpt “the first anti-war march where oppressed and exploited peoples took the lead” shows that racial groups had rarely come together, highlighting that the Asian American civil rights movement was crucial for all aspects of racial activism and how the Vietnam War atrocities resulted in the union of all people, regardless of race. (ie. Yellow peril supports black power and the filipino latino delano grape strike). Asian Americans had constantly been diminished and demeaned throughout history, this movement was imperative in bringing light to Asian American injustices. It helped in rejecting the model minority myth and the ‘exoticism’ in which many white Americans viewed Asian women. The Vietnam War brought light to injustice and created an amalgamation of all people in resistance to treatment of the Vietnamese and Asian Americans, it developed Asian American power.
“But it would be a mistake to understand this as a single moment in time isolated from larger social and cultural shifts. Opposition to the Vietnam War was a key component of the Asian American Movement, and grew out of the same groundswell of activism that resulted in the birth of Asian American Studies, the Asian American women’s movement, and redress for the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans”. As Karen L. Ishizuka notes in her study of “the Movement”: “It was no accident that Asian America was born at the peak of the Vietnam War.”
From: In the Belly of the Monster: Asian American Opposition to the Vietnam War
I also want to spotlight a woman whose passion and undying drive for equality shaped this movement: Yuri Kochiyama. Yuri Kochiyama was a revolutionary American Civil Rights activist fighting for Black Power, Asian American civil rights, anti-Islamophobia, and Latino immigration rights. Her family was taken into the Japanese incarceration camps when she was a little girl in 1942, her father tragically died due to unjust medical service in the incarceration camp. Yuri Kochiyama was an incredible change maker and societal innovator bringing awareness and justice to disenfranchised ethnic groups in America. Her activism, along with others, was the mentality which fueled the Asian American Civil Rights Movement. The idea that Asian Americans could speak out broke down the inherent ideas of ‘weakness’ that others perceived Asians as. Defying the model minority myth in the likeness of Kochiyama gave power and a voice to Asian Americans. Her bravery and spirit are truly admirable, I hope Asian Americans around the U.S. will be inspired by her ideals and the heart of this movement.
From: Los Angeles Times