Looking back on 2007, several Asian Pacific Americans have broken new ground and made significant gains for themselves and the APA community. Certainly, the Indian American and newly-elected Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, fits that description. As do Congressman Mike Honda (for his tireless advocacy), Lt. Ehren Watada (for his principled opposition to the Iraq war), and Gen. Antonio Taguba (for speaking out about the abuses at Abu Ghraib).
In a year when the excesses of the Bush Administration had to be held in check, people who could stand up to power and speak up for principle were sorely needed. And given the way the media conglomerates have favored celebrity fluff over substantial news, people who chose to protest what they perceived as abuses of power were oftentimes forced to toil outside of the media spotlight.
My choice for 2007 APA Person of the Year, therefore, may sound unfamiliar to people outside San Francisco, where Michael Yaki served as a member of the Board of Supervisors (from 1996 to 2001) and as district director for Representative (now Speaker) Nancy Pelosi’s office.
As a lawyer with credentials from U.C. Berkeley and Yale Law School, Yaki could be making more money and having fewer headaches if he were not serving on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Since his appointment in 2005, however, he has risen to the challenge. Sometimes, he even finds himself the lonely dissenter on a Commission that seems more intent on undermining President Eisenhower’s 1957 vision of a bipartisan federal agency that would investigate and recommend ways to end discrimination in this country.
Whether you know it or not, if you are an Asian Pacific American, you have benefitted in some way from the work of the Commission on Civil Rights. Their landmark report in 1961 provided the factual underpinning of the famous Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1977, they issued the Window Dressing on the Set report to address the severe under-representation of minorities and women in television and the media. A few years later, the Commission examined the administration of justice with respect to America’s immigrant communities in The Tarnished Golden Door report (1980).
Reading Yaki’s dissenting opinions in many of the Commission’s reports, I am reminded of Justice John Marshall Harlan, who famously dissented against the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and in other cases throughout the late 19th century. At the time, the High Court was undermining the rights of African Americans, yet Harlan knew their view of America could not prevail in the long run.
Similarly writing for the history books, Yaki and fellow Commissioner Arlan Melendez blasted not only some of the findings, but also the way the U.S. Commission on Human Rights was conducting its business, in a September 2007 report on the status of school desegregation.
As with many other government agencies that regulate and oversee industry, the Bush appointees at the Commission on Civil Rights have issued informal “briefing reports” rather than formal statutory or hearing reports, stopped performing original social science research, and conducted brief hearings that, as Yaki noted, “[a]t worst, … serve as thinly-veiled political cover for the Commission majority to issue ideological policy statements to influence pending legislation, administrative decisions or reviews, and judicial cases.”
On the Commission’s website (usccr.gov), you can read more about their work and Yaki’s brave and principled efforts to protect affirmative action, Title IX opportunities for women, and more. The depth of Yaki’s passion and scholarship is displayed in reports such as the Commission’s ten-year update on the effect of the Adarand federal procurement case decided by the Supreme Court in 1995. In 2005, the majority of the commissioners issued a 77-page report that was rebutted by Yaki’s 106-page dissent, including five appendices of facts and figures.
Next year could prove another difficult one for Yaki and others who continue to toil inside our federal government, to hold back the Bush Administration’s assault on our Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties. Thank you, Commissioner Yaki, and keep up the good fight!