Moving Beyond the Past

Like most of our editions, this week’s AsianWeek shows the diversity in our community as well as the myriad of issues facing us. On the lighter and happier side, there is the phenomenon of greater API representation both out on the field and on the big screen. In a trend that began with Hideo Nomo, the all-American sport of baseball now boasts a long roster of Asian players including Los Angeles’ Chan Ho Park and Colorado’s Masoto Yoshii. Meanwhile at movie theaters, Asian actors are finally being seen and heard, not only at traditionally API events like this month’s Visual Communications Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival, but also at mainstream Hollywood premieres, such as the opening for Jackie Chan’s Shanghai Noon.

Does all this mean that at last we have arrived? The answer is ‘no.’ Indeed, other events of this past week clearly show that the struggles of our present mirror our past. Over 50 years ago Japanese Latin Americans were ripped from their homes and sent to internment camps in the United States. Today, that group is still fighting for justice (reparations and an apology), while another man, Wen Ho Lee sits shackled in jail, allegedly for the mishandling of nuclear secrets though there is no evidence any information went to China or even beyond his computer. Other equally disturbing news: Buford Furrow, the killer of Filipino postman Joseph Ileto, refers to his victim as a “Chink or Spic” in an interview with law enforcement officials; Amtrak defends its practice of questioning suspicious looking foreigners in an effort to trap “illegal aliens.” And at SUNY Binghamton—administrators announce the wrestling team will be required to attend diversity and conflict resolution workshops. That decision, however, comes after three members of the university’s wrestling team attack four Asian American students, another is accused of an off-campus assault incident, and still other members are accused of participating in a brawl at a Denny’s restaurant.

These events should not cripple us in powerless defeat, but rather they should spur us to speak out and move the Asian American experience toward true equality.