Asian American Activism Across Generations
This article originally appeared in the December 2021 issue of Gidra Zine.
As a member of civil rights group Japanese American Citizens League Philadelphia Chapter, I have spent most of the past decade studying and teaching topics related to Asian American activism. I have had the privilege of organizing in a multitude of Japanese American and Pan Asian American spaces including Tadaima! Virtual Pilgrimage, Tsuru for Solidarity, Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, and the Pennsylvania Governor’s Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs. Since 2017 I have been teaching a course on Asian American activism at University of Pennsylvania’s Asian American Studies Program where I synthesize the lessons I have learned while doing this work in the hopes that my students will be empowered to actively participate in these movements.
Activism requires constant learning – and unlearning. It is only through the generous teachings from the many elders and mentors who have come before me in these movements that I have been able to articulate my own advocacy vision for the communities I serve. Given the renewed interest in organizing that we have seen during this past year from many who have not previously engaged in activism, I wanted to share some of the perspective that I have gained in the time I have worked in these spaces.
While there have been many instances of Pan Asian organizing in our collective past, for example Asian American Political Alliance’s fight for ethnic studies, or nationwide organizing in the aftermath of Vincent Chin’s murder - what happened after the Atlanta Spa Shootings was something that has never occurred on a comparable scale. To see nationwide organizing across multiple ethnic communities that also spanned generations and included a fair amount of participation from non-Asian allies gave me hope for the first time in a long while that transformative change that uplifts the stories and people of our AAPI communities might actually be possible.
In many ways living through the Spring of 2021 felt like a turning point that many who have been engaged in this work far longer than I have laid a foundation for, but honestly were not sure if they would ever see. Most remarkable perhaps, was that many of the first street protests and rallies that occurred in Philadelphia at least were being organized independently from the movement elders and other established activists. Six months later though, now that the national conversation has moved away from the acts of anti-Asian violence that continue throughout the country, I find myself asking what was actually accomplished, and whether this was just a passing moment?
In the course I teach on Asian American activism, I often debate with my students whether activists truly speak for the will of the communities they represent. Although they are generally acting with the community’s best interest at heart, my feeling is that most activists typically represent the vanguard of progressive (and in some cases conservative) viewpoints. There is often a lag between the activist perspective and that of the general community who may be less familiar with a particular issue and therefore lack a strong opinion. This tendency is compounded by the reality that newer immigrants are typically focused on establishing their lives in the place they have settled, and may be less inclined to involve themselves in movements that are critical of the society to which they are actively trying to assimilate into. These challenges are further complicated for refugees who may be reluctant to voice their political dissent, in some cases having been actively silenced by oppressive regimes from which they fled.
The emergence of a broad-based Asian American grassroots campaign like Stop Asian Hate that was largely made up of individuals who have not previously participated in activism was an exciting prospect, as it suggests that this opinion gap is closing between the broader community and our activist vanguard. That being said, the fear of racialized violence alone is not enough to sustain a long-term movement.
Issues like institutional white supremacy, anti-Blackness, internalized racism, intergenerational trauma, hyper-sexualization of Asian women, and so many others that our communities face cannot be solved quickly. These are deep-seated issues that date back to the birth of our nation and are still at the rotten core of the United States as an institution. Asian American activists have been working to uproot these foundational issues for generations, with frustratingly little progress.
Just as the media coverage has moved on from the topic of anti-Asian violence, many of these newfound activists have not demonstrated a willingness to commit to the long haul. That said, there is no single person or organization who owns activism. We can all be activists in our own way to the extent we are able – not everyone needs to be on the picket line. Successful movements are built by a diversity of voices and spectrum of beliefs, pushing different pressure points through techniques we are uniquely enabled to. Even armchair activists can play a role in shifting the conversation towards the direction of progress, but only if they do the work to educate themselves about the movements that came before them.
I recently had a conversation about what it means to come from the pre-1965 diaspora with an artist-activist friend whose parents are both immigrants. Although they appreciate that history from a philosophical perspective, they expressed a challenge in relating it to their own personal experiences. This is a conversation I have had many times over the years with other friends and colleagues who have trouble connecting the longform history of the Asian American community to their own families’ more recent immigrant narratives. In this particular example, my friend was ultimately able to connect with descendants of the pre-exclusion era diaspora who have helped mentor them along their own activist journey. In my experience, if you are willing to listen with an open heart and mind, I find that the elders within social movements are more than happy to welcome you into their spaces.
That said, I also benefit from having a longform diasporic narrative myself, as a mixed-race Yonsei (fourth-generation) Japanese American whose great grandparents immigrated from Japan to the US mainland in the 1910s-1920s. I have spent a lot of my adult life thinking about the role that activism played in my family’s Japanese American experience over the past four generations, and the ways it continues to inform and drive many aspects of my own activism.
