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Oakland’s Cultural Center Changes Name — Again

The “Asian Pacific Cultural Center – Oakland” banner gets rolled up and put away. The center’s board of directors will vote on the final name in November. Photo by Ethen Lieser.

By Ethen Lieser

The large banner hung proudly. In large black lettering, it read: Asian Pacific Cultural Center — Oakland. It faced the entrance of the cultural center where hundreds of members could glance at it before entering the auditorium. Security guards assessed the filing contingent. Little did they know that in an hour, the banner would be stripped down.

Since the name’s conception in March, controversy, questions and division have erupted within Oakland’s Chinatown, even though it was just one word added — Pacific, as in Pacific Islanders. The board made the change to make the center more inclusive.

On April 17, at 6 p.m., Francis Wong, director of the Asian Pacific Cultural Center, stepped up to the microphone and gazed through a sea of people in the airy auditorium. He was dressed casually, loosely. But his bespectacled face held intensity, as he stood in front of a dark curtain that draped like it would in a cathedral. Nearly every seat was taken, but there was silence. Wong then addressed the anxious crowd — and suddenly, the room resounded with a restrained applause, expressing what seemed to be a collective sigh of relief. The name of the center had changed back to the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.

“I think it is the best thing for us to do at this point,” Wong said. “We need to have more unity in the process because we don’t have it now. It is important for us to reach a common ground in order for us to work together.”

Said Zenobia Lai, the executive director of Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco: “I think the culture center made a wise decision in changing the name back, so that there can be a community process.”

Even though the center’s name has been changed for now, the speakers said that Pacific Islanders are welcome.

“I think everyone agrees that the center should include Pacific Islanders, but it’s the process that the community must go through,” Lai said. “It’s not up to me alone to say.”

Every speaker echoed one common phrase: “We need to work together.”

But it seems that’s easier said than done.

To some, especially the Chinese Americans who formed the center in the late ’60s to help preserve and showcase the culture of Chinatown, tweaking the center’s name ignited fear of being overrun by other ethnic groups.

Others, however, felt that keeping “Pacific” out of the name is Sino-centric.

According to Jeff Chan, the program developer at the Asian Cultural Center, the majority of the people who use the center are of Chinese descent. Though the center offers diverse programming, that “doesn’t mean we’re turning our back on Chinese culture,” Chan said. “One doesn’t block out the other.”

“It could be [we’re picking on] whoever is the easy target,” he added. “Right now, it is the Pacific Islanders.”

Chan, 30, theorized that the controversy over the center’s name stems from opposing values of immigrants versus American-born generations.

“It’s definitely the older generation that’s making a big deal of this. It’s not our generation,” he said.

Former cultural center development director Sonny Le held a different view, though. He charged that it’s the American-born Chinese, both young and old, who are pushing to keep the center’s original name.

“The most unusual aspect of the Oakland Chinatown Center — most of the people opposed to the diversity are the American-born Chinese,” said Le, who is an immigrant. “I came to the conclusion that it is because Chinese Americans growing up here have been denied their own place. So, now that they have their own place, they want to keep it.”

The Oakland Asian Cultural Center board of directors will use the allotted time from now until November, when they will vote on finalizing the name change, to gather community input on the issue.

But for Wong, the deciding vote count is secondary to the overall picture.

“We need to start a conversation, restart the process,” he said adamantly. “If it makes sense to vote in November, that is what we’ll do. The most important thing isn’t the end result of the process but, really, how we are talking together and working together.”

At the end of the meeting, the conflict over who is right or wrong subsided into the background, as a drummer and four cymbal players punched out hard beats, and dragon dancers joined by a bald, stout man with an engraved smile entered the stage. For 10 minutes, they danced. As the performers flew and slithered past each other, the whole auditorium erupted into applause. And for a moment, there was no caution or suspicion.

“We live in a society that is pretty polarized, so I think there are tensions between communities,” Wong said. “The center is a place where we want to get over those tensions, but unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do that in this process, so we need to get back to the basics.”