Asian Americans' place in time

The "integrationism" proposed by Rose Lee in the 1950s was indeed a great temptation for Asians at that time, and caused them to pursue their own American dream as if they were obsessed with it. However, in the process of Americanization, even though Asians gave up their own language, customs, history and cultural values to adapt to white culture, they found that they were not accepted by the mainstream society and were still discriminated against. Yuji Ichioka, founder of the coalition, puts it more bluntly: although Asians dress up like whites, mimic their actions and speech, and strive to be like them in almost every way, "it's just a self-defeating dream that exacerbates their own identity crisis."

After such a reflection, the majority of Asians have come to the profound realization that the consciousness and culture of the white man is unattainable for them, and that they must give up this unrealistic American identity and instead establish a new direction more suited to their own characteristics. This shift in understanding was the key to the formation of the Pan-Asian community consciousness. Secondly, the complete rejection of "Oriental" and other disparaging terms shows an unprecedented increase in the awareness of racial equality among Asians.

Since the Asians first landed on the North American continent, there has been the "Oriental" "elegant name". Later generations, and more and more discriminatory implications. This title, almost so that Asians live in full of prejudice and restrictions in the "cage", they are based in the United States and the development of huge obstacles. 1965, although the number of Asian immigrants continue to increase, the quality of the improvement, the economy has improved, but the mainstream society of its exclusion and discrimination has not decreased at all. According to the results of a survey in 1970, 25% of the college graduates of Chinese descent, once praised as a "model minority," worked in restaurants, gift stores or grocery stores, and many others could not find jobs, becoming typical "incompletely employed"; in the case of college graduates with a bachelor's degree, the number of graduates with a bachelor's degree in Chinese was only 1.5 percent. Only 13.39% of males with an undergraduate degree earned $10,000, while 27.7% of white males with the same degree earned $10,000. As for Chinese women, incomplete employment is a common phenomenon; even if they can be employed, most of them are engaged in clerical work, such as accountants, cashiers, secretaries, typists, file clerks, etc. According to statistics, more than half of Chinese women are employed. According to statistics, more than 40 percent of Chinese-American female secretaries have a college degree, while most white women in this occupation tend to have only a high school education. In California, 36 percent of Chinese-American female employees work as clerks or typists.

Under these circumstances, Asians in general resent the "Oriental" label. But for a long time, there has been no solution but to tolerate it. "Asian Americans" as a new concept, emphasizing "Asians are also Americans" this mainstream society also have to recognize the idea, and then negate the "Oriental" and a series of other It also rejected a series of derogatory terms such as "Oriental". This struggle over the issue of designation is essentially a defense of or opposition to existing racial discrimination, reflecting a new awakening of the consciousness of racial equality among Asians in general. Once again, the recognition of the different races of Asians as a whole, and the perception of a "Native American Third World," is a transcendence of mono-ethnic consciousness.

For a long time, the anti-discrimination struggle has been a one-man war, lacking the necessary connections between the Asian races, a situation that has fundamentally changed since the late 1960s. Throughout the Coalition's discourse, regardless of the particular ethnic group from which the authors came, the basic position was the same: they all saw themselves as members of the Asian community and discussed issues from that point on.

The collection of essays Roots: An Asian American Reader, published in 1970, was produced by the Coalition's core group of authors: Franklin Wardo, Mary Uyematsu, Ken Uyematsu, and John Wardo, who were all members of the Coalition. Uyematsu, Ken Hannada, Peggy Lee, and Maria Ching, all of whom were of Japanese, Indian, and Chinese descent. The book expresses the same sentiment: "With hard labor and taxes, we have enriched the pockets of wealthy Americans, only to be rewarded with a life without equal rights and with restrictions and discrimination. Like the colonized people, this life is considered reasonable, uncontroversial and immutable. The problem is clear: there are many parallels between America's treatment of Asians and its treatment of Asians within its borders"; "Many of the same problems that plague the Third World plague the Third World on American soil." It can be said that the same experiences, social status, and the *** same quest for equal rights for Asians pushed the pan-Asian ethnic consciousness onto the stage of Asian American history. The title "Asian American" unites all Asian Americans across ethnic lines, labels their identities and attributes as "unique," and allows them to recognize and define themselves in a new light, exploring what it really means to be an Asian American. The book is a great example of how to define yourself and what it means to be an Asian American.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a group of outstanding Asian writers began to emerge, and their works all explored issues of racial identity and cultural identity that were closely related to them. Chinese-American writer Frank Chin is one of the most representative of these writers. Through the filter of history and culture, he accurately summarizes the cultural connotation of "Asian Americans": "Asian Americans are not a single ethnic group, but are composed of several ethnic groups such as Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos. The Chinese and Japanese have been separated from China and Japan for seven and four generations, geographically, socioculturally, and historically. They have evolved a very unique culture and sensibility in the United States, which is different from the characteristics of both China and Japan, as well as the characteristics of white Americans. Even the languages of the various Asian ethnic groups, which are still spoken by the Asian community in the United States, have been adapted and developed into a unique language that expresses their new experiential experience."

The title "Asian American" brings together all U.S.-born people of Asian descent under this politically charged designation, uniting the dispersed Asian American individuals in an unprecedentedly broad collective consciousness of the Asian community. It is like a badge of honor, a fine trophy hanging on the chest of all American-born Asians.