Despite being forcibly removed from their farm and home in Gardena, California during the Second World War, both of my Issei (first generation) great grandparents practiced cultural maintenance as a form of activism. My great grandfather opened the first judo dojo in the state of Utah during the postwar era to help instill a sense of cultural pride among young Nisei (second generation) who were transitioning back into civilian life after being mass incarcerated in American concentration camps.
In her own way, my great grandmother became a leader in her local Buddhist community at the Ogden Buddhist Church where she taught younger generations how to prepare traditional Japanese dishes. She also practiced Ikebana flower arranging and crafted Hinamatsuri dolls. I credit her for helping establish my own Japanese American ethnic pride as I grew up watching Japanese chanbara (samurai films) with her every time we visited.
Although my Obaachan rebelled against the traditional Japanese culture her Issei parents raised her in to the extent that she eloped to California to marry outside of the race in an era where anti-miscegenation laws forbid her from doing so in Utah, she too would find her activist voice in the Japanese American Citizens League where she worked alongside Grayce Uyehara and other Nisei women of their generation, fighting for the Redress Movement.
Like many Sansei (third generation), my mother resented the culture of silence she grew up in, prior to the political awakening that her Nisei mother experienced in the early 1980s. Instead, she related more directly to the experiences of her Issei grandmother, from whom she learned many of the cultural traditions that she imparted to me in my own childhood. Under her own initiative, my mother became deeply involved in the Hiroshima peace movement, as both of her grandparents hailed from that city, and both lost relatives to the atomic bomb.
We too have our own difference of opinion on many things, although I am grateful for the extent that my mother shared the culture of our ancestors with me. I expect someday that my own son will look back with a critical eye on some of the choices I have made. It is natural for each generation to disagree with the one that proceeds them, particularly where activism is concerned.
From a cynical perspective, one could argue that every generation becomes more conservative as they age, but I would argue this is more so an indicator that progressive change is occurring at least on an incremental level from one generation to the next. Although we may not always agree with the previous generation’s tactics or some of their stances, it is still important to acknowledge that contemporary movements would not exist without those who did this work before us. The challenge is finding the areas of overlap that allow for us to engage in productive intergenerational dialogue in a way that both honors the sacrifices of those who came before, while also holding space for emerging perspectives based in the contemporary reality – including the first generation immigrants and refugees of today.
Pan Asian American movements can only truly succeed if we create a framework that allows for the full diversity of perspective across ethnicities, age groups, and immigrant generations in a way that enables all of our strengths to be utilized as we work towards the common good. This is yet another reason why Asian Americans should not be treated as a monolith, and an important reminder that we must be willing to critique our own movements if they are not inclusive of the true diversity of our communities.
Revisiting these topics through the lens of this past year, prior to the COVID related violence, many of the immigrant generation folx whom I know through non-political AAPI community organizations were reluctant to engage in conversations related to white supremacy and the history of anti-Asian racism in our country. That is understandable given how unpleasant these topics are, but I also wonder if we had been having more of these conversations across generations/waves of Asian immigrants and their descendants - could we have done more to build a truly Pan Asian American movement sooner and stem the tide of anti-Asian violence?
With all the challenges that our multigenerational immigrant families have endured - colonization of the Philippines and Hawaii, racial pogroms against Chinese laborers, revocation of citizenship from naturalized South Asians, to name a few - would a deeper knowledge of these past struggles have helped newer generations of Asian immigrants navigate their own issues with more success? It is not productive to compare these historic issues on a one-for-one basis with that of the contemporary immigrant generations, but they can certainly provide us with a knowledge of what has and has not worked in previous movements as we strategize our own tactics.
We multigenerational descendants also have a lot to learn from our newer immigrant communities. Contemporary immigrants have a certain amount of agency to maintain ties to the country of origin in ways that were not possible when families like mine immigrated in the early 20th century. Between the technological advances in digital communications and the general freedom of movement (pandemic restrictions and finances notwithstanding), newer immigrants and their descendants have been able to maintain much closer ties to the homeland than previous generations. This enables our contemporary AAPI movements to engage in transnational discourse around particular topics that brings the wisdom of our ancestral cultures back into our conversations.
It is also important to acknowledge that those of us who have multigenerational ties to this country benefit from many privileges related to settler-colonialism and the white supremacist state. Newer immigrants, and especially refugees and their descendants continue to be marginalized in our own movements. Not to mention the almost total lack of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander issues being advocated for within the broader Asian American context.
If ever there was a moment to join together and build a truly inclusive movement among our peoples this is it. Only together will we be able to overcome the many challenges our communities face. If and when we ever do manage to build a true coalition within the AAPI communities, perhaps our movement can provide a model for interracial solidarity building on a society-wide scale. Until then, we must remain open to learning from the many perspectives within the diaspora as we continue to grow the Asian American movement.