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Heroes, Big and Small

Civil rights and civil liberties are more easily lost by erosion than by grand theft. The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1941 and 1942 was a major act, yet it had been preceded by a century of anti-Asian American ordinances, legal decisions, violent actions and daily indignities. The net effect was a citizenry capable of watching passively while 77,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry were stripped of their Constitutional rights and sent to concentration camps.

Many of us say that something like these camps could never happen again, but the unfortunate reality is that institutionalized bigotry is returning to this country in an incremental fashion. Of greatest concern for Asian Americans is the return to political power of evangelicals calling themselves Christians and then preaching intolerance toward those of other faiths.

As a community with adherents of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and other faiths (as well as many Christians and people who prefer not to practice any organized religion), Asian Americans should be in the forefront of protesting President Bush’s “Faith-Based Initiative,” as well as other efforts to give preferential treatment to Christianity and Christians.

Christians should be encouraged to practice their faith. This country, however, was explicitly set up with a First Amendment barrier to state-sponsored religion. Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson, a practicing Christian himself, explicitly decided to omit a campus chapel when he designed the University of Virginia. In fact, Jefferson chose to have the library dominate the site plan, instead of the church, which stands at the center of other major university campuses. He and other seminal thinkers were well aware of the bigotry that follows when someone can use the power of the state and be answerable only to a non-elected deity.

Here in Virginia, in the very state where Jefferson resided, a Minute of Silence law was passed in 2000 and upheld by a federal appeals court last week. A panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said that the law calls for public school children to begin each day with a minute of silent meditation, which could include prayer. That does not violate the First Amendment’s ban on state-sponsored religion, the court said. Seven Virginia families, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union, challenged the law in the case Brown vs. Gilmore, saying it promoted religion because it required all of the state’s public school children to set aside a minute each morning to “meditate, pray or engage in other silent activity.”

Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, writing for the 2 to 1 majority, said, “Virginia has introduced at most a minor and nonintrusive accommodation of religion.” ACLU attorneys have vowed an appeal to the Supreme Court, and those who protested the Minute of Silence in their schools last year vow to continue the fight. The dissenting justice in the federal appeals decision gave them ammunition when he said, “The ‘minute of silence’ mandated by the Virginia statute is, like the Trojan Horse, a hollow guise … [for] an effort to once more usher state-sponsored religion into public schools.”

Among the heroes of this struggle are three Asian American teens. Vanessa Brown, the named plaintiff and a Filipina American, just completed her senior year in high school, and, fittingly, will be attending the University of Virginia this fall. Jana and Ariel Lepon, two sisters of Japanese Jewish heritage, will be returning to 10th and 6th grade classrooms next fall.

If it was hard for Minoru Yasui, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Fred Korematsu, all adults when they launched their protests of the Japanese American incarceration — imagine how difficult it must be for these three heroic teens to register their protests every day in front of their teachers and classmates. Such tenacity and chutzpah are wonderful characteristics in people so young.

When asked to reflect on the experiences of the past year, the Lepon sisters showed that they have thought a lot about their positions. Jana, age 15, said, “This past school year, I left the classroom in the morning after the Pledge of Allegiance. Most people are respectful of my non-participation and nobody has been openly hostile. Some of my friends have asked why I leave in the morning, and I have enjoyed explaining the case and debating the issues with a few.” She continued, “I am a Reform Jew. I pray and I believe that everybody has the right to pray where, when, and in the manner they want. However, my religion does not influence my position in this case. I am opposing the law because it infringes on the First Amendment rights of every child attending public school in Virginia.”

Likewise, Ariel, age 11, says, “I’m very glad that I have been a plaintiff for the Minute of Silence case. I will gladly always protest something that is wrong. My best moment was when four other students stood in the hall with me to protest. My worst moment was when my teacher told my class that she strongly supported the Minute of Silence.” While her Asian heritage did not make a difference in this case, she said, the respect for justice that she learned from her lawyer father, Jeff Lepon, and her civil rights activist mother, Cora Yamamoto, were lessons that clearly had a lasting impact on her